The University and Say's Law

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Jean-Baptiste Say was a notable French economist during the early years of the Industrial Revolution.  That revolution was truly revolutionary in the sense of entirely changing how people lived and worked, and the social structures underpinning society.

And in its early years, it was not at all clear to anyone just what was going on.  Say - a big enthusiast of free markets and competition - attempted to explain it.

What's interesting is that the most commonly found statement of Say's Law comes not from Say or his contemporaries, but rather from John Maynard Keynes.  I myself learned Keynes' formulation when I was an 18 year old undergraduate:

Supply creates its own demand.

Basically what Keynes meant was that hey, what was spent building a stock of inventory (say, a factory that creates solar cells) represents money that went into the economy, and so demand overall went up because of the resulting fiscal stimulus.

Well, sure, but that doesn't mean that demand for solar cells went up.  Or more precisely, if I spend $500M to build something, that doesn't mean that anyone else will think it's worth $500M.  This is the well, duh school of economic analysis in action.

And so the the University.  Universities have for years - since the years shortly after World War II - been telling people that a University degree is the ticket to a high paying job.  Just as in the early years of the Industrial Revolution it appeared that there was an inexhaustible demand for cotton fabrics, it appeared for decades that modern economies had an inexhaustible demand for University graduates.  And so the diploma mills mushroomed, because after all supply creates its own demand, right?

In an article published in the journal Human Relations, Belgin Okay-Somerville (PhD, Human Resource Management) from the University of Aberdeen and Professor (of Human Resource Management) Dora Scholarios from the University of Strathclyde claim that the number of "skilled jobs" no longer matches the number of "skilled workers".

This means that graduates have no choice but to take rubbish jobs or, at best, "intermediate level" positions.

Naturally these are a long way from the sort of jobs once dished out to graduates in the days when a degree was a rare badge of distinction, rather than something which fell out of your cornflakes packet following three years of alcohol-fuelled fornication.

The Scottish-based trick-cyclists surveyed 7,787 graduate employees, finding that just 379 met their criteria for what defines a good job. These smug and satisfied employees worked in managerial, professional or associate professional occupations and had already racked up between 5 and 15 years in the real world after graduating.

But well done on the alcohol-fuelled fornication, not to mention leftie indoctrination!  It's funny how the Professors are so scornful of Say's Law (as expounded by Keynes) when they've been flogging it more any anyone in the Free World for decades.  I guess that Irony 101 is no longer taught at the Academy these days.