Posted on 02/25/2024 3:29:52 PM PST by george76
Seventy-three percent of college graduates who enter the labor market underemployed stay that way for 10 years...
almost half of America’s college graduates are working at high-school-level jobs.
The study, published Feb. 22, also found that 52 percent of college graduates are underemployed a year after graduation.
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employers are increasingly turning to factors other than college degrees to determine competency.
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52 percent of college graduates are underemployed a year after graduation. Even 10 years after graduation, 45 percent of college graduates remain underemployed.
Graduates who enter the labor market with a college-level job are said to “rarely slide into underemployment, as 79 percent of them maintain a college-level job for five years after graduation. Of those who remained employed in college-level occupations for five years after graduation, 86 percent remained in a college-level job for a decade.
Conversely, 73 percent of college graduates who enter the labor market underemployed stay that way for 10 years.
Then there’s the cost-to-degree and degree-to-job ratio.
A June 2023 analysis by Campus shows that an associate degree costs about $11,600 per year, including room and board, for a full-time student. That’s $23,200 for this two-year degree.
The average yearly cost to attend a four-year public college or university with room and board was $21,035. That’s $84,140 for a bachelor’s degree.
The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the median annual salary of someone with an associate degree is $48,240. For those with a bachelor’s degree, it’s $68,736.
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For a bachelor’s degree, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that business degrees are the number one major (19 percent) among today’s college students. Data compiled by Coursera shows that the median annual salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree in business is $65,000.
The second most popular degree is listed simply as “Health,” which ranked at 13 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median salary for a bachelor’s degree in the health care industry is between $51,330 and $128,790. The third most popular degrees are in social sciences and history (8 percent).
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the typical salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and history is around $64,540.
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Another consideration is whether the graduate can find a job that covers the cost of their student loan payments.
According to Bankrate, the current interest rate for federal student loans for undergraduates is 5.50 percent. Graduate students pay 7.05 percent or 8.05 percent for unsubsidized loans.
According to the student loan calculator by Smart Asset, the average debt for a student loan is $28,400. At the current interest rate, monthly payments for a 10-year payoff period are $308.
Degrees Versus Skills...
Julie Lammers, senior vice president of advocacy and corporate social responsibility at American Student Assistance (ASA) believes this is further proof that college degrees are not as valuable to the typical college student as they are being led to believe. She cited a September 2022 survey conducted by ASA and Jobs for the Future that found that employers are seeing less value in a bachelor’s degree.
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“In fact, 72 percent of surveyed employers said that they found a bachelor’s degree to be an unreliable way of assessing the quality of a candidate and are looking for ways to better evaluate the actual skills of a prospective employee rather than a degree type,” she told The Epoch Times.
Moreover, she said a November 2023 study by ASA showed that 71 percent of young people in non-degree pathway programs “perceive that they are workforce ready.” Asked if the degrees college students are pursuing contribute to their state of underemployment and their inability to find jobs that will provide sufficient income enough to cover the cost of obtaining the degree. Ms. Lammers said this wasn’t “universally true.”
“What we do know is that many young people are pursuing degrees that are not aligned to long-term career goals because they have never had the chance to explore and test and try career interests prior to making choices about postsecondary education,” she explained. “The lack of planning, and the fact that many young people are not aligning postsecondary education to prepare them for a chosen career contributes to this underemployment and struggle in the job market.”
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Ms. Lammers also said that ASA believes it’s critical for young people who want jobs that lead to economic prosperity to get more exposure to the working world at an earlier age.
“Not only does this allow a young person to build skills and a career identity, but it allows them to start building the social capital that can lead to long-term career success,” she said. “When young people have exposure to work at an earlier age through opportunities like internships and entrepreneurial experiences, they can begin to build these professional networks and the skills that employers say they desperately need but aren’t seeing when just looking for a degree.”
Ms. Lammers also said it’s important to note that what employers say they want most in employees are “durable skills,” a set of professional capabilities like teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and flexibility, which are essential in almost every job.
“It is these durable skills that are desperately desired by employers,” Ms. Lammers said, citing a study by America Succeeds that found 70 percent of the most requested skills in nearly 82 million job postings are Durable Skills.
“These are the skills employers are looking for on resumes,” she said, “Not just a degree.”
If you have a gender studies degree, you can go on to get a masters degree or a PhD and then teach required classes at a college. It’s a scam.
You could also become the diversity department head at a corporation or university. These people are not only not productive. They are anti-productive.
Our children and our nieces and nephews have heard about instant/expensive unemployment degrees while they were in high school.
ti
So we have engineers, Rns, and other grads with real degrees not instant unemployment degrees.
All have gotten good jobs before they were graduated and most worked in the summers and during break time. That and a good degree enabled them to get good full time jobs.
He said they joke about all the wokeness, and they get briefings now and then, but mostly, they just fly.
Unless you get a degree you must have for a specific career you will be a barista or waiter. English, gender studies, sociology, etc are going nowhere job wise. Once you get a degree & a decent job you can dabble in those areas as you wish. By themselves they are a trip to nada.
College is just another attempt to delay responsibility of living on your own and working for living.
The money spent on college is enough to start a handful of small business franchise’s and by the third or forth time finally succeed.
Most the people attending college in the past 25 years have not had the actual educatonal Bonafede’s to gain entrance.
Once athlete’s on scholarship graduated not being able to even sign their names, it didn’t take long for the lack of education to mainfest itself in the like’s of that Dr. Gay at Harvard.
Most are lucky if they get past their indroctrination that tells them to “Do what you love” rather that work or performa job you don’t like.
It’s past time to kill the Dept of Education, ATF, FBI and Homeland Security.
It’s time for Trump to declare that the Federal Government will no longer back Student Loans, and that no banks in the Federal Reserve System will be allowed to fund them or work programs. Let the College’s fund the student loans and get Federal dollars out of Education.
Really?! You mean it’s hard to find someone to pay you for your expertise in Queerness in Shakespeare, or Systems of Oppression and Gender Discrimination in the Teletubbies?
There are no jobs for fresher engineers. They’ve been taken by cheap labor H1Bs.
because they had no business going to college to begin with! they accomplished nothing but wasting their time and racking up debt!
Sorry, but those women and minority studies majors will NOT help you in life!
And they effectively have middle school-level educations.
I’d like to see a comparison. I’m betting the trade school grads are earning big $$$ within a couple years of graduating.
You list the number one degree is in Business, and number two is health degrees. So what. No wonder we (The US) is behind with our graduates. We have students that graduate with a degree that will not move the businesses ahead as TECHNOLOGY moves you forward. STEM degrees, not generic degrees.
If a kid spends 2-3 years at a good trade school learning HVAC, welding, electronics or machinists skills, he can step into a high paying five figure a year job right after graduation if he did well in school.
I don’t ever remember even asking an applicant for a college transcript to verify their grades.
My son took a ton of advanced placement courses in high school and got his Masters degree in public administration and economics in three years. Now he’s making big bucks working for the Federal Government.
Congratulations to you and your son. I haven’t heard a story like that in a long time.
this is level 6...
https://gutenberg.org/files/16751/16751-pdf.pdf
Thanks, I didn't realize it was on Gutenberg. I saved it for later.
I have the original bound set, we used them some when homeschooling, but even McGuffey's was slightly "dumbed down" compared to readers and other school books from the 1840s and 1850s, which were what we mostly used.
My son is part of the statistics. He’s almost 30 with an economics degree and is working at Whole Foods. He got one off for a job in San Francisco, but it didn’t pay enough for him to live there.
I think he kind of shut down after a while. It’s hard getting ghosted and rejected.
Thanks! I’m very proud of him. He also earned a bunch of scholarships so he’s not too deep into debt.
I was in school in the 1980’s...the only kids that got internships were minorities or kids who had families with pull.
In high school, the dumb kids got out of school early to go to work...quite a disadvantage for the smart kids.
Maybe supplement the economics degree with some accounting courses, and go for a job as a bank loan officer?
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