Not working in a degree field? I’d like to know if that number is anything unusual, historically. Bet it’s not and has been worse.
Degrees aren’t everything. From what I’ve seen lately, a lot of grads simply do not know how to think, use logic or have reasoning skills.
“And many of the others are jobs that don’t require a college degree to perform, the employers just use it as a sorting mechanism (of dubious value IMO). “
Well it’s exactly a sorting mechanism and I can tell you how it started.
Employers, including large corporations, used to be willing to hire people without college degrees. They would give you tests, intelligence tests, tests for general knowledge, and decide whether or not to hire you. This provided an entre for smart people who didn’t want or couldn’t afford college.
But whites tended to do better on tests of this sort. One of the results of the Civil Rights Act was that it gave the federal government the power to sue companies because the civil rights enforcers could accuse them of racism. It didn’t matter whether or not the tests had the slightest racial bias or not, the accusations tied up the companies in lengthy and expensive defenses. So in the early 70s companies began dropping their testing policies.
They still needed a sorting mechanism to keep out deadbeats and flakes. The option that they fell on was to let colleges do the sorting for them. All that the college degree had to do was insure that the prospective hire could show up often enough to get a grade, could sign his name. The student didn’t have to know squat. It was just a pricey 2 to 4 year sorting device, because the government’s thought policing on racial issues had closed out the old method that had once provided opportunity to so many.
Just maybe, this means that there are few well paying jobs available and that colleg grads are forced to settle for service sector jobs, as that is mostly what there is.
For instance, every summer there are paid internships at certain banks for the college bound that want to work in the banking industry.
For every internship, there are as many as thousands of applicants of which dozens are ‘invited’ to interview. After as many as 4 interviews, only one applicant is selected.
It is hardly surprising that college grads cannot find work in their chosen fields.
What degrees do they have? Art history?
I work in healthcare as a medical technologist. Gasp, I had to take somewhat advanced chemistry and microbiology.
There are openings everywhere, people begging for those in my career.
These college grads are just lazy, imo.
I have an engineering degree and have never been out of work as an engineer since graduation in 70’s. Most of my undergraduate course work had little applicability to anything that I ever did on any job, almost everything was OJT. A motivated English major could probably have done almost as well, if he or she were willing to learn on the job. After a few years it makes no difference. But I never would have gotten that first job without an engineering degree.
Screw college, enter the trades, good money and great barter.
I wonder how many jobs that they’re qualified for are filed by cheaper H1B and other non-citizen workers.
You mean that all of those high-paying jobs in lesbian and transgender African-American studies didn’t materialize?
In other news, nearly 50% of recent college graduates graduated with a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving.
All in debt to the rotten Fed govt. What a horrible govt in Washington. Cut the govt and send the crooks home.
The administration and liberals keep pushing the idea that everyone NEEDS TO GET AN A COLLEGE EDUCATION...
No they don't...
How much money will the taxpayers spend on trying to educate people who have no right to a free education because of their low IQ, undisciplined lifestyle, poor behavioral decisions...
They will blow though a couple of semesters and drop out...
Personally, the idea of a free education is not a bad idea for the top 10 % of students going into STEM and medical fields studies...
Reward those who potentially have the greatest ability to improve this country...
Instant Unemployment Degrees have been a problem since the 1970’s.
People with these IUD’s often have zero personal skills, zero job skills, and zero work experience in their 22+ years of life, required for a good paycheck.
The final nail in their unemployment coffin, often is a negative attitude and the world owes me a living attitude which comes across if they get a job interview.
It protects those making the hiring decisions. If a hire turns out to be a complete doofus -- as in, "How could I know he (she) was a complete moron? He (she) went to Harvard?"
The price tag on the college isn't the whole story. Many of the elite colleges offer generous financial aid (MIT has a $21,816 average annual net price according to College Scorecard). Like with everything, the asking price isn't the entire story.
At about the same cost as a new Honda Accord it's not a bad investment. (Cost of 2 years community college + 2 years State U in my state. There are always places for Juniors and Seniors because the dropout rate is so high)
At $250K in loans for a degree in a useless field that qualifies the graduate mainly to be a Starbucks barista -- it's not a very wise investment.
There is actually one useful thing that the Obama administration has done in 7 years. You can now look up how much graduates of schools earn after graduation. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/
ie. the average Harvard grad makes $87,200 10 years after graduation. (I don't know how that compares with the average Trump U. graduate 10 years after graduation.)
I have a degree, but I don’t work in the field that my degree is in. By choice, and I am definitely NOT complaining. I absolutely love my career, and wouldn’t trade it for my original choice for anything.
Yes.
Most jobs could be done with a relative short training period. I think most jobs could be adjusted to allow people to earn and learn.
After you graduate with $280,000 in debt you can get a job with UBER.......
California considers huge tuition hikes for out-of-state students
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_29954758/california-considers-huge-tuition-hikes-out-state-students
Excerpts: Tuition hikes that would push annual nonresident tuition from about $37,000 to $54,000 over six years.
Including housing, campus fees and other expenses, the annual cost of education for UC’s out-of-state students would approach $70,000 by 2019
** meanwhile short of engineering and medical field, you can go online and learn most of what you need to know for very little to no cost.
Where I work the engineering department is about 50/50 on whether they have diplomas. I don’t think that means the ones who have them have wasted the money or time, it’s just their path to here.
This has always chaffed me. I’m ex-military with no college degree. My family was too poor to pay, and there weren’t all of the financing options available then that there are today. I’ve become a self-trained techy, and I’ve worked as a salesperson in such top tech companies as Rockwell and GE (highly successful, I might add). But with 20 years of experience and success, I’m still screened out when looking for a job. I see people with liberal arts degrees pass me by. One recruiter said she couldn’t hire me because I didn’t have a degree. When I looked her up on LinkedIn, I saw her degree was in communications. What the he’ll does that have to do with technical recruiting and HR???
Now, it’s even worse. Since basic four year degrees now are a dime a dozen, companies are now requiring an MBA. An MBA??? You’ve got to be kidding me! What the he’ll do you need a four year Electrical Engineering degree, followed by an MBA to be a freaking sales person for???
Which leads to greater wage depression among non-college graduates, because there is preference for the degree holders even when it is irrelevant to the job.