Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Overeducated and underemployed

economy.money.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#21

Post by justin_vanw »

This has the usual journalist bias of putting all graduates in the same bucket. I would like to see the same statistic, but with Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, EE, Mechanical Eng., etc all in their own buckets.

There seems to be some kind of outrage that you can go to a good school and get a 4 year degree and end up working with people who just graduated high-school. New grads were probably led up the garden path and not given realistic expectations. On the other hand everybody knows there are no jobs for English, Communications, Journalism, or any of the various 'Unemployment Studies' programs. Everyone knows this, it's past common knowledge and well on it's way to becoming a cliche.

Basically, I guess you can boil down what I'm saying as, "If you partied in college, and didn't take classes that were hard: you didn't learn anything, and that is why nobody will pay you for access to your training."

It used to be that certain kinds of jobs were reserved for a 'college man', but that was because that was synonymous with white and upper middle to upper class. The great liar, statistics, said that a college degree was highly correlated with lots of great outcomes, higher income, better employment, etc. The government started laying lots of money into getting everyone to go to college, without realizing that people weren't paying for the college part of college grads, they were paying for the stuff that college was correlated with. Like if the British started sending more people to Eton because they wanted to increase the size of the royal family.

These days who you know matters as much as ever. However, and this is kind of new, since the 20th century (or post Edison anyway), you can have a very comfortable and low risk life regardless of where you started, if you can learn enough technical stuff. Rich people and companies will pay to rent your brain all day. They will only pay, though, if your brain can do things that most brains can't, it's like anything else, value comes from scarcity.

So, if you are going to Harvard and your dad went to Harvard and your parents friends are as rich as they are, study whatever, you'll be fine. If your parents had to show up to work and had a boss, or worse if you are on scholarship, for the love of god study something with some cash value.

“I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.” - John Adams

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#22

Post by muzz »

asdfologist wrote: post #20
betterunix wrote: post #11

"Overeducated" implies that there is some upper-bound on the appropriate education a person should receive if they have a particular career. It is the sort of elitist, aristocracy-favoring view of the world that we should be trying to discourage. Of course, when going to college means taking on mountains of inescapable debt, not getting a high-paying job afterwards is problematic. That's why we need to change the way…

You're taking that word way out of context. "Overeducated" here means getting an academic credential where it isn't necessary. There's nothing wrong with learning a lot, but that doesn't mean you need to pay $200K for a college degree.

Average student debt is $25K, hasn't been increasing that much, except in for-profit schools like Univ of Phoenix:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/student-...

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#23

Post by larrys »

jeffdavis wrote: post #14
betterunix wrote: post #11

"Overeducated" implies that there is some upper-bound on the appropriate education a person should receive if they have a particular career. It is the sort of elitist, aristocracy-favoring view of the world that we should be trying to discourage. Of course, when going to college means taking on mountains of inescapable debt, not getting a high-paying job afterwards is problematic. That's why we need to change the way…

I would add to that: being a cab driver out of college doesn't mean you are making a career out of it. It's called an "entry-level" job for a reason.

Could also be an immigrant with a degree from another country that is learning the language or getting situated as well.

That said the story doesn't point to the trend from 1970 till now. The data is available I'm assuming. But did this happen evenly over time or in the last 5 or 10 years or?

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#25

Post by nickpinkston »

betterunix wrote: post #13
patja wrote: post #5

This reminds me of an EconTalk podcast from about 6 months ago where the assertion was made that college has become an extension of adolescence, as opposed to a direct path to a middle class career. Given that the ability to write and reason well are foundational to success in many careers, I am all for the benefits of a classical liberal arts course of study, but how many psychology and visual arts BA's can the econ…

Education is not just about jobs. The better educated people are, the harder it is to take advantage of them regardless of what sort of job they have. Communities benefit from having educated people living in them -- people who can solve problems, mediate disputes, and organize to improve the community's situation. A democracy requires an educated populace in order to ensure that rights are not violated, that bad law…

This is a good defense of a true purpose of education - no doubt. However, I'd say that if we measured and ranked schools' impacts the number one would be in worker productivity: i.e. better jobs / wages + more positioned filled.

The protection from aristocracy is part of it, but I'd bet it's not the biggest part.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#26

Post by greghinch »

"Overeducated" is probably not the correct term here. Maybe something like "mis-educated" would be more suitable. There's nothing wrong with wanting to learn and study interesting subjects. Gone are the times when a college degree alone will land you a job. You need employable skills if you want to be paid these days, and things like History, English, and most of the Liberal Arts degrees don't equate to that.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#27

Post by Spooky23 »

mc32 wrote: post #6
patja wrote: post #5

This reminds me of an EconTalk podcast from about 6 months ago where the assertion was made that college has become an extension of adolescence, as opposed to a direct path to a middle class career. Given that the ability to write and reason well are foundational to success in many careers, I am all for the benefits of a classical liberal arts course of study, but how many psychology and visual arts BA's can the econ…

I think in Western Europe the ratio might even be higher. I recall a conversation with a German several years ago and was told it was not uncommon for people doing blue collar jobs to have achieved some higher education. In any event, more education the better, even if not individually returning the time/money investment.

There's a difference between "blue collar" and a crappy service sector job. The blue collar person in many settings makes a decent wage and has alot of autonomy. A substantial number of NCOs in the Army have Masters degrees. HVAC guys often have BAs with substantial industry certifications.

The person with a $250k MFA folding sweaters at the Gap for $8.50 an hour or the person with a law degree working as a bank teller are basically a rung up from casual labor with no career path.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#28

Post by fennecfoxen »

motters wrote: post #15

The whole concept of overeducation seems foreign to me. Surely people should strive to be as educated as they can or want to be. The background assumption is that education isn't really about education, and is instead merely about training people for jobs. If people were being trained for work which didn't exist then that would certainly be a problem, but as I understand it that's not really what universities are for…

"Surely people should strive to be as educated as they can or want to be."

No one will argue that, all else being equal, more education is better. Education's nice. So are lots of other things that people want from life, e.g. leisure, money, exercise, real-world job experience, entertainment, participation in the arts, family time, spirituality, world travel, what-have-you.

But we make trade-offs in life, and getting a big fat expensive degree and making very little use of it is quite possibly too much "education" at the cost of "money" and other valuable things. It's perfectly meaningful to consider that "overeducation".

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#30

Post by randomdata »

drcube wrote: post #19
randomdata wrote: post #2

1 in 5 of the general population have a bachelor's degree, so 1 in 7 seems expected, if not on the low side.

Not if the reason people get those degrees is to get better jobs. If the proportion of degree holders is the same across all jobs, why should someone pay tens of thousands in tuition, plus the opportunity cost in lost wages, for that degree?

I don't really think that is a realistic reason to pursue higher education. Without even getting into some of the deeper conversations, there are only so many "better" jobs to go around. 80% of the jobs out there pay less than $50K per year, and just $45K per year for 75% of the jobs. Meanwhile, if you are aged 25-29, 30% of your peers have a degree. Therefore, 33% of college graduates in that age group are basically guaranteed to make less than $50K per year and many of them will fail to even make the $45K threshold. Not to mention that in reality, percentage is even larger than that as a significant number of non-college graduates live in the top 25% of earners.

Furthermore, 18% of university graduates fail to even earn $20K per year and just 24% of the top 1% have a non-graduate degree as their highest level of education attainment. I see no compelling reason to even begin to think you would go to college to get a better job, unless that job is in a specific field where the law requires (doctor, lawyer, etc.) Someone still has to drive the taxis. Having a degree doesn't put you above such work and the more people obtain their degrees, the greater chance someone with a degree will take on such work.

With that said, college still has merit and should not be discounted. Finding a job at the end should be one of the last reasons you consider attending.

Post reply on HN