问答题 3.  In recent years, it is not uncommon that a college degree can not earn a college graduate a decent job while skilled workers from vocational schools are gaining in popularity with employers. The following is an article about this issue. Read it carefully and write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should:
    1. summarize the article briefly, and then
    2. express your opinion towards whether university education should be vocation-oriented.
    Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
    Write your article on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.
    I saw an interview with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz where he announced that the company would pay for most employees to get a degree online from Arizona State University. This seems like a benefit few of the company's employees would need. Aren't most of their baristas (咖啡师) already people with worthless degrees?
    The type I've described as Generation U (unemployed and underemployed). But it seems that Mr. Schultz is just echoing a sentiment that suggests that a college degree is required for most people to have a good career. This starts at the very top in America—the White House's education imperative states that "Earning a post-secondary degree or credential is a prerequisite for 21st century jobs."
    But the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that only 27 percent of jobs in the U.S. economy currently require a college degree. By comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 47 percent of workers today have an associate degree or higher. But the BLS projects that the proportion of jobs requiring a college degree will barely change—increasing to only 27.1 percent by 2022. Even the most optimistic projection—a study from Georgetown University, projects that at most 35 percent of jobs will require a college degree by 2020.
    While we're pushing more people to get college degrees, we're also facing a worsening shortage of skilled workers in many categories that don't require a college degree. In manufacturing, as many as 600,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs remained vacant across the U.S. due to shortages of skilled workers, according to the Manufacturing Institute's most recent "skills gap" report.
    This situation exists across all categories of trades. A study by Manpower Group shows that the hardest segment of the workforce for employers to staff with skilled talent are the skilled trades—the welders, electricians, etc. who are so prevalent in manufacturing and construction. The hourly pay for a manufacturing worker is almost $24, compared to about $9 for a barista at Starbucks. Given that spread, one would think more people would seek work in manufacturing than settle for a job making coffee. But we've managed to create a culture where a college degree is supposedly a magical ticket to the good life, while vocational education is something to be sneered at. Consequently we now have the average college grad carrying a debt of almost $30,000 upon graduation and outstanding student loans of over a trillion dollars.
    Even among those opting for college about a third pick majors that have very poor job prospects, including social sciences (11 percent), education (6 percent), psychology (7 percent), and visual and performing arts (6 percent). By contrast, only 2.4 percent pick computer science, 5 percent choose engineering, and 1.4 percent graduate with degrees in the physical sciences.
    Yet, we do everything possible to encourage people to go to college. The federal Pell Grant program in the U.S. intended to help low and moderate-income students finance college—costs over $35 billion annually, though almost 40 percent of Pell Grant recipients never graduate.