Awesome: Mike Rowe Testifies to the Senate on Skilled Labor

Mike Rowe, the sunny host of the excellent Discovery Channel show "Dirty Jobs," has probably single-handedly raised national awareness about hard work, those who do it, and their value to society as a whole.  Check out his recent testimony to the Senate about skilled labor.  Random thought: Rowe just doesn't look like himself in that suit!  Oh, but do take a look at what he has to say.  Here's a nice blurb:

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel. 

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a "good job" into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber -- if you can find one -- is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both.

It's the flip side of the overselling of "higher ed."  I can tell you for a fact that we could do with more skilled plumbers, electricians, and other skilled laborers than another graduation season's worth of largely useless sociology/women's studies/religion/philosophy majors who come out of school with utterly crushing amounts of debt and very bad job prospects.  And that's the cold hard truth.