
The Growth of College Grads in Dead-End Jobs - grej
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-growth-of-college-grads-in-dead-end-jobs-in-2-graphs/283137/
======
thatthatis
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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png)

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 that second 5% is a lower number. 2) The 5% total attainment
measures the full pool, not the delta in the pool as would be appropriate to
use in comparison to the recent college grads numbers in the article.

A lot of this "college grads now worse off" seems like partial views of the
statistics that ignore the meteoric rise in enrollment over the same period.

One stat I haven't yet seen, that would make a great paper for anyone still in
college, is: What percent of these numbers can be explained by higher GI bill
usage following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?

~~~
ye
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 future graduate trends, etc.

~~~
Jormundir
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 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).

~~~
ye
> _as so many of the graduates with "bullshit degrees" are incredibly
> competent_

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.

~~~
mgkimsal
"A history graduate is competent in what exactly?"

Studying/researching problems.

Writing persuasive documents based on evidence.

Working collaboratively in teams doing research.

Or, at least, that's what I'd expect. I'd expect that almost _anyone_
graduating with a 4 year degree in _anything_.

Sadly, I know it's not the case. > 20 years ago, I was taking a college course
on 'intro to china'. It was definitely a 'blow off' class - a 2 credit class
you had to take to fulfill some general ed requirement.

The class was 2 months, 1 (or maybe 2?) nights per week, and we had to write 4
'papers'. The 'papers' needed to be 1-2 pages on any topic of our choice
relating to China - historical, modern, political, whatever. The instructor
was a librarian by trade, and loved China, and taught the class.

First papers go back to the students, and 3-5 students in the back - 'non
traditionals' by the look of it (all over 30 IIRC) started complaining -
_loudly_ \- that they'd been marked down because of spelling and grammar
mistakes. The instructor replied that this was a college class and they should
be able to write basic English competently enough to avoid basic spelling and
grammar mistakes - we should all know how to use semicolons, commas, periods,
capitalization rules, possessive forms, etc.

One of the students shouted back "this isn't an English class - this is unfair
bullshit that I'm being marked down like this". Sadly, a group of people all
chimed in agreeing. The teacher was visibly shaken.

Of course, not arguing this is the state of every single college class out
there, and it wasn't even the norm in my experience. I was just shocked at the
time that it happened _at all_ , but now it doesn't shock me any more. Just
saddens me that people think like this. Those sorts of people shouldn't be
going to college in the first place, but were sold the line "get a college
degree and your life will be great". It's not true.

~~~
electronvolt
This unfortunately happens fairly routinely even at high level universities.
Not always as publicly, though, but it does happen.

I'm a faculty brat (professorial parents) at one of the top public
universities in the nation. There are always students that will complain to
professors that things are too hard, or that grading schemes are unfair, or
etc. with very little cause. Possibly worse is that sometimes people's
/parents/ will call or email their professor to appeal a grade.

It does seem to be somewhat major dependent: I have /never/ seen it occur in a
math class, for instance, whereas it apparently routinely occurs in my
mother's English classes. (She's known for grading more stringently than many
other English professors. Complaints also don't usually work.) However, I
think that it's a mark of an experienced teacher that they don't let bullshit
like that faze them: the one time I've seen it really affect how a class was
taught, it definitely made the class worse as a learning experience. (Some
vocal computer science majors thought that an algorithms course was too
difficult, and the professor made it easier, which definitely was a net loss
for everyone. I'm very glad that I wasn't enrolled in it.)

I think it's disgusting. Sometimes professors make mistakes: in class
structure, or assignment load, or grading something, or the like, and bringing
that up politely is appropriate. But if they know they are assigning hard,
long assignments, or the grading is fair, or the like, then it's usually for a
good reason. The professors who don't care about teaching usually also don't
teach hard courses or grade harshly, because it means more work for them.

I agree that generally the people who do things like this are less likely to
do well post-college. Either because their parents are hovering over them (see
parental phone calls) and they won't ever learn self-discipline and reliance,
or because they expect that if they complain, the world will magically bend
itself to their will. I think some of it happens when people are taking
courses they don't want to take for a requirement, but I agree that there are
a good number of people who get sold on the "college degree -> good job and
happiness and money."

~~~
gms7777
Back in my undergrad I TA'd Comp Sci for a few years. That sort of stuff was
rarer in upper level courses, but in the intro classes which were often
largely filled with non-cs majors, it was rampant. The policies of the course
were extremely lenient as well, and very explicitly spelled out in the
syllabus.

For example, there was an assignment every single week, and 3 times during the
semester, they were allowed to turn in an assignment up to a week late. This
is by far the most lenient late policy I've ever seen in a course. And still,
every semester, I had to deal with several kids angrily yelling at me because
they found out they got a 0 on an assignment because for the 4th time they
decided to turn in something late.

------
Pxtl
Well, this isn't incompatible with the perception that a lot more college
grads are stuck in dead-end jobs.

Let's imagine three tiers of college grads: winners, middling, and losers,
depending on how employable they were when they graduated.

Before, the winners and middling grads got _real_ jobs, and the losers went to
Joe-jobs.

Now, the winners are still getting _real_ jobs, the middling folks are now in
Joe-jobs, and the losers are unemployed.

And nobody cares about losers because we're all callous that way, so all we've
noticed is that people who used to get the real jobs are now stuck in the Joe-
jobs.

~~~
Domenic_S
I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the data.

A _slightly_ larger percent of graduates are working the "Joe-jobs".

College graduates have increased as a percent of the population.

Everything looks to be in order here.

------
ChuckMcM
What a silly article. It ignores that you can get a college degree in
anything. Do the analysis for art majors, literature majors, business majors,
and various STEM majors. Look at 2 year degrees, 4 year degrees, and graduate
degrees.

Sadly there are enough variation that you can almost make any statement
technically true. You could say more people with college degrees are
unemployed now than ever before in history. In absolute numbers sure, as a
fraction of the available workforce not so much.

------
rayiner
These graphs ignore the fact that from 1992 to 2009, the percentage of people
over 25 with a college degree rose from ~20% to ~27%:
[http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf)
(page 3). Meanwhile, the first chart in the article shows from 1990 to 2012,
consistently just over 30% of college degree holders had a job that didn't
require their degree. That means that in 1990, 0.7 * 0.2 = 14% of the
population had a college degree and a job that required one, while in 2009,
0.7 * 0.27 = 19% of the population had a college degree and a job that
required one.

------
at-fates-hands
I just had several friends who were Architects take menial jobs after the
housing market busted. These were guys who were 2 years removed from college,
thinking they had paid their dues and were in their chosen fields.

Two are still trying to catch on to another firm somewhere and another
completely changed fields to find a job. I wonder if they're including these
people in those stats?

------
Futurebot
We've had a few previous discussion on this and peripheral subjects. Here's a
good one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982)

I'd also invite you to read my comment on it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836)

The "studied the wrong subject" stuff has surprisingly come up in this thread,
so I'll just sum up the answer to that one here:

'About the suggestions that these people studied useless subjects: true, many
of them did. What, however, would happen if they all decided to go into STEM
instead? Assuming they all did amazing, we'd wind up with a glut of people
with degrees in "good" subjects, which does nothing to magically create jobs
(having a STEM degree does NOT mean you're going to start a company!) - it
only helps where there are shortages. Once those are filled, we're back where
we started (and wages may get pushed down due to a talent glut.) That's the
best case scenario, too. What would be worse? What would the reality likely
be? If everyone did rush into STEM, a good portion would fail out (not
everyone is cut out for it. Really, some people just do not have the attitude,
mindset, demeanor, worldview, interest, etc.) and be left with no degree (or
they'd switch to one of those useless ones) and still be debt - right back
where we started again. For some real world examples, just look through some
other discussions on HN about this subject about people in countries who DO
exactly this and they're stuck with unemployed and underemployed STEM grads up
the wazoo.'

~~~
EpicEng
You'd probably end up with a lot of people who have the degrees but, in
practice, aren't very competent. I don't subscribe to the belief that anyone
can do anything they chose as long as they try hard enough. Individuals have
individual skill sets, and some simply aren't all that skilled.

My thought is that many of the people enrolling in college should actually be
pursuing a career in skilled labor.

------
pnathan
I can not count the number of college students I met while I was in college
(2001-20010ish) who did not have a clear vision of how they would pay off debt
and maintain a living after graduation. Following your dream, being
passionate, etc were the proverbs being lived by.

Not a realistic analysis of how they would survive in non-minimum wage jobs.

It should not surprise anyone that following your dream without counting the
cost results in very high costs for most people - the penniless genius and
starving artist is still a proverb.

------
zwieback
The document one link down is really interesting:
[http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes....](http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes.2013.2.pdf)

Apart from the usual suspects (sociology, anthropology, archeology)
"Information Systems" doesn't fare well but CompSci is still ok and Math is
good.

------
aestra
Many are by choice, aren't they?

I know a lot who studied "just anything" in college, because, well, I've gotta
go to college, don't I? They didn't have a career path or anything planned
out, just picked something, took some classes and graduated.

Then they decided what they picked wasn't anything they wanted to do for the
rest of their life.

I know someone who studied business but soon realized she hates the business
world, because you have to be cut throat to get ahead.

------
robodale
Find a pain and solve it. This can be applied to a college degree fairly easy.
Do you want increase your value to potential employers after graduation? Be
able to solve painful problems. Where are the painful problems? STEM.

------
aridiculous
For context: I spent my time across the arts and sciences at a top 20 school
and graduated with a very high GPA — all without ever writing a paper longer
than 12 pages. A lot of this was my fault, but it should not have been close
to possible for me to graduate.

The problem to me is larger than which degree someone graduated in. It's that
college isn't rigorous enough in general, and the only people who see the real
benefits of education are people that study the sciences AND are curious and
motivated. See, with science, business, and technology, the worst case
scenario is that the teacher is terrible and the textbook takes over the
responsibility of pedagogy. This, along with a motivated student, is enough to
salvage an education.

In the humanities and the social 'sciences' (which, in my opinion aren't
really science in how we tend to define it these days — and I say that as a
great admirer of sociology, political science, psychology, and economics),
motivation from the student isn't enough to save them from the worst case
scenario: the student graduates underdeveloped, unfocused, and scattered with
only the seeds of critical mind if the curriculum and teaching is poor. And
that worst case scenario happens A LOT since, as previously mentioned, lack of
rigor and inconsistent teaching quality is poor across all departments at the
university level. With very few exceptions, my social science peers didn't
have even a high level understanding of the alternatives to a intellectual
framework like positivism. I doubt they would even know what I would mean by
an intellectual framework or positivism. Technical students don't need to know
this (though they should), but as a social science student, you can't do your
most basic work without an understanding of such topics.

College has become a replacement for high school, because high school has
become a daycare. University teaching is inconsistent because universities are
confused on their role in society. This teaching problem is cross-discipline.
However, with the sciences, the textbooks can more or less set an expectation
of learning. Other subjects require a very disciplined teaching method to be
valuable — the professor must direct the path. Humanities and social sciences
require boldness and direction from its teachers, which they can't do because
the university is a hostile environment for professors.

The only solution I see to this problem (on a personal level) is to encourage
aspiring college students to choose the HARDEST college (the reading
difficulty and writing quantity should terrify the applicant), which
explicitly and forcefully values teaching, and has the highest level of
prestige (for when it comes time to showing that resume around).

If you're a humanities or social science major, you should be reading at least
a book every week (I'll give you 2 weeks for Das Capital ;) and always
MULTIPLE books on any topic. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and money. I
wish someone told me this, so I hope a high school or current college student
comes across this comment and thinks about transferring to a serious
institution.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I don't know quite what to make of this ... It almost sounds good. But then
again, it almost sounds like elitist trifling ...

~~~
aridiculous
You're right, I made a mistake.

I should have pointed out that I didn't do anything of this stuff while in
college. I didn't really know what positivism was. I didn't read Das Kapital
(I didn't even spell it right!). I didn't know what an intellectual framework
was.

But I've played catch-up since graduating. I hope to save someone else that
dysfunction by just going to a proper institution that cares about disciplined
learning.

