The obvious summary: because they take degrees that aren’t worth anything.
Because the degrees are worthless?
Too many baby boomers, who also have college degrees, who are able to work until they are 80 years old and have no intent on retiring, preventing jobs from opening up.
Not that I’m blaming baby boomers per se, but if all the jobs in a sector of the economy have been taken, they aren’t hiring.
to the author:
not all degrees are equal
not everyone does as well in their studies
not all the jobs pay tge same salary
When a dull-normal student takes out huge loans for a degree in Transgender and Racial Environmental Justice, he/she belongs working at a McDonald’s drive through. There are too many ridiculous, meaningless college majors that are being offered.
Colleges don’t educate people anymore. They indoctrinate them.
I have a niece who is 34 years old and has been taking college courses since she was 20. She says she wants to get a PhD in Spanish literature. That will take her at least another five years. At best, she might find a low-paying part-time “adjunct professor” job.
Circa 1966 graduated from high school oddly number one the ACT tests. Two years later most deservedly flunked out of college. I did go back to obtain a degree in geology but also took much chemistry as electives. 17 years later in the oil field I went back to school again. I became a pharmacist.
We live in an great nation.
Once even if you had a degree in Philosophy you had also taken classes in advanced maths as well as English composition.
You knew the basics of how the world worked, you could do math, write a coherent report, turn your work in on time, get along with people of other cultures, all things that even now will get you a job.
You also did not think that you already knew everything.
In fact, if your collage had done their job properly you were extremely cognoscente of how much you did not know.
Not the case today.
there are one million jobs to go around to all the kids, nephews, nieces, and kids of friends of those who work in corporate and government America or those of sorority members. At 7% degreed, everybody got a job, even those from the lesser-knnwn schools. 7% degreed meant that degree was gifted or worked hard for. At 45%, the market is flooded but the connected are still going to get their jobs (see Malia, Chelsea, Hunter etal) leaving slim pickings for those who are not connected or were unable to form connectons during the college experience - the average student.
I did not because my degrees in Geology and Pharmacy and aviation had value.
I don’t share the sentiment of some posters that blame the teenagers for getting into debt because they took bad advice and went to college when they probably shouldn’t have. Lots of people did that in prior generations. The millennials were the first generation for bad decisions in college to really follow them for a career, even if they did “everything right.”
Jobs, good paying ones that need a degree are also much more selective because they are applied for en masse via the internet. So, the selection criteria becomes much more selective. You have to rewrite your resume, tailor it for each application, then log on to the company’s website and rephrase everything you just spent an hour rearranging... Just to get a shot at speaking to a human about the job. And that first person you talk with is almost always an HR person who never worked a day in the department that you’re applying for and is only picking your resume out of a pile because you used some key words that she was searching for.
That is going to get worse as well, especially in the jobs where people can work remotely. Now you’re competing against not just other candidates in driving distance, but people all around the nation, and some of them are willing to take a step down career wise if they can work from their lake house in some lower cost of living state than you.
I would say they are stupid. They signed up for an expensive college course not knowing if it was worth getting.
A Philosophy Degree is a notch below Basket Weaving in employment demand. People would be better off going to a trade school. Things like mechanics, plumbers, a/c repair, etc. will always be in demand. Colleges prepare students for very little these days, like being community agitators or anything that requires no physical labor or rational thought. If I were a parent paying for a child’s college now I would demand they attend a conservative college with an established record of graduating student who are in demand in the private sector and has professors who actually teach subject rather than preach left wing ideology.
Most college propaganda solicitation is focused on achieving 4 goals...
1) To get your money!
2) To convince you an education will guarantee you the American dream. A 6 figure income. A complete lie.
3) Deliberately sets you up with unrealistic expectations for failure. Charges you $100k-250k that you must borrow when the school knows perfectly well you will never get a job with a useless liberal arts degree that will pay you enough to pay-off your school loans. Which sows discontent and desperation. You want government bail-outs and have convinced yourself Capitalism doesn’t work and ebrace socialism.
4) “And this is the most important”...
... to indoctrinate you by exposing you to a hostile campus/faculty culture of victim-hood, hate, division, intolerance; critical race theory, anti-white, anti-America, SJW activism, and anything under the doctrine/agenda of the far left Marxist counter-culture mantra of the DNC and Democracy. The campus culture is a 24/7 propaganda campaign that Republicans/Conservatives are evil... they are the enemy! They are racists, Nazi’s, fascists, greedy capitalists, white supremacists, and kill black people for sport. You are not to listen to their toxic rhetoric or you will be expelled from the campus and fail your degree! No dissidents, opinions! No outside truths, ideas or questioning. You must listen, comply, obey.
Indeed, all this brainwashing accomplished without a SHRED of proof/evidence. Only that students are a captured audience led to believe that their teachers are infallible in giving you truth and information, not realizing you are slowly being brainwashed by communists.
It’s all a production line. An ‘Academia Indoctrination Industrial Complex’ meant to produce proletariat useful-idiots for the Bolshevik Revolution High Command.
LEGAL immigration and work visas like H-1B are killing our kids opportunities....
I wonder how many foreign nationals on H-1B visas he hired over Americans?
My oldest daughter got an expensive art degree, the kind where you say, “Do you want fries with that?” and actually spent a number of years as a waitress at a neighborhood pub. She got tired of that, went back to school and became a boat mechanic. She loves her work and was recently honored with a national award from the American Boat and Yacht Council.