
'Malemployment' on the Rise - J3L2404
http://www.thetakeaway.org/blogs/takeaway/2010/nov/08/malemployment-rise/
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adolph
_The problem isn’t that precious college graduates have to get their hands
dirty. Rather, the issue is that people who paid for a college education
aren’t getting the expected return on that investment – and might never get
it._

This sounds a lot like the underwater mortgage issue. Maybe people are
overpaying for college because of easy government-backed credit?

~~~
josh33
Agreed. Here's a solid video on the topic where Peter Schiff explains why
college tuition is so high: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIcfMMVcYZg>

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pashields
I don't know why they made up a new word for this or why they think it is
different from underemployment. From wiktionary definition of underemployed:
"Employed in a job for which one is overqualified"
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/underemployed>

~~~
aplusbi
I suppose that depends on what you mean by "overqualified". I'm a computer
programmer, and let's say I lost my job and started looking for a job in
construction. I've never worked in construction before and while I'm not out-
of-shape I'm not exactly ready for heavy-lifting.

So am I overqualified or underqualified? Or both?

~~~
jhamburger
I would think of it like this- If the job on paper requires you to be a high
school graduate, you're overqualified because you have education beyond high
school. If the job requires vocational
training/certification/licenses/experience etc, that's a different story. The
fact that you wouldn't be that good at the job in practice doesn't mean you're
not overqualified.

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JonnieCache
A bit of anecdotal evidence; I graduated university in the UK the summer
before last, and "malemployment" as defined in this article applies to almost
all of my friends and classmates. I have been very lucky to land a job doing
what I love. Many of my newly graduated friends are doing service jobs or
doing brainless admin tasks in offices. Most are simply unemployed, they
cannot bring themselves to settle for these jobs and would rather sit at home
on unemployment benefit. Often these jobs only pay one or two pounds more per
week than what they are receiving in benefits.

The worst thing about this situation is the sense of helplessness and having
been lied to it instills in young people. We have been told by our parents,
rightly or wrongly, for the first two decades of our lives that if we simply
work hard in our education we will land well paid, secure jobs. This was the
reward for all the hard work at school, and for all the debt uni now requires.
Now these kids are graduating, and finding that their £30000 of debt and three
years of hard work might get them a job in macdonalds, if they're lucky.

When you combine that with the fact that those responsible for this situation
got all their education completely free and were given large grants to pay
their way through, you end up with the events of last week:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE3IEKWu4rA>

~~~
patio11
Was there an option in, say, 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for people with brand
spanking new English degrees that wasn't a braindead job in an office? The
entry level job mix changed a bit but the character strikes me as fairly
consistent: if you have no commercially valuable skills at graduation (and if
you majored in English, you probably don't), you get a low-responsibilities
job while becoming acclimated to your industry and learning some soft skills.

~~~
JonnieCache
You would've been able to get a job as a junior sales/marketing/etc person.
Now they will hire you as a secretary if you're lucky.

Edit: this was also due to the relatively smaller proportion of the population
with degrees at that time.

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harshpotatoes
I liked where the article started out, but the only advice they offered was
keep your chin up and go to mint.com. The line between news and advertisement
is thinning.

Of course, maybe good financial planning is helpful if students are graduating
with $4000 of credit card debt... That is the nu mber I will never understand.

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gaius
Well, most jobs _don't_ need degrees. That doesn't mean they're any less
worthy, mind. But it's the truth.

I'm not even talking about unskilled jobs - just jobs that require some other
kind of training that academia.

~~~
eru
Yes. Vocational training and apprenticeships are probably undervalued.

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twymer
_In 2000, about 30 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds were working in jobs that
did not require college degrees. By 2010, that percentage had risen
drastically to almost 40 percent._

20-24? A lot of students are taking more than four years for degrees these
days. This statistic doesn't specify if it counts students enrolled in college
working at a campus job or not.

 _At the beginning of this year, there were twice as many four-year college
graduates working as waiters and bartenders as engineers._

Is the problem just that it's mostly expected that everyone moves on to
college, whether or not they can pick a degree they care enough about to make
a real effort in succeeding with?

~~~
mian2zi3
> At the beginning of this year, there were twice as many four-year college
> graduates working as waiters and bartenders as engineers.

Umm, maybe this is because 60% (or more) of college students studied the
humanities rather than engineering?

~~~
twymer
I assume this is related to my point, though, that most people aren't going to
college because they care about something but rather because they are expected
to. They then wind up picking something easier somewhat at random and can't
get a job because of it.

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z0r
Higher education should be free! Then the 'return on investment' issue would
not be as serious

~~~
jamesbritt
"Higher education should be free!"

Do you mean no one should be paid to provide it?

~~~
z0r
Society should pay for it, since society will benefit from it.

~~~
jdminhbg
Society doesn't seem to be benefiting from it right now if it's employing
grads as waiters and bartenders.

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mswen
Conversation at a wedding reception the other day. Approx. 120 Civil
Engineering BA graduates for the 2009 and 2010 graduating classes from a major
university. As of this fall only 5 graduates from those two classes, actually
have been hired into engineering positions. My friend's son happened to be one
of those 5 but what a dilemma for the other 115, do you double down and go to
graduate school? Do you take whatever you can get and hope to enter
engineering later? I don't know.

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devmonk
Malemployment is very subjective. I can't see how you could effectively
measure it and it mean that much.

I think a job happiness index would be better. You could just ask, "From 1-10
how happy are you with your current job (1=couldn't be more unhappy,
10=couldn't be happier)," would be enough. If this score dipped, morale is
lower overall, and productivity will suffer.

~~~
stellar678
I think they covered the basics of it - malemployment is employment that's not
paying the expected ROI on someone's education level.

~~~
devmonk
Yes, but just being accredited by an institution as having been educated in a
subject doesn't mean that you are qualified for a job. I'm not saying that it
isn't a valid indicator, just that it seems subjective and fuzzy.

If some "over-educated" employees still happy and perhaps have substantially
greater output than their "less-educated" counterparts, then there could be a
significant enough ROI on their education to justify it. However, you can't
differentiate those from the "over-educated" workers that are unhappy that
would be more productive in other roles. This is why I think a work happiness
index would be a better indicator of how well those that are employed are
fairing.

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grannyg00se
How long do we have to hear the same "college is a ripoff" fact, wrapped in
different stories, before people actually stop promoting a four year degree as
_the_ primary post secondary path for young adults? The return on investment
has been questionable for quite some time now.

~~~
flatpointer
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm>

Education / Unemployment Rate:

Didn't finish high school 15.3%

No college degree 10.1%

College Degree 4.7%

That looks like a solid ROI to me. I think this article is indicative of the
fact that education + not much experience means you get left out in the cold
when people with the same education and more experience are looking for work.
Note that they talk about recent college grads in the low 20s - these
typically aren't people with lots of degree-related work experience. You can
also argue that not all degrees are created equal, in terms of employment. But
hearing 'college is a ripoff' a lot (like, say, here) doesn't make it true.

~~~
grannyg00se
Those statistics don't show an ROI, they show a correlation between education
and unemployment. There could be many reasons that people with higher
education aspirations have lower unemployment. Correlation does not imply
causation.

I'm sure you can imagine that if somebody has the drive and mental capacity to
finish a college degree, they also likely have the drive and mental capacity
to land and keep a job. It is not the college degree that matters necessarily.

Using your own statistics, 89.9% of college dropouts have a job. And 95.3% of
college grads have a job. Is four or five years of your life and tens of
thousands of dollars worth a 5.4% increase? What if you were to dedicate those
four years to personal study and lower job market experience and work your way
up for four years instead? Can you be sure that the college route is _the_
better solution, knowing that it only gives a 5.4% increase in those
statistics?

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sudont
This situation's looking a lot more like Iceland's (right country?) workplace
dimorphism, with a majority of women graduating college and entering office,
technical and desk jobs, and men working more traditional (manly) jobs such as
fishing and oil-rigging.

