More educated than uneducated people are now unemployed

[Landshark]

They say you can't get a good job without a Bachelors Degree.  Nowadays, it seems you can't get a good job even with one.  For the first time in history, there are more unemployed people who have attended at least some college than those who haven't.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/most-unemployed-americans-attended-least-college-first-time-152523538.html

Very disturbing trend.

[dolphins4life]

Doesn't really make me feel better because I bet most of those people are not in science fields.  The science fields seem to be doing just fine. 

I have two jobs, but neither are in my field.  Do I count as unemployed?

[bsmooth]

Not surprising. They falsely led everyone to believe you needed a bachelor's to get a good job, so people started flooding the schools, including a lot of people who did not belong there. Not everyone belongs in college. There are many high paying to very good paying jobs in skilled positions.

[Landshark]

Doesn't really make me feel better because I bet most of those people are not in science fields.  The science fields seem to be doing just fine. 

I have two jobs, but neither are in my field.  Do I count as unemployed?

No.  If you're not making enough money, you're considered UNDERemployed.  Unemployed means you're out of work but actively seeking work.  And this doesn't count the "distressed workers" or people who have gotten frustrated and stopped looking for work.

Not surprising. They falsely led everyone to believe you needed a bachelor's to get a good job, so people started flooding the schools, including a lot of people who did not belong there. Not everyone belongs in college. There are many high paying to very good paying jobs in skilled positions.

You hit it right on the head.  These for-profit colleges are the ones to blame.  They targeted the uneducated and low income families in order to get them enough financial aid to go to college.  They basically went after your typical "welfare mom" who had been working at fast food joints her whole life and put it into her head that "With a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice, you can be like the people on CSI Miami".  Jobs like that require advanced training in addition to a degree.  So once the welfare mom graduates, she has a degree that she can't really use in one hand, and a $50,000 student loan debt in the other hand that needs to be paid back.  She won't be able to find a job that will generate enough income to pay back that loan and she will end up in financial distress. 

They need to ban for-profit colleges altogether.

[badger6]

I said it in another thread and I'll say it in this on. College is one of the biggest scams that has been perpetrated on this country. Most employers aren't helping the situation. Take where I work for example. The want a Bachelors Degree to be a department manager/supervisor/babysitter or whatever they call it this week. These people literally do noting for half the day and don't do a good job the other half of the day. Really, 4 years in school for that. Most jobs that ask for a degree in reality only need 3-6 months of training, some maybe a little longer. I have actually been told twice now that I could fill any position at my facility but since I didn't have a degree that I didn't qualify. So I qualify because I can do a job but I don't qualify because I don't have a piece of paper.

[dolphins4life]

Landshark, if they did ban for-profit colleges, wouldn't that put you out of work?

[Doc-phin]

It seems to me that the wording is pretty important here...

"For the first time in history, there are now more unemployed Americans who attended at least some college than people who only graduated high school or dropped out of high school, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show."

"Seasonally unadjusted BLS data from April show that about 4.7 million of the nation's 9 million unemployed either graduated from a four-year or a two-year college program or attended college for some time before dropping out."

-------------------------------------------------------

Considering this, I am not shocked at all nor do I find a great deal of significance in the statistic.  The college dropout rate is well over 50%. 

Of all the people I would want to employ, a college dropout would be one of the lowest on my list.  These are people who are likely not able to finish what they start without being forced.  They may have found college to be too hard, so they are either lazy or not talented enough.  They wasted money on an education with nothing to show for it, so they have proven they are a bad decision maker and don't do their research before making choices.  Or perhaps they were just there for show and don't mind wasting other people's money.  Before you freak out on me, yes there are some who didn't complete college for well justified reasons.

Higher education isn't always perfect but it certainly has it's roll.  College reputation is very important, or at least the reputation of the particular program at the school that a student went through.  A degree in a useless field that isn't particularly challenging means very little.  A degree in something usefull has meaning and even more meaning when the school has a history of producing quality graduates in that field.  A degree in something useless can have meaning as long as there is strong evidence that the achievement required high level thinking, hard work and dedication.

I would venture to say that the main reason for this statistic is that society is creating a culture where youth believe they are entitled to get rich quick and without getting their hands dirty.  Everyone seems to think they are going to live out their dreams in some sort of premier career, but there is only so much demand.  High supply and low demand adds up to high competition in these premier career fields.  When people in our society don't make it, they don't suck up their pride and give their all to a lower "status" job.  They hold on to their fantasies and muddle around hoping they will catch their break.  In the mean time they either get fired for half ass effort or never get hired because they were sniffed out ahead of time.

This goes hand in hand with George Carlin's viewpoint on the pussification of america.  Not everyone has to roll up their sleeves and really work, but if you want the cushy life you better have what it takes to beat out the other people who want the cushy life.  And unfortunately, just about everyone wants the cushy life these days.

[SportsChick]

I am finishing my BBA in 10 weeks (finally). I did my AA and then took a "semester" off because I was burnt out from working two jobs, going to school full time, I needed a break. My semester turned into 8 years until I finally went back 3 years ago and now I'm just about done.

I don't think I'll have a problem finding a job in my field, it's just that entry level jobs in my field pay crap.

[Landshark]

Landshark, if they did ban for-profit colleges, wouldn't that put you out of work?

No, because I teach at a traditional college.  A lot of professors at traditional colleges teach online clases at for-profit colleges.  It's not the teaching that is the problem at for-profit colleges, it's the admissions reps.  Those guys are salespeople, plain and simple.  I've seen the requirements to be an admissions rep at one of those places, and they require car or timeshare sales experience.  WTH???

[SCFinfan]

The total saturation of the legal market is a microcosm of this larger issue. In the boom time, new law schools seemed to open every other week and, I think, upwards of 40k newly minted lawyers were graduating per year. There was no way that could be sustained, and, now, with the glut of lawyers, salaries are waaaay down (if one can even find a full-time, non-contract job that is).

On the macro level, I would guess any "hot" area of the economy eventually becomes saturated and the opportunity there dramatically decreases (although perhaps not as violently as the real estate industry did four years ago). That would mean the so-called knowledge economy, which has been the "hot" area of the economy for close to 3 decades now, eventually was sure to decline. Perhaps that is what we are seeing.

In my view, in a few generations, there'll be certain segments of society which return to the land en masse. I don't mean to indicate that I believe subsistence farming will be the wave of the future, but I do think agriculture and manufacturing (along with computer technology, software, and internet products) will be some hot areas in the future.

[Spider-Dan]

Of all the people I would want to employ, a college dropout would be one of the lowest on my list.  These are people who are likely not able to finish what they start without being forced.  They may have found college to be too hard, so they are either lazy or not talented enough.  They wasted money on an education with nothing to show for it, so they have proven they are a bad decision maker and don't do their research before making choices.  Or perhaps they were just there for show and don't mind wasting other people's money.

...but in your opinion, a person who never attended college at all is a superior choice?

"Why try and fail, when you can just not try at all?"

[EKnight]

I said it in another thread and I'll say it in this on. College is one of the biggest scams that has been perpetrated on this country. Most employers aren't helping the situation. Take where I work for example. The want a Bachelors Degree to be a department manager/supervisor/babysitter or whatever they call it this week. These people literally do noting for half the day and don't do a good job the other half of the day. Really, 4 years in school for that. Most jobs that ask for a degree in reality only need 3-6 months of training, some maybe a little longer. I have actually been told twice now that I could fill any position at my facility but since I didn't have a degree that I didn't qualify. So I qualify because I can do a job but I don't qualify because I don't have a piece of paper.

Did it ever occur to you that that "piece of paper" shows a commitment to follow through with something and commit yourself to a task over the long haul, which absolutely sets you apart from those who don't have a degree? Why would a company want to promote someone to a position of higher responsibility and potential growth who hasn't shown a capacity for that already? They're investing in a position to make themselves better; OF COURSE they want someone who has further developed critical thinking skills and shown a commitment by having that piece of paper. -EK

[bsmooth]

It seems to me that the wording is pretty important here...

"For the first time in history, there are now more unemployed Americans who attended at least some college than people who only graduated high school or dropped out of high school, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show."

"Seasonally unadjusted BLS data from April show that about 4.7 million of the nation's 9 million unemployed either graduated from a four-year or a two-year college program or attended college for some time before dropping out."

-------------------------------------------------------

Considering this, I am not shocked at all nor do I find a great deal of significance in the statistic.  The college dropout rate is well over 50%. 

Of all the people I would want to employ, a college dropout would be one of the lowest on my list.  These are people who are likely not able to finish what they start without being forced.  They may have found college to be too hard, so they are either lazy or not talented enough.  They wasted money on an education with nothing to show for it, so they have proven they are a bad decision maker and don't do their research before making choices.  Or perhaps they were just there for show and don't mind wasting other people's money.  Before you freak out on me, yes there are some who didn't complete college for well justified reasons.

Higher education isn't always perfect but it certainly has it's roll.  College reputation is very important, or at least the reputation of the particular program at the school that a student went through.  A degree in a useless field that isn't particularly challenging means very little.  A degree in something usefull has meaning and even more meaning when the school has a history of producing quality graduates in that field.  A degree in something useless can have meaning as long as there is strong evidence that the achievement required high level thinking, hard work and dedication.

I would venture to say that the main reason for this statistic is that society is creating a culture where youth believe they are entitled to get rich quick and without getting their hands dirty.  Everyone seems to think they are going to live out their dreams in some sort of premier career, but there is only so much demand.  High supply and low demand adds up to high competition in these premier career fields.  When people in our society don't make it, they don't suck up their pride and give their all to a lower "status" job.  They hold on to their fantasies and muddle around hoping they will catch their break.  In the mean time they either get fired for half ass effort or never get hired because they were sniffed out ahead of time.

This goes hand in hand with George Carlin's viewpoint on the pussification of america.  Not everyone has to roll up their sleeves and really work, but if you want the cushy life you better have what it takes to beat out the other people who want the cushy life.  And unfortunately, just about everyone wants the cushy life these days.

You have proven what I said. Too many people have been sold the lie they need a college degree to be successful. Not everyone should be in college. You can make a nice living for yourself in a skilled job, especially if you have an inclination to that type of work. I see so many kids in classes that have no business being there, but they are churning through the workload( unhappily) towards a piece of paper. All because they were told they "need to have a degree".

[badger6]

Did it ever occur to you that that "piece of paper" shows a commitment to follow through with something and commit yourself to a task over the long haul, which absolutely sets you apart from those who don't have a degree? Why would a company want to promote someone to a position of higher responsibility and potential growth who hasn't shown a capacity for that already? They're investing in a position to make themselves better; OF COURSE they want someone who has further developed critical thinking skills and shown a commitment by having that piece of paper. -EK

Hogwash propaganda. You have been programmed...........

[BigDaddyFin]

Getting a degree does show commitment, and yeah it probably helps.  But it's gotten out of control.  Do you really need an MBA in Business administration to fill out a form 4?  All the jobs I had they said if you want to be a manager you have to have a business degree.  Why?  You manage a movie theater or a call center.  Is the paperwork really that difficult?  It was no different than the paperwork we had to do at the grocery store I worked in. 

One of the other of many glaring problems, they offer degrees that won't get you a job.  Remember that movie PCU where the dean goes "I think Bisexual Elephant Studies (or something at the time that seemed ridiculous) should have its own department..."  the sad part is most colleges will let you major in it now.  Then they get a degree and a mountain of student debt, and the HR people that interview them (my hatred for HR departments aside) look at them and go what the hell does a degree in (insert ridiculous major here) do to make you more prepared for this job?  NEXT! 

Now you have a mountain of student debt, no career prospects, and no future.  Congratulations.  Thanks for the 4 years tuition the government paid on your behalf, have fun with your sports studies degree, and we'll send you a letter every year soliciting a donation.   Meanwhile, you flood the market with cheap college labor, and the world still needs plenty of bartenders and waitresses.