Posted on 07/01/2012 3:24:51 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Andi Meuth earned a history degree from Texas A&M in May and has applied for 150 jobs, so far with no luck.
Jon Ancira graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology last year, but can't find work that uses his degree. After six months of searching, the 26-year-old did finally land a job — at a bank.
Alex Ricard, 21, is grateful to be using his electronic media degree from Texas State at a social media startup company, but it's an unpaid internship.
He says he's sent out three to five resumes a week for the past two months, with almost no response from prospective employers. When he does hear back, he says, it's most often that he doesn't have enough experience.
While the particulars for each graduate are different, the overarching narrative has become familiar.
Up to half of all recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, doing low-wage work outside their chosen fields, according to a widely reported analysis this spring by the Associated Press.
These young women and men still have high expectations — as do their parents — that a college degree will pay off, despite rising tuition and the resulting debt.
But increasingly, say economists and workforce experts, there is a mismatch in today's job market between graduates' skills and those needed in the fastest-growing career fields.
The recession changed the economy permanently, economists say. In this largely jobless recovery, millions of mid- and entry-level positions are gone, the work now automated.
Many of those with college degrees who do find jobs can expect lower salaries and reduced earning potential over their working lives. Rising debt — the average graduate carries about $25,000 in loans — can push the often-necessary advanced degree out of reach.
Locally, the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-olds has been about twice as high as the overall rate.
Psych degree overload
Ricard still holds out hope that his degree will eventually lead to a job, given the increased importance of social media and digital technology, but he has his limits: August.
“If I haven't found something by then,” he said, “even though I'd like to think my days of fast-food jobs are behind me, it becomes less about the job I want and more about the job I need at that point.”
Not all graduates face such dire straits. Those with in-demand degrees in areas such as engineering, information technology and nursing enjoy much brighter job prospects.
Kevin Davis, who earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin, had three job offers before he graduated in May. He took a job with Toshiba in Houston.
John Hollman will graduate from Austin Community College in December with a two-year associate degree in nursing. The San Antonio native already has two job offers, one from his current employer of nine years, Texas Oncology.
But employers and workforce agencies say the labor market is suffering from a jobs-skills mismatch.
Psychology, for example, is the third-most-popular four-year degree in Texas and one of the fastest growing, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, a public agency that works to bring people and jobs together.
Problem is, there's almost no demand at that level, said Eva Esquivel, communications manager with the agency.
More than 5,000 people graduated from Texas colleges and universities with bachelor's degrees in psychology in 2010, she said, to compete for four job openings in the field, with an annual salary of $22,000.
“That's not even enough to pay student loans back,” Esquivel said. Most psychology jobs require a higher-level degree — and there still aren't many positions available.
Ancira, who saw some of his psychology research published while studying at Northwest Vista, one of the Alamo Colleges, said he found fewer research opportunities after transferring to UT.
Disenchanted, he looked into changing majors or getting an advanced degree, but the burden of $36,000 in student loans put him off.
Meuth, who lives in San Antonio, said she knew the job market for history majors without a master's degree or teaching certification was limited but decided to go for a major she was passionate about, even in a slumping economy. She wants to work in a museum eventually, which requires a master's, but is putting it off for now to avoid taking out any loans.
Conversely, Texas colleges graduated far fewer engineers than psychology majors in 2010 — just 271 petroleum engineers, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, and demand far outstrips supply, especially as the Eagle Ford Shale continues to boom.
Starting pay for petroleum engineers averages $85,000, Esquivel said. For the 405 chemical engineers who graduated in 2010, it's about $60,000.
Skills in short supply
Chris Nielsen, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Manufacturing in San Antonio, said the company has struggled to fill engineering positions and points to the healthy starting salary as proof of the competitive nature of the field.
But perhaps more crucially, Nielsen said that in the six years the company has been building trucks in San Antonio, it's never been able to fill all its trade positions, or what it calls “skilled job” positions.
Those include maintaining assembly-line robots, which Nielson said requires training in programming, hydraulics and pneumatics.
These are good, career-track positions, he said, many that pay in the $60,000 range.
Toyota is hardly alone.
Manufacturers surveyed in the latest “Skills Gap” report from the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, reported that roughly 5 percent of current jobs go unfilled because of a lack of qualified candidates. That's as many as 600,000 unfilled jobs — machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors, technicians and more — that manufacturers say hamper their ability to expand operations, drive innovation and improve productivity.
Those surveyed said the national education curriculum is not producing workers with the basic skills they need, and the trend is not likely to improve in the near term.
Tom Pauken, appointed to the Texas Workforce Commission by Gov. Rick Perry in 2008, has become a passionate advocate for greater vocational and technical training.
He laments what he calls a “one size fits all” approach to higher education, which assumes that everyone needs a four-year degree.
Those who do are often saddled with enormous debt and still can't find good jobs, he said. “Meanwhile, there is a shortfall of qualified applicants for those with skills training as welders, electricians, pipe fitters and machinists.”
Entry-level salaries for those jobs in the San Antonio area begin in the low- to-mid-$20,000 range, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, and rise to the upper $40,000s at the expert level.
In San Antonio, Alamo Colleges runs Alamo Academies, which aims to train high school juniors and seniors for skilled employment in fast-growing local industries, including aerospace, information technology and security, manufacturing and the health professions.
The academies, which are a partnership among the community college district, local industry and workforce agencies, also provide college credits, and expose students to occupations that require a college education. Students stay in their high schools, take about half their classes at the academy and participate in a paid internship in their chosen field.
After high school, graduates earn an average starting pay of more than $30,000 and will have earned a couple dozen college credits.
“I tell students they need to do career planning even before education planning,” said Esquivel, who travels a 12-county region talking to high school students about where job growth will occur in the coming years. “I wish more students would take advantage” of the information her agency has to offer.
Luisa Ramirez, the on-campus recruiting coordinator at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said she's seen an increase in freshmen who come to the career center seeking advice, rather than waiting until they're seniors.
“They've seen their parents go through the recession,” she said, “So they're more aware.”
Ancira said many recent graduates might be in for a rude awakening.
“You go to school thinking you're going to graduate and there's going to be a job in an office waiting for you,” he said, “but a few years into it, you realize that's not really going to happen.”
“College grads learning good jobs hard to find now”
Pfffft!
I have a bucket. I shall cry all of two tears into it.
Take it to SCOTUS. They may be able to find a way to mandate you a job.
What an amazing site! Thanks for that.
Well, God Bless You!! Pretty sure you had OTHER training and Education than History to fly....right?
Yeah, we’re completely useless. Let’s see.
I’ve done advertising (since I can do public speaking, know how to write, and know how to appeal to other people).
I’ve done research (since I know my way around a library and can dig through any archive)
I’ve done freelance writing (since I can write just about anything your little heart desires from technical reports to poety).
I’ve done database work, since I’m trained in systematically organizing information so as to be accessable and understandable.
History majors have quite a few talents that are hard to find in other occupations. I can do most anything because most of all, if I don’t know how to do it, I know how to learn it.
I’d be interested in knowing how many of these are first generation university grads. On the one hand, first generation tend to be more focused on a degree as a means to a better standard of living, but on the other, they have no basis upon which to form expectations, no network of family and family contacts to help guide them. My father was the first to attend college in his family since the Civil War, and I was the first to graduate. It’s very different, knowing now what I didn’t know then. I have no children but my niece will benefit, I’ll make certain of that.
Is this before or after they passed Obamacare and asked us to read it to find out what’s in it?
More importantly, the A&M grad had a real opportunity staring her in the face for four years and she failed to acknowledge it. She could have chosen one of the ROTC programs, gotten a military commission, and now be employed to learn real skills that will have value after she leaves the military. Plenty of liberal arts majors have been down that path over the years and have gotten good jobs because of those management skills from the military experience.
At a minimum, you no longer get an employer response about lacking experience.
I came of age during Jimmy Carter’s miserable administration. I made under $100 a week for the first year and maybe $125 the second year. It built up my work skills and toughened me up (well, somewhat). So, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for kids with an English degree who want $60,000 straight out of the box.
History, psychology and electronic media? You’d have to be very creative to find a job that directly translates to the first two. Electronic media, this person needs to move to a podunk town and get a job with the TV station or become a technical writer, if they learned any writing in college.
Four jobs? Pathetic and I blame the colleges. You've got to know that all those college psychology professors and instructors have jobs!
I work at a university teaching high-level IT skills.. Just getting the know-it-all professors to understand there is a world beyond Cobol and object-oriented programming is tough enough (I had to offer them FREE classes), but to convince the psychology and various feminist/black/chicano/gay studies types that there programs are worthless is next to impossible. Why? Because they got a nice cushy teaching gig without having to break a sweat and to actually inform their students that they're on a dead-end track would mean the gravy train is over.
Believe me, the professors in these worthless programs actually go out recruiting students. Despicable!
Your post is dead accurate! So much success depends on other things than the right degree. Family and friend networks, for example. I grew up in a working class home and was the second person in my family to attain a college degree. Both my parents and I had no knowledge of how to put that degree to good use. So, in my case, it took a lot longer to get ahead - and a lot of kicks along the way!
Not everybody can do calculus and not everybody can be an engineer.
Especially with so many online job sites. She could send 50 resumes a week, per geographic area.
I have a daughter who is in the ROTC program right now. She is doing things that really boost her confidence and skills. It is a great program for a kid that wants to do it, but if your heart is not in it it won’t work.
I recently visited the West Texas town of Kermit, smack in the middle of the Permain Basin. They are drilling for oil all over the place there and are crying for people to work.
Andi Meuth should get off his resume sending ass and get out to Kermit or Monahans where there are tons of openings but no people to do the work. A warm body will earn more there than any history major starting job ever will.
She’s likely to wind up as an overly-educated pole dancer.
When I was in college, those that majored in Psych were there to party and the females were there to find a degree in Mrs. This female graduated with a degree in Psych..Even the senior level psych courses were ones that required little, if any, hard work.
“History degree???? What the HELL would they be good for in the workplace?? NOTHING but be Mr. KnowitAll.”
The value of a liberal arts education is rarely preparation for a specific job classification. Instead its value should be in improving communications skills (reading, writing, speaking), honing critical thinking skills (reason, deduction), and providing a broad perspective of history, philosophy, math, science, which provide a framework for life. Most of the founding fathers, even though most were self taught or tutored, had what today would be considered liberal arts educations. Many spoke multiple languages, were extremely well read in history, philosophy and law. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were conceived, developed, argued, and written by men with strong liberal arts backgrounds.
Liberal arts graduates can find jobs even in this economy. Many retail executives are liberal arts graduates who started on the floor as a sales associate in a store. Tellers and administrative staff members in banks often rise to senior management roles in retail banking, they all don’t have MBA’s from Harvard. Large companies in many industries have sales training programs hiring thousands of recent graduates to pitch products to customers. It is hard work and performance is measured everyday numerically. Many junior military officers and policemen are recent liberal arts graduates. Low paying jobs with temp agencies result in assignments at companies that then turn into full time employment.
The job market is tough out there for college grads without technical degrees but there are jobs out there for people who don’t mind working and who can suppress their egos. Someone who is bright, energetic, and a high performer can work their way into a management position within 2-3 years, even starting at the very bottom. What most recent grads don’t realize is how many people in organizations do only what is required to get by. Particularly at the lower levels, the stars really shine and get pulled up in the organization. The key is getting into the organization even if it means sweeping the floor or carrying boxes in the warehouse.
If I were a college grad today with an English, history, or political science degree who couldn’t get into the management training program of the corporation, I’d go to work in a really good McDonalds or Chick fil A store. A quick learner and high productive worker could reasonably expect to be a unit manager within 5 years and owner of at least one unit within 10 years. i know a guy who started cooking hamburgers in a McDonalds who today is 42 years old and a multimillionaire owning 5 restaurants as well as being involved in other business interests. Like the new CEO of McDonalds he is also an African American but that isn’t his identity. He’s an American who still believe in the dream and has worked to earn it and live it. Perhaps a history degree in some small way contributed to his success. It certainly didn’t hurt.
Having an undergrad psych degree often qualified one to be a manager somewhere. Better to major in business with a minor in psych. Better yet to get a technical degree, because the psych professors don't know what they're talking about.
I've always thought that, if you really want to get an education in how people tick, have a few beers with a successful salesman or business owner.
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