Robert Reich: Four Years Of College Shouldn’t Be The Only Gateway To The Middle Class – OpEd

 May 28, 2025  

By Robert Reich

Trump’s latest idiotic idea of redistributing $3 billion in grant money from Harvard to trade schools, which he posted, masks a larger and more serious issue. 

It’s absurd that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class. 

Many high school seniors feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary. 

But not every young person is suited to four years of college. 

Some may be bright and ambitious but won’t get much out of college. 

An estimated half of recent college graduates are in jobs that don’t even require a college degree.

And they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for decades. Trump’s Department of Education has restarted collections on defaulted student loans. For the first time in years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.

If young people start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures. 

The biggest frauds are for-profit colleges that are raking in money even as their students drop out in droves, and whose diplomas are barely worth the inkjets they’re printed on.

America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone and looks down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees.

This has to stop. If the election of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s that people without college degrees — fully 60 percent of adult Americans, most of whom voted for him — need better jobs, better wages, and more respect. 

Young people need an alternative to a four-year college degree. That alternative should be a world-class system of vocational-technical education.

A four-year college degree isn’t necessary for many of tomorrow’s good jobs.

The emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories.

Along with people who can upgrade the software embedded in almost every gadget you buy.

Who can implement machine-learning algorithms. Process natural language for AI. Install and service robots. 

Today it’s even hard to find a skilled plumber or electrician.

The vocational and technical education now available to young Americans is wildly underfunded and inadequate. 

And too often, vocational and technical education is denigrated as being for “losers.”

These programs should be creating winners.

Germany — whose median wage (after taxes and transfers) is higher than ours — gives many of its young people world-class technical skills that have made Germany a global leader in fields such as precision manufacturing.

A world-class technical education doesn’t have to mean young people’s fates are determined when they’re 14. Instead, rising high school seniors could be given the option of entering a program that extends a year or two beyond high school and ends with a diploma acknowledging their technical expertise.

Community colleges — the under-appreciated crown jewels of America’s feeble attempts at equal opportunity — could be developing these curricula and credentials. 

Businesses could be advising on the technical skills they’ll need and promising jobs to young people who complete their degrees with good grades.

Government could be investing enough money to make these programs thrive. (Trump’s $3 billion to trade schools would hardly make a difference.)

Instead, we continue to push most of our young people through a single funnel called a four-year college education — a funnel so narrow it’s causing applicants and their parents excessive stress and worry about “getting in”; that’s too often ill-suited and unnecessary, and far too expensive; and that can cause college dropouts to feel like failures for the rest of their lives.

Trump’s attack on Harvard and other prestigious universities will only harm America. And his idea of redistributing grant money from Harvard to trade schools is a silly populist token. 

But it does offer an opportunity to rethink one of the central tenets of American society: It’s time to give up the idea that every young person has to go to college. 

America should offer high school seniors a genuine alternative route into the middle class.

• This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack

Robert Reich

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

North Korea: Fears Of A Purge In Shipyard Town After Destroyer Launch Goes Wrong

North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 May 28, 2025 

By RFA

By Chang Kyu Ahn and Ji Eun Kim

The mood in the North Korean port city where a warship launch went badly wrong last week is grim, local residents say, as authorities make arrests and officials scramble to find ways to salvage the 5,000-ton vessel.

North Korean state media has reported that several senior officials have been detained, including Hong Kil Ho, the manager of the Chongjin Shipyard, and Ri Hyong Son, a senior military industry official in the ruling Workers’ Party.

The May 21 launch was meant to be a signature event for supreme leader Kim Jong Un, signaling North Korea progress toward building a blue water navy.

He was presiding over the launch when the ship tipped sideways after an attempted “side launch” from the dock side that left one side of the hull submerged. Just a day later, state media reported his angry reaction: calling it a “grave and unacceptable accident” and a “serious criminal act.”

“People are stunned that the government acknowledged the failure so openly,” a resident of North Hamgyong province, where Chongjin is located, told RFA. Like all the sources in this story, the resident spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

A source from Chongjin said: “The whole city feels like it’s in mourning.”

North Korea’s opaque and often brutal political system only adds to the tension. Residents now fear that those involved—engineers, managers, and possibly even their families—may face severe punishment.

“People worry that this will lead to a purge,” a second source from North Hamgyong province said. “Kim takes failure personally, especially when it undermines his image.”

Reasons for failure

The shipyard was once known for building ships like the 9,500-ton Mangyongbong-92, a cargo and passenger ferry which launched in 1971. But it has not launched large-scale vessels like that in decades, according to local sources. During Kim Jong Un’s rule, the yard had pivoted toward production of military assets like submarines and torpedo craft.

“The shipyard used to be capable of building cargo ships before economic collapse in 1990s,” the Chongjin resident said. “But after the economic collapse, they haven’t built larger ships. With the retirement of older engineers, additionally the new generation lacks the experience for this kind of operation.”

Following the accident, the damaged warship was covered with blue tarpaulin, visible in satellite images. The residents say attempts to recover the vessel have been slow, hindered by poor infrastructure and a lack of proper equipment.

“There are no large cranes at the shipyard that can lift a vessel of this size,” the first source from North Hamgyong said. “They might use sea cranes, but the approach route through sea to the dock is too narrow and shallow for those to operate easily.” 

“It is possible to use crane ships (floating cranes), but the shipyard dock where the vessel has capsized is too narrow, making it extremely difficult to deploy multiple crane ships,” the source added. “Another problem is that the dock is not directly connected to open waters — it lies deep inland and can only be accessed through a narrow channel, which makes it challenging to bring in large crane ships to the site.”

Using balloons?

Satellite imagery appears to show that North Korea is attempting to raise the destroyer into an upright position by attaching numerous balloons to it, according to a U.S. expert.

Decker Eveleth, an imagery analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., likened it to a scene from a popular animated movie.

“North Korea appears to be attempting to lift up their destroyer with methods inspired by Pixar’s hit 2009 film Up. Note the numerous balloons in the air above the destroyer,” he wrote in a post on X featuring a May 25 satellite image from Maxar. 

In “Up,” an elderly man ties vast numbers of balloons to his house to fly it to a South American wilderness.

RFA

Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Content used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

EU Again Delays Recognition Of Catalan, Basque And Galician As Official Languages

 May 28, 2025 

By EurActiv

By Inés Fernández-Pontes

(EurActiv) — EU countries have once again postponed a decision on granting Catalan, Basque and Galician official status as EU languages, citing a lack of unanimous support among member states.

It has been two years since Madrid formally submitted a proposal to amend the EU’s linguistic regime to include Spain’s three most widely-spoken minority languages, which requires the support of all 27 countries. The bloc’s Europe ministers met to discuss the proposal in Brussels on Tuesday.

But just after the meeting, Spanish government spokesperson Pilar Alegría said during a press conference in Madrid that some countries had requested “more time and more information”. She added that Spain would “undoubtedly accept their request.”

Several large countries had reservations about the cost and legal feasibility of incorporating three new languages into the EU machinery, three EU diplomats told Euractiv.

Currently, the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician within EU institutions is governed by administrative agreements between Spain and specific EU bodies. They can be used in the institutions – in meetings or debates, for example – with prior notice and approval.

The cost of the translation of all EU legislation and the use of interpreters and translators in the three languages has been calculated by the European Commission at around €132 million per year. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has previously said Spain would be willing to pay these costs entirely.

EU ministers have once previously delayed a decision on the proposal after a September 2023 meeting.

Sánchez’s growing headache

The official status of Catalan was one of the main conditions imposed by the main right-wing separatist party Junts to provide the seven votes that allowed Pedro Sánchez to become prime minister for a second term.

This demand was backed by left-wing sepratists ERC in Catalonia, and by Basque and Galician nationalist parties. Basque nationalist parties PNV and EH Bildu are Basque to be granted official status in the EU – as are the BNG in Galicia.

The use of Spain’s co-official languages at national institutions was approved in 2023, to allow “the use of the languages that have the character of official in some Autonomous Communities.”

The next step, Sánchez told Catalan separtists, was to guarantee the official status of Catalan as the EU’s 25th official language – but Sánchez and his government have run into opposition in other European capitals.

Albares said on Tuesday that the three languages’ official status is “a matter of Spanish national identity,” and as such the EU “must protect the national identity of all member states.”

Eddy Wax and Magnus Lund Nielsen contributed reporting.

 

Kremlin Hopes ‘Russian Community’ Violence Will Channel Veterans’ Nationalism – Analysis

Members of Russian Community nationalist organization. Photo Credit: VKontakte/obshina_rus

 May 28, 2025  

By Paul Goble

The Russian Community, today the largest Russian nationalist organization, is rapidly evolving from an ideological group that supports Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church into a criminal band. It is ready to engage in violence against the Kremlin’s opponents and is backed and directed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) (see Meduza, May 5; Kavkaz.Realii, May 22).

Unsurprisingly, given the Putin regime’s general approach, the Russian Community is doing so in ways that allow both its leaders and the Kremlin deniability. This allows the group to pass under the radar and become ever more similar to other smaller and more extreme nationalist groups in Russia in the last several years. It has additionally come to resemble groups such as the Black Hundreds at the end of the tsarist period in Russia or the Freikorps in Germany in the wake of World War I (see EDM, October 15, 2024; Window on Eurasia, April 7).

As of now, the Kremlin appears confident it can use the Russian Community to exploit nationalist energy to control the most extreme forms of Russian nationalism, especially among veterans returning from its war against Ukraine and other conflicts abroad. There is a very real risk, however, that it is creating a monster that will further divide Russia’s ethnically and religiously diverse population or transform the regime ruling over it in the direction of full-blown fascism. This appears to be a result that many near the top of the Russian political system would like to see (see EDM, January 19, 2024).

Over the last year, there has been an increasing number of violent, even deadly, attacks on minorities of various kinds by individuals and groups, which have sometimes proudly identified themselves as members of the Russian Community (Kavkaz.Realii, September 8, 2024).

The organization’s leadership have sometimes denied that those involved in these attacks were members, only to take them in and even suggest that those who engage in such violence are the kind of people who should form the core of the Russian Community as it grows (Telegram/obshina_ru, May 8; Kavkaz.Realii, May 22).

Russian officials, as is their custom, often refuse to acknowledge that these attacks were motivated by ethnic hatred. Leaders of the non-Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, whose citizens were among those attacks as well and who had earlier sought to ban the Russian Community, however, have made it clear that they believe these attacks were ethnically motivated  (Telegram/adelimkhanov_95, May 8; Telegram/news_ingushetii1, May 8).

Most of these attacks have involved relatively small numbers of attackers and victims, and have been far from Moscow or other major Russian cities, with a few notable exceptions, most recently in St. Petersburg (Fontanka.ru, May 6; Arminfo.info, May 5). As a result, the attacks have not garnered the attention of Moscow’s media or experts. As a result, there have been few attempts by Russian analysts to analyze these attacks and suggest the broader implications of the role that the Russian Community is now assuming in the social and political life of that country. Asmik Novikova, the leading Russian specialist on vigilante groups who works at the Public Verdict rights organization, however, is an exception. She says that both the timing and the manner of recent attacks against minorities and the connection of these attacks with the Russian Community deserve careful scrutiny because they highlight how the Kremlin’s involvement and how it may be threatened by that involvement (Telegram/publicverdict, May 20).

Novikova argues that these attacks are the work of organized groups and target members of ethnic or religious minorities in almost all cases. Therefore, the organizer, in this case, the Russian Community, meets the characteristics in Russian law of “an organized criminal group” and should be subject to criminal sanction. That, however, has not happened. Far too often, she points out, those most directly involved are let off with no charges or minimal penalties, and the organization itself is able to continue its work unimpeded. This indicates that the Russian Community and its violence have the support of the Kremlin and the FSB (Telegram/publicverdict, May 20). She suggests that even more compelling evidence for this conclusion is that the Russian Community was founded five years ago, but it has exploded in size only now (Telegram/publicverdict, May 20). The timing and rapid growth can be explained only by one development, given how the Kremlin has increasingly sought to control all nominally independent social groups. The explanation, Novikova continues, is that today,

“[V]eterans of armed conflicts are trickling back into Russian society in thin streams not only from the war in Ukraine but from other conflicts in general. No matter how hard the government tries to contain such people, either by keeping them in war zones or nearby, they are coming back  (Telegram/publicverdict, May 20).

That creates a reservoir of people “who are capable of very quickly resorting to violence against others”  (Telegram/publicverdict, May 20). Having a group like the Russian Community, which is more than ready to take action against groups the Kremlin dislikes, is a safety valve and a convenience, even though any group powerful enough to take such actions could become one that its creators may soon lose control over. 

Re-integrating veterans of Putin’s war against Ukraine was always going to be a serious problem, as Moscow’s experience with veterans of its war in Afghanistan and the experience of other countries with returning veterans suggested (see EDM, April 14, 2022). As more and more veterans have returned, Putin has promoted a much-ballyhooed program to integrate veterans as the new “heroes” of his Russia (see EDM, May 22). That program, however, has not had much success, especially as ever more people are worried about how returning veterans are producing a crime wave in Russia (see EDM, September 25, 2024, February 25).

Up to now, the crimes being committed by the Russian Community have gotten lost in this larger phenomenon. Because the Kremlin and its FSB are behind these groups, however, they are likely to have a greater impact over the longer term. They cannot be stopped by a militia alone, and the transformations they are promoting are goals that at least some of those at or near the top of the political hierarchy share and want to see implemented (Verstka, October 11, 2024).

The question now is whether Moscow will pull the plug on the Russian Community, as some commentators suggest, or whether it will not, either because of its own choices or because it may soon lack the ability to do so without incurring costs far greater than it is prepared to pay (Radio Svoboda, May 10).

• This article was published by The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 22 Issue

Paul Goble

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .