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.”
All throughout their government schooling experience their Democrat/liberal teachers and guidance counselors have been grooming these kids to “follow your true self”. You see it in their imbecilic appearance patterns - tattoos, piercings and whatever that aboriginal giant black round ear thing is. You also see it in their confused sex roles and partial rejection of traditional marriage and normal families.
This is just a further example of the destructive power of turning our children over to idiots and liberals, but I repeat myself. These children have been trained by the “experts” to “follow your dream” and in college studied a hobby rather than a career. Like the average hobbyist they’re paying dearly for their hobby.
Not a single one of them displayed regret or associated this bad advice with their bad outcome - will the demand for psychology or history majors ever be such that they’ll find a job in their chosen “field”? That’s how deep the indoctrination goes. Even the psychology majors don’t grasp the cognitive dissonance.
Having a degree is better than not...if you have a good attitude, flexibility, integrity, honesty and a good work ethic. That TX girl with the gold class ring...if she is unemployed why did she go further in debt to have a gold class ring? Also, sending 2-3 resumes each week? A week is a long time. The country is large. I really have a hard time crying for those who have degrees who have such inadequate ways of finding a position. They should all get “green” jobs...ones that put green into their pockets.
“College bills...no skills” is incredibly good and so accurate.
I sat in my university library a year ago working on my undergraduate degree (I graduated with a 4.0 GPA) and heard a student at another table talk about her 45% grade on an exam, and then declare “This my last class and all I need a D becuase D mean D-gree.”
Translation: “All I need is to pass this class with a “D” to earn my degree.” And my degree looks the same as hers. So what was the point of doing the work I did and earning the marks I did, when mediocrity and the bare minimum to earn the passing grade is all that’s really required?
Handing out degrees to people like this is a part of what is making them functionally useless today. They mean less, yet the price keeps going up.
College changed in the last 40 years. It used to be about making you a well rounded person. Now it is about job training. The days where a degree was an automatic ticket are long gone.
Because someone, somewhere will want to see your respective GPAs.
My daughter will be marrying a young man this summer who she met while in college. During their Sophomore year, he had a decision to make - he had received an offer of full-time employment with a credit union. Started as a teller, and has now worked his way up to Financial Specialist. They are paying for him to finish his degree.
Rather than live in an apartment, he borrowed enough money from his parents for a down payment on a duplex - rented out the top floor and took in a roommate with whom he lives on the lower level, thus eliminating his living expenses.
In the meantime, my daughter worked very hard to finish her degree. She had a job waiting for her with the firm that she interned with (at no pay) last summer. They told her that she was the only intern they ever had that did more than stand back and observe - she actually learned their systems, worked with clients and manned their booth at trade shows - they could hardly wait until she graduated - the owner herself was putting in 90 hr weeks to hold off on hiring someone else.
With interest rates on mortgages being so low, and home prices depressed, I have a feeling they will be looking for either another duplex or perhaps a single family home for themselves....both are 22 and they are actually in much better shape than MGD and me.
“Having a degree is better than not...if you have a good attitude, flexibility, integrity, honesty and a good work ethic”
In most cases I agree but as you note, it is an amalgamation of all those things which makes a successful candidate and a person who will be successful regardless of the field they choose. I cannot over stress the last point, work ethic. Work hard at what you are doing and you will be surprised at what may happen to your future.
Another great post! Where I live every kid has either tattoos crawling up his neck or down her leg and hair dyed purple. They do all kinds of weird gender-bending (like a friend’s daughter who shows up at parties wearing an ill-fitting man’s tuxedo) and then wonder why they are unemployed or have to go back to school for more and more degrees which seem to make them more and more unemployable.
Well said.
Hanging with “cool” teachers has left them hung out to dry. I wonder how long self-esteem can prop up the illusion.
3-5 resumes per week is the minimum the state requires to keep your unemployment benefits...it looks like August is when those benefits run out if you read between the lines of that article.
My kid is a freshman majoring in psychology and she already started her business plan for when she graduates.
In today’s world its all about a SURVIVAL PLAN and if you aren’t immediately flexible you are dead meat.
The universities and colleges are turning out thousands of feel good generic degrees that have no practical use in the real world.
“I have no place for the socialistic tripe fed wussies that openly admire socialism. I can tell on a job application to a good degree where a person stands.”
I would think that criteria would also automatically cut down on those prone to engage in workplace lawsuits at the drop of a hat because of any minute perceived “unfairness”. In other words, you would be hiring fewer children and greater numbers of adults who know how to deal with life as it knocks them about.
Ha ha ha. I have a history degree and wish I was a know-it-all! I fly jets off carriers now:)
How dare you say anything like that, sir! Don't you realize that "the practical people" who post on threads like this know everything there is to know about education and employment?
History majors have quite a few talents that are hard to find in other occupations.
Face it....a history major is worthless in the real world.
Don't forget underwater basket-weaving, which is how we engineering students classified practically ALL other non-engineering/science degrees back in the day.
So what is your occupation, sir?
That said, I have no sympathy for those who voted for Obama thinking he was going to make things better for them while screwing someone else, only to find out that they wound up being hurt as well. There are tons of people out there who have worked hard their whole lives, scrapping together what they thought was going to see them into retirement, only to have their life savings and their plans decimated by the social engineering crowd.
In the American economy, when the tide is high all, or most boats float higher. When you try to selectively target the kinds of success you don't like, in a hate-driven attempt at social engineering, you make the tide lower for everyone (except the political class - who are always impervious to reality). For all of those who wound up being 'collateral damage' because of their vote for this administration, blame yourselves.
Thanks for that post #59. It was a nice attempt to outline what a liberal arts education is, but I’m sure it fell on deaf ears.
You, of course, know that what you’re dealing with on threads of this kind are: 1) the know-it-alls who have no advanced education but somehow know everything about life and 2) the engineering-is-god types who were basically trained, no educated in the true sense of the word.
They know The Way and you don’t, and that’s all there is to it. It’s a waste of time to argue with such closed minds.
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