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Overeducated and underemployed

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Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#41

Post by DannyBee »

muzz wrote: post #22
asdfologist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Student debt for bachelors, maybe.

Even then this doesn't tell you the cost of education (IE how much you + your parents are spending), only how much money you still owed at the end.

If it takes eating your parents 401k to pay for college, that's still very harmful, even if you only have 36k debt at the end.

Lastly, all the numbers are normalized to 2009 dollars, which makes them hugely misleading. If you look at the original data source, in original dollars, the debt load has gone up by ~50% in (They are also estimates, with 2009 being based on 17,000 out of 1.6 million degree earners. i'm too lazy to look up the methodology in the referred report to see if it's sane)

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#42

Post by adrr »

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.

Entry level job is a job teaches your skills and gives you the experience to get a better job in the same field. Taxi cab driver isn't an entry level job, being an intern or assistant is an entry level job.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#43

Post by justin_vanw »

xijuan wrote: post #32
justin_vanw wrote: post #21

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 a…

I don't like what you said. You made it sound like that English and Journalism are easy majors. Even though it is harder to find jobs with those majors right now, they are not necessarily easy majors. In fact, depending on your talents,these majors can be very hard. Taking me as an example, I can never imagine myself majoring in English or Journalism because I dislike writing and I have never done too well in my Engl…

I have no idea what the difficulty of various majors are in China.

Now, let me put this caveat in the front: At a good University, there are people who are serious and will amaze you in the following majors. Those people will be successful, and go on to graduate school and eventually become academics. But that doesn't change the fact that...

In America, the following majors are a joke. If you are bright and can read wikipedia, you will find that two hours of reading will leave you ahead of 90% of the people majoring in these things in knowledge of their major: Criminal Justice History Journalism English Kinesiology Communications Anthropology Religious Studies, Comparative Religions

And of course there are things that are more about passion and talent: Anything Art (Film, painting, photography, music)

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#44

Post by michaelochurch »

justin_vanw wrote: post #21

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 a…

I feel like this attitude that English is an easy major smacks of the guy who goes to a meditation retreat for his competitiveness, never gets the point of what he's there for, sits there bored and learns nothing, then walks away saying, "That was easy, and I was the best meditator there."

It's easier to bullshit, but that's largely because of lenient grading. You can actually fail a math course if you don't understand any of it. If you fail an English course, you typically get a C.

Also, while I think STEM majors are more valuable, I would argue that it's a sign of cultural decline that English and history majors often can't get quality jobs. Sure, if you're not from money, you should study something practical. That is true. But it sucks that so many people can't study humanities and have decent careers.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#45

Post by justin_vanw »

michaelochurch wrote: post #44
justin_vanw wrote: post #21

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 a…

I feel like this attitude that English is an easy major smacks of the guy who goes to a meditation retreat for his competitiveness, never gets the point of what he's there for, sits there bored and learns nothing, then walks away saying, "That was easy, and I was the best meditator there." It's easier to bullshit, but that's largely because of lenient grading. You can actually fail a math course if you don't understa…

I'm not sure if this disagrees or agrees with your point, but English is an easy major because stupid people can complete it without a lot of stress, and come out with a degree even though they still have absolutely no special ability in, nor deep understanding of English.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#46

Post by JoeAltmaier »

justin_vanw wrote: post #45
michaelochurch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this attitude that English is an easy major smacks of the guy who goes to a meditation retreat for his competitiveness, never gets the point of what he's there for, sits there bored and learns nothing, then walks away saying, "That was easy, and I was the best meditator there." It's easier to bullshit, but that's largely because of lenient grading. You can actually fail a math course if you don't understa…

I'm not sure if this disagrees or agrees with your point, but English is an easy major because stupid people can complete it without a lot of stress, and come out with a degree even though they still have absolutely no special ability in, nor deep understanding of English.

Don't go showing your biases or anything, but I remember quite a few not-very-bright Engineers getting their degree too.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#47

Post by michaelochurch »

justin_vanw wrote: post #45
michaelochurch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this attitude that English is an easy major smacks of the guy who goes to a meditation retreat for his competitiveness, never gets the point of what he's there for, sits there bored and learns nothing, then walks away saying, "That was easy, and I was the best meditator there." It's easier to bullshit, but that's largely because of lenient grading. You can actually fail a math course if you don't understa…

I'm not sure if this disagrees or agrees with your point, but English is an easy major because stupid people can complete it without a lot of stress, and come out with a degree even though they still have absolutely no special ability in, nor deep understanding of English.

Is this limited to English? I've interviewed some appallingly bad programmers with PhDs from top-5 CS departments. I'm sure they had high IQs, but they were awful programmers and, thus, in the context I cared about, were stupid.

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#48

Post by betterunix »

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.

That sounds like an argument for reforming how college is paid for. Like, say, having colleges that people can go to at no cost, without burdensome debts. There are countries on this planet that have managed to do such things...

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#49

Post by cadlin »

justin_vanw wrote: post #21

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 a…

This comment (and article) are silly without comparing college graduates with "unemployable" degrees to people who only have a high school diploma.

If you look at minimum wage data (which would presumably filter out "high earning degrees"), you find that 7.3% of minimum wage employees have bachelor degrees or higher. This is certainly not zero, but it's evidence that unemployable degrees have some value. Unfortunately, there's not very good data on compensation by major.

65% of minimum wage employees have high school diplomas but not a bachelor's degree, and 27.7% don't have a high school diploma (this presumably includes high school students). Interestingly, there are about 1000 people in the country with a doctoral degree who work at a minimum wage job.

Source (page 8): http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.pdf

Re: Overeducated and underemployed

#50

Post by politician »

xijuan wrote: post #32
justin_vanw wrote: post #21

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 a…

I don't like what you said. You made it sound like that English and Journalism are easy majors. Even though it is harder to find jobs with those majors right now, they are not necessarily easy majors. In fact, depending on your talents,these majors can be very hard. Taking me as an example, I can never imagine myself majoring in English or Journalism because I dislike writing and I have never done too well in my Engl…

The idea that we should be rewarded for doing something hard, regardless of its value, is a consequence of a nation weaned on video games. Navigating a maze may be hard, and you might have a natural talent about it, but the real question is whether that's a skill other people consider worth paying enough for to cover your overhead. The market is voting against History, Journalism, etc. Learn a skill (or build a product) valuable to other people and you'll do fine.

Downvoters: I like video games, I just don't expect to payed for my RTS skills.

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