House of Eratosthenes

Colleges are rapidly adding new majors and minors in green studies, and students are filling them fast.

Nationwide, more than 100 majors, minors or certificates were created this year in energy and sustainability-focused programs at colleges big and small, says the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. That’s up from just three programs added in 2005.

Two factors are driving the surge: Students want the courses, and employers want the trained students, says Paul Rowland, the association’s executive director.

“There’s a great perception that there’s a sweet spot with energy to do good and do well, and it appears to be the place of job growth,” says Rob Melnick, executive dean of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Uh, yeah. That’s the problem. It’s going to appear to be the place of job growth for a good long time…I give it about a decade.

At the end of which, we’re going to be acutely feeling the effects of all these professionals walking around, every bit of fluff stuffed into their noggins pure symbolism, no substance. Which means they won’t know how to build a goddamn thing, and they won’t know how to think like builders either.

Already, during any stretch of time that sees you accumulating…oh…let us say…twenty things of which you feel the need to complain — nineteen times or more, you are told “I don’t make the rules.” Or “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Or “company policy.” And these aren’t you-charged-me-too-much types of complaints. Overcharging benefits somebody. It makes sense on one side. This is stuff that is unreal…sur-real…inexplicable…doesn’t help anyone. You present your logical, well-thought-out argument that this is the wrong way to be doing it, and you’re given some bulletproof iron-curtain policy that says they gotta keep doing it that way, whether it makes sense or not.

You see what’s happening here? We’re becoming experts in doing things efficiently…in theory…while carefully avoiding testing it out in practice. “Education” is quickly becoming proficiency in following sequences of steps scripted by invisible, alien, otherwordly others. We’re not trying to become efficient so we can do more of something. We’re becoming skilled in going through the motions, that appear to be the delivery of the substance behind truckloads of marketing bullshit. Green health insurance. Green Karate studios. Green banking. Green coffee, and green cups to hold it. Green Chinese food — blecch. Yes, sure, it looks like a genuine market demand. It really is, for the next few years or so.

This green graduates are still going to have solid careers, at the time their own kids are going to college?

How’s that possible? We’re losing the notion that revenue comes from other people…from our neighbors who are just like us. Something goes right at work, your sales guys land an account and it’s “an account.” It’s just there. Usually begins with “State department of.” They have an open bid on — something.

Real people needing things? That’s so yesterday. So our business world is becoming something of a festering swamp of narcissism. Each one of us wants to end up with “all” the money…or enough to live in comfort…but these green guys have their entire professional disciplines dedicated to servicing faceless agencies trying to satisfy arbitrary rules. Not people. The circle has been anti-circuited.

And they’re navigating a vast ocean in a canoe made from a giant salt lick.

Enough of your “green” marketing twaddle. For every unit of carbon you don’t emit, I’m going to emit three.

At some point, people started getting the notion that they needed to find a way to be successful without being good at anything. Presumably because they had learned that being good at something was just too damned much work. So education turned into this odyssey to get trained for “jobs of the future,” which you may be able to also recognize as “jobs that don’t exist,” which makes the education for them completely meaningless.

Real, existing job markets have been dominated for centuries by people who have worked hard enough to earn the right to dominate them. The lazy, overpriveleged cretins of the green movement are having none of it.

Careers, real work, are based on immutable socio-economic NEEDS. “Green” is a fad. Futureless. But absolute Xanadu for the vain and lazy. They will never be outcompeted for that education or those jobs, because they are the only ones after them. Makes it an easy choice.
- Andy | 12/28/2009 @ 10:52
I work in power generation and this type of shit bothers me immensely. These graduates will have no discernible skills, and no knowledge of anything useful. Sure, the government will hire them and their vaporware ideas for a while, but eventually the green gravy train will dry up and we’ll have a surfeit of under educated, unemployable people. Actually, we have a decent number of those circulating around society now, but this tomfoolery will increase that number geometrically.

Huh. I wonder which side of the political spectrum these idjits will fall on? Quite the poser, that question is. I’m stumped.

Actually, my snark at the end contains the reason why this crap is happening: an overly leftist dominated field is creating a whole new set of red on the inside, green on the outside watermelons, whose skills will consist of nothing more than being able to spout the latest socialist shibboleths.

Speaking as a power guy, I will opine that I think a new power source will likely appear via research within the next 10-20 years, if the government doesn’t screw things up too badly. What that source will be, I don’t know, but I will wager my meager life savings on the fact that it won’t be solar or wind.

Ehh, what the hell do I know? I’m just an engineer. No one needs the things that I produce. Unless, of course, you like lights, heat and air conditioning in your house.
- Physics Geek | 12/28/2009 @ 11:55
Physics Geek | 12/28/2009 @ 11:55

“Vaporware,” indeed. I knew there was a term for this crap, I just couldn’t remember it.

That puts the current bubble in perfect perspective vis-a-vis the ’90s.
- rob | 12/28/2009 @ 12:33
The one item that hasn’t been mention is the glaring fact that our colleges and universities have been turned into glorified trade schools or “High School part II” as I like to call it.

Most of these young adults, physically that’s what they are, have gone to college simply because they were told to. They don’t know what they want to do, where they want to go, or anything beyond the fact that since they now have a high school diploma the next step is a college on.

College used to be about grooming the leaders of tomorrow by making them well rounded, well read, people. You went there to expand your critical thinking skills. Skills that USED to be taught to students in high school so they could make proper decisions based on empirical evidence rather than “Gee, well I just feel that…”

Most of the people in college now just need a trade school education. Learn the trade skill you want and then get out in the field and do the job you want to do and I wonder how much the federally backed student loan program has had to do with this. The government is giving out the money so that kids can go to school and as long as schools can get the government dollar they will keep adding crap on to draw more students and more money.
- Instinct | 12/28/2009 @ 14:56
If they want “green studies”, I believe it is already called “agriculture”
- pdwalker | 12/28/2009 @ 22:16
Morgan. Hammer. Nail. Bang!

Beauty.

*sniff*!
- philmon | 12/29/2009 @ 20:30

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Green StudiesMonday, December 28th, 2009

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Monday, December 28th, 2009