The job market is just lousy in general right now. If all the "liberal arts" and "business" majors chose engineering and healthcare, all of these articles would be shouting the opposite.
:huhldup: Gawker: We Need Fewer College Graduates
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The job market is just lousy in general right now. If all the "liberal arts" and "business" majors chose engineering and healthcare, all of these articles would be shouting the opposite.
Yea man, it's an economic downturn, things will turn around.....
I don't know, I think you have structural problems now. Employers are requiring more and more. It's really up to people to hustle to build up their resumes while in college. That whole "take what you want" shyt is pretty much pointless. It's more like "take what employers want and internships that demonstrate those skills."
Another thing, people need to pay attention to what the local job market around them is actually looking for. There are really only a handful of colleges that have national transferability (STEM majors are like the exception to this) and most people will end up working around where they went to college. It's where their school has the strongest reach. So if you live in a place where there is no market for your major, you just might be fukking up.
Yeah, my father went that route after getting out the Navy.
I think the key is exposure. A lot of people my age ended up being the first people in the family to attend college, especially if your family is from the south. So really we didnt know shyt about all the opportunities out there and were playing this shyt by ear. I had never heard of a lot of majors and jobs until i got to campus and started talking to some of them white kids. If i could start over i may have went another route but you cant dwell on that. Im just gonna make sure when i have kids they know all the things i had to find out about on my own. If i have a kid i know isnt the smartest ill be sure to brief him on some of those trade positions these rednecks take full advantage of.
IDK breh. I know a lot of kids who just graduated and are making grown up money. Some majors are just gimmes no matter what the economy is doing. Similarly some fields are just gimmes right now even w/o degrees.
People say everyone can't be STEM... I think we are underutilized in STEM. I think our school system sucks and takes people out of STEM that could have otherwise been candidates. But the way to sustainable prosperity is through STEM. No developed country made its way out of the third world through art/history- as important as those might be for a country's culture.
I've seen both. Folks graduating and getting good jobs right out the bat. But they're normally the top fish in terms of credentials, regardless of major.
I agree that our school system really doesn't prepare students for the math based rigors of stem majors, and universities for the most part aren't all about getting and keeping students in that field (a ton of people drop out and go to other majors, myself included). But the economic value of stem degrees (which what most are touting) would drop precipitous if all the "soft" majors ended up going that route.
I dunno, I've seen the same issues with trades as with degrees if you're not well connected with employers for those types of jobs. My pops went did HVAC/refrigeration route after the millitary and he said it took him two years to get a decent gig (no experience).
In my experience its been broader. Middle of the road kids still find work when they have the right degrees.
All soft major people can't go that route, just based on innate talents/skills. But its definitely a candidate's market in most STEM related fields. Put it like this. If half the soft major folks went STEM/business, it would better serve the soft major folks left by taking off pressure, and it would help fuel the untapped STEM growth. We need soft majors in society, I don't think they should disappear completely. But we have a long way to go before there are too many STEM candidates. Realistically I don't even think that is a possibility in today's STEM driven world.
Couple of points:
1. People picking shytty majors isn't really the main problem. Sure, people should be discouraged from picking majors with bad job prospects, and colleges need to be more honest about this, but that's not the root of the issue. It's not only people that pick bad majors that are having trouble finding jobs. Even if everybody currently in college picked a "good" major, a certain percentage would still end up working shytty jobs due to their just not being enough jobs for all of them.
2. College being too expensive is part of the problem, but again, if people could graduate and get good enough jobs to pay their loans back then it would be less of an issue.
3. Having a less-educated populace is not going to help anybody in the long-term. We shouldn't ignore the benefits of having an educated populace - educated people on average have better health, are less likely to commit crimes or go to jail, contribute more back in terms of GDP, etc.
My overall point is that too many people with college degrees isn't the real problem. The real problem is lack of decent jobs. That's what needs to be addressed. We need to figure out why society can't produce enough good jobs for people coming out of school.
Thank you!!! everything else is secondary. Regardless of the degree, if there are too many ppl and not enough jobs then at the end of the day a lot of people are going to be SOL. We outsource so much shyt in this country trying to keep costs down for big corp that it is hurting our job growth. The news always paints a pretty picture that there is "growth" but I beg to differ.
I honestly believe that we will eventually get to a point where everybody will have a degree of some sort(even some STEM degrees), be drowning in debt (probably student loan), and will be making pennies if anything.
And also, people arnt retiring like they used to so you have 22 yr olds fighting the same position against a 65 yr old. shyt is cray.
mbewane
Knicks: 93 til infinity
nah this going to turn into a discussion of most people being unable afford to traveling abroad and sh*t...
"Traveling abroad" is a luxury sohh to speak...
aka a social class issue..
what do I know I'm just some spoiled rich kid
To be honest it isn't THAT expensive, but obviously you have to take into account the expected "return on investment", which will only be on the long term. Studies have shown that indeed, it is more probable that someone doing voluntary work in Europe is more likely to come from the middle-class or a privileged background, not because it's expensive (this particular program I participated in, the "European Voluntary Service", is totally free) but because people with less money fear that the year off will be considered as "paid holidays" and...hurt their employment chances.
This is kind of linked to what I was saying before, presenting it as "travelling around the world" as opposed as "getting trained abroad" is one of the reasons such programs are very hard to implement, and given that returns are not easily quatifiable in the short term, most politicians will say it's "useless".
Been saying this for years, I think most people have no idea what "real" capitalism would be like. You can add the military complex to that list.
Couple of points:
1. People picking shytty majors isn't really the main problem. Sure, people should be discouraged from picking majors with bad job prospects, and colleges need to be more honest about this, but that's not the root of the issue. It's not only people that pick bad majors that are having trouble finding jobs. Even if everybody currently in college picked a "good" major, a certain percentage would still end up working shytty jobs due to their just not being enough jobs for all of them.
2. College being too expensive is part of the problem, but again, if people could graduate and get good enough jobs to pay their loans back then it would be less of an issue.
3. Having a less-educated populace is not going to help anybody in the long-term. We shouldn't ignore the benefits of having an educated populace - educated people on average have better health, are less likely to commit crimes or go to jail, contribute more back in terms of GDP, etc.
My overall point is that too many people with college degrees isn't the real problem. The real problem is lack of decent jobs. That's what needs to be addressed. We need to figure out why society can't produce enough good jobs for people coming out of school.
The whole issue with the "real problem is the lack of decent jobs" is not that it's not correct (it is) but...what exactly do you do about it? It's not like governments and firms are refraining from creating jobs...it's that the economies have the exact amount of jobs they need, otherwise they would create themselves. Again, it's not because 1000 people graduate from law school that suddenly the market needs (= has available jobs) for 1000 lawyers. Today's economy is more serviced-based, where quality is more important than quantity. Of course you have manufacturing jobs, but since we were told that we would be able to "achieve our goals" and that we want a "decent pay", well they shipped those jobs in China (and we sure do enjoy not paying those products what they would cost is manufactures in Western countries).
Govts can't just "create" jobs out of the blue. They can facilitate job creation, but at the end of the day if the market needs 1 sociolinguist, the second one will have to find something else to do.
One problem is CEO and top executive pay. shyt is out if hand
But, a big problem that doesn't get any attention is Techonolgy has killed a lot of jobs.
But, a big problem that doesn't get any attention is Techonolgy has killed a lot of jobs.
We going to have to agree to disagree on the bold, I graduated in 2010, and pretty much everyone I knew from my class who wasn't top tier in terms of credentials, or didn't have any connections had a hard time finding a corresponding job.
If more people majored in stem related fields, the economic value of those degrees would go down just strictly due to market forces, and with H-b1 visas
it makes it very realistic with today's economy that the economic advantages of most non-shyt ( oil rigs, north dakota lol) stem jobs looking like the median (with the resent cuts in government, r&d).
What fields did these folks study? I know dudes who graduated in everything from business to law, middle of the pack grades, who graduated into jobs
Common themes among them being
- sought advice/mentoring from people in the fields they were going into
- aggressively pursued and got internships to build real world experience
- focused coursework towards stuff relevant to their careers
To be fair though a lot of them had educated parents, who didn't always pay but definitely guided them through the system. That could be a legit difference IMO
Even if the value of STEM credentials went down from an uptick in STEM candidates, I don't know about you but I would rather be a STEM candidate with a "hum drum" 50-70K STEM job than a soft study candidate w/a job a high school graduate could do/get.
Not to mention STEM is positioned to grow indefinitely. Energy is a constant + real problem and govt + business are spending $$$$ to find and conserve it. Population is getting older and unhealthier, and medical industry admin needs an overhaul, so medicine is set to grow. Companies are getting more and more "connected" and cloud architecture is huge. So IT is set to grow. Maybe you are right, and in 200 years all these fields will be dead. But we will be long dead by then. I think anyone looking to position themselves to have a career over the next 30 years needs to jump on one of those 3 waves. The proof is everywhere- job apps, govt programs, investments, etc etc.
VerbalIntercourse
Banned
For Coli/sohh poster you seem to have grip on reality.
Raising taxes in the worst economy since the depression doesn't seem like great idea either.
People want those European socialist economies, and those economies have been characterized by high unemployment and low growth for decades--some notable exceptions exist.
What we are experiencing now is just par for the course. It's not going to get any better. We will never experience the growth of the Tech boom or the housing boom ever again in our adult lives.
To be honest it isn't THAT expensive,
good universities are ridiculously expensive. people used to be able to work their way through college and graduate with NO debt. that is impossible now. when you graduated college, you were expected to buy a house. now people graduate and owe enough money to buy a house, except they dont have a house. its just another form of slavery, to keep people in debt and working without being able to afford property.
