We will not calm down without Belarusian migrants, although we leave many very capable Lithuanians aside

"“Spatial ability, defined by a capacity for mentally generating, rotating, and transforming visual images, is one of the three specific cognitive abilities most important for developing expertise in learning and work settings,” wrote Gregory Park, an independent researcher, Lubinski and Camilla Benbow of Vanderbilt in Scientific American.

There are several essential occupations that all modern societies require and for which outsourcing is not possible. Master carpenters, electricians, mechanics, and plumbers, among others, are needed to maintain and build complex infrastructures.

First, spatial ability is a salient psychological characteristic among adolescents who subsequently go on to achieve advanced educational and occupational credentials in STEM. Second, spatial ability plays a critical role in structuring educational and occupational outcomes in the general population as well as among intellectually talented individuals. Third, contemporary talent searches miss many intellectually talented students by restricting selection criteria to mathematical and verbal ability measures.

Children at the top of their 3rd grade mathematics class are much more likely to become inventors, but only if they come from high-income families. High-scoring children from low-income or minority families are unlikely to become inventors. Put differently, becoming an inventor relies upon two things in America: excelling in mathematics and science and having a rich family.

Bell and his co-authors graphed patent rates, looking at inventors who were children in families from the top income quintile compared with the rate for those who were children from the bottom four quintiles. 

The failure to “harness the underutilized talent” of mathematically inclined children from middle class and working class families, the authors argue, results in a substantial loss of innovation and economic growth. In order to remedy the situation, they call for policies providing those with strong math scores with “greater exposure to innovation” through “mentoring programs to internships to interventions through social networks.” Targeting exposure programs “to children from underrepresented groups who excel in mathematics and science at early ages is likely to maximize their impacts.”

Harrington, Fogg and Khatiwada “estimate that there are about 31 million adults in the U.S. who left college with no award.”
Not only that, but a substantial portion of those who do graduate do not have the basic skills for a job with college-level requirements: “more than one in five adults with a bachelor’s degree have literacy skills below level 3 (basic) and one in three have low numeracy scores.”
Why has this happened?
Many colleges and universities expanded their enrollment capacity to accommodate this near universal demand. This accommodation included admission of a substantial share of students with weaker literacy and numeracy skills.
Admissions requirements were liberalized, Harrington and colleagues write, despite the fact that
most colleges are not organized to bolster those skills. Substantial shares of matriculating students with lower literacy and numeracy skills raise the risk of both quitting school before graduation and of mal-employment after the degree award. 

Who are the mal-employed?
Employed persons with a bachelor’s degree or higher who are employed in an occupation that does not typically require the knowledge skills and abilities of a college graduate. 

The college labor market is largely composed of professional, technical, managerial and high-level sales occupations. The incidence of mal-employment is highest among recent college graduates who frequently struggle to find their place in the labor market.
Harrington and his colleagues estimate that
about one in four prime age workers are mal-employed. The likelihood of mal-employment varies considerably by major field of study. About one in three humanities/liberal arts/social sciences majors are mal-employed, about one in six engineering, math and computer science majors as well as majors in health specialties are mal-employed.

Most importantly, resource inequality is an order of magnitude larger in higher education compared to K-12. Rich school districts spend maybe 20 percent more than poor school districts. Elite private colleges are spending upwards of $100k per student per year, compared to about $10k in community colleges. In higher education, we devote the most resources to the students who need the least help.

Work is becoming more knowledge-intensive, and more and more jobs require BOTH a strong foundation of numeracy and literacy AND “higher-order” skills like problem-solving, teamwork, critical thinking etc. Many of these jobs also require digital fluency and more advanced technical skills. Overall, the baseline skill set required for most middle or high-paying jobs is increasing, and will continue to do so.

If you could measure skills by college type, I suspect you’d find that the college grads with low skills in non-college jobs are mostly graduating from for-profit schools and less-selective open access nonprofits and publics. I also suspect that the “mal-employed” college grads are mostly from this group."