11–20 of 61 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blaming the victim, favorite American pastime.
In this case the victim is often responsible for making poor career choices. The whole "I graduated, I'm entitled to a job" sentiment must go away, or we will end up with an army of hungry homeless history, women-study, art, philosophy graduates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case the victim is often responsible for making poor career choices. The whole "I graduated, I'm entitled to a job" sentiment must go away, or we will end up with an army of hungry homeless history, women-study, art, philosophy graduates.
So what do you recommend they do? We can't all be programmers.
1) Give up and work for a shitty job, until it gets automated, then go homeless and hope the government keeps them alive
2) Learn new marketable skills and get a job. You're right, we can't all be programmers, but we can be nurses, car mechanics, accountants, pilots, welders, plumbers, farmers, etc.
3) Start a small business. Many successful small businesses are literally as stupid as "buy wholesale, sell retail". Many have very low barriers to entry, like making ice cream.
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so…
Blaming the victim, favorite American pastime.
The only people I'm blaming for anything are the people writing these articles that leave out what I believe to be crucial and potentially explanatory information.
Any victim blaming you found into my comment was put there by you.
Another way of parsing the data, which is fully coherent with my prior point: society is making great progress, we're approaching the point where even our janitors are afforded the luxury of a college education.
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so…
The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of fut…
Or, better, we could try to figure out how to keep costs from spiraling so high that they prevent a "useless" degree-bearer from ever leaving their dead-end job.
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so…
The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of fut…
It really has nothing to do with studying "bullshit degrees", as so many of the graduates with "bullshit degrees" are incredibly competent and hard working, and would make better employees than the arbitrary person with "5 years experience", who may have 5 years experience being a terrible employee.
Counseling students of the trends of the market is stupid. You would get a ton of students with whatever degree was popular 2 years ago. You can't just switch your degree on the whims of the job market, and why would we want our college educated force to do so? There would be a stupid and obvious consequence: hordes of graduates all with the same single degree all still complaining about how college doesn't lead to a job.
Really the problem is that there just aren't enough jobs for college grads, and the jobs that are available, employers naively put bars of experience, completely ignoring a mass of very competent workers.
One thing I might be in support of is more of a compromise: cut out more of the atrociously poor general education in exchange for a policy of something like 1 career degree (Business, Science, Engineering), 1 arts degree (Everyone must double major). But this would likely have the drawback of students having to grind through a subject they're not interested in and are never going to apply in practice.
P.S. (I'm a few years out of college and have been employed the entire time, so this is not my personal anger at the job market, but more an observation of systemically poor hiring practices).
Apart from the usual suspects (sociology, anthropology, archeology) "Information Systems" doesn't fare well but CompSci is still ok and Math is good.
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so…
Blaming the victim, favorite American pastime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of fut…
There's also the problem across the aisle of employers looking for bullshit skills and experience that are almost completely irrelevant to the jobs they're offering. Graduating from college today and trying to move into the workforce feels like a lockout, like there's some sort of employer union to purposefully bar recent grads out of employment. It really has nothing to do with studying "bullshit degrees", as so man…
You can re-state your point that "there aren't enough jobs for college grads" as "there are fewer jobs that require a college degree than people with college degrees"
Society needs: lawyers, janitors, computer programmers, bus drivers, etc.
There are other imbalances in the labor-training market: we're currently over-producing lawyers, and under producing programmers.
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so…
Blaming the victim, favorite American pastime.
Now, by saying this, I don't mean that we should settle for the status quo and that all is well. Just like with interfaces we should make systems that make it easy to choose right and hard to choose wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of fut…
There's also the problem across the aisle of employers looking for bullshit skills and experience that are almost completely irrelevant to the jobs they're offering. Graduating from college today and trying to move into the workforce feels like a lockout, like there's some sort of employer union to purposefully bar recent grads out of employment. It really has nothing to do with studying "bullshit degrees", as so man…
A history graduate is competent in what exactly?
They aren't even competent at teaching history, which generally requires Masters or PhD.
> Counseling students of the trends of the market is stupid
I never said the students should counseled on the trends. But the counselors must be aware of them.