President Obama while touring a Boston school with Melinda Gates made the following comment:

There is no better economic policy than one that produces more graduates with the skills necessary to succeed.

This idea emerges from a long tradition of linking education to jobs. Nothing new there. And maybe the President is embracing one of the few rhetorical strategies that works around education. You can’t win a public argument challenging the connection between jobs and a good education.

My issue, though, is with the assumption that skills will somehow shift labor markets, as if, in a global economy, the number of well-prepared graduates has a major impact on where the jobs are.