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Yep. They will have employment suited to the their real world skills.
They will suffer, but that is the price of not thinking ahead on how to pay for their four year vacations.
Newsflash, they more than likely aren't going to ever pay off their college debts.
The job market doesn't want those people at the prices needed to repay the loans.
If the loans were guareenteed by the government, then those taxpayers who have decent jobs will be saddled with the loan repayments that the originators can't meet.
And newsflash, as automation increases, and with the recent trend of higher more part-timer workers, many of the minimum wage jobs will be hiring less as time goes on.
So basically, my point is, maybe mistakes were made. It's easy to point fingers. That doesn't really solve the problem of what do we with half a generation of people who can't find good stable jobs.
The solution is that they suffer. 21st century economies have little use for the plethora of liberal arts majors generated by western education systems. Those who are useful to the market will have gainful employment, the surplus can scramble for the gleanings.
Think of liberal arts majors as the 'Artiests' of the new millenium. Like musicians, they are a dime a dozen, and while colorful and fun to watch in their antics, there are way too many competing for a small market.
Your personal opinions on Peter Schiff notwithstanding, that's about two dozen real people who work with something that never needed their college degrees.
In addition to the unemployment created by the current economic problems, we've also heard a lot in the last couple of years about how many college degrees are worthless, and only burdens people with extra debt. This is usually ascribed mostly to liberal arts degrees and other soft sciences and non-sciences, but from what I can tell many STEM employers require a couple of years of experience in addition to a degree, and that experience is many times difficult to come by.
What troubled me the most about that video was the fact that there were engineers and other STEM people among those interviewed.
Are or have you been underemployed/unemployed or do you know other in that situation? Would you ascribe this merely to the current state of the economy, or do you think there is some truth to the idea that tons of people are being educated to be unemployable? Should and can anything be done about this?
This isn't a purely new phenomenon. It actually was a lot more applicable to my dad than me. He may had a master's in physics, but never was able to get a job that made use of that in a direct way (late '70s). Instead, it was a single undergraduate course in programming that got him his breakthrough position. One of my professors had a similar, slightly earlier story after having studied theoretical mathematics and trying to find a job with it in an academic setting. He found one position across the country looking for his training, and was lucky enough to get it... but scores of other contenders were out of luck.
Granted, the Stagflation economy of that time wasn't exactly great, so I can't say the economy isn't part of it. But I wouldn't say it's all due to the current economy.
Should something be done about it? Maybe. There isn't much concern made about employability when deciding what to study in college; the general view seen in college is "if you're good at it, you'll find a job", no matter what "it" is. Perhaps some more realism would help. But we still have to ask the question, is it better to be an English major and have a tough time finding a job that uses it, or to have been dissuaded from going to college because you didn't want to study, say, biology?
bombshoo's point about automation is interesting. I've wondered, as we become a more automated society, and there's less need for manual labor, are we going to continue to be able to employ people as much as we currently are? Are we running into a limit where we simply don't need more people with "soft skills" or services-type skills than we already have, even as more automation means there's fewer jobs in a lot of "hard skills" or manufacturing type positions?
More to the point, will we always need to employ the average person 40 hours a week, 5 days a week? In the early industrial times, people would often work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, or more. Nowadays, few positions require that, in large part because we can do things more efficiently with machinery and other technological advances. Might society do better if we slightly reduced the average amount of time each worker works, and compensate for that by hiring more people, and somewhat redistributing wages? At first glance it might appear worse for the currently-employed worker, but if it reduces the strain on society from unemployment and the issues it can cause, it might end up being worth it even for the currently-employed.
There are obvious places where this might not work, such as at the low end, where you really need most/all of the salary you aren't making. But if you reduced the average desk job hours (via hours/week, or via more vacation) by, say, 5%, and correspondingly hired 5% more people, that would bring in some people currently with minimum-wage jobs, free up some of those jobs for the unemployed etc. It might not have to be drastic to have decent effects on unemployment.
This is to say that I'm skeptical of the current system that, at least in America, often encourages salaried workers to work long hours (far beyond 40/week) and take little vacation (especially by European standards). If your average employee works 80 hours/week to pull in their $80K salary, when you could have twice as many employees working 40 hours/week and making $40K, aren't you favoring a strategy that works towards lower employment (in addition to likely being stressful for the employed)?
Yep. They will have employment suited to the their real world skills.
They will suffer, but that is the price of not thinking ahead on how to pay for their four year vacations.
Newsflash, they more than likely aren't going to ever pay off their college debts.
The job market doesn't want those people at the prices needed to repay the loans.
If the loans were guareenteed by the government, then those taxpayers who have decent jobs will be saddled with the loan repayments that the originators can't meet.
They also suffer, but their debt load is smaller, since they were smart enough to not pile education loans on top of their other problems.
The solution is that they suffer. 21st century economies have little use for the plethora of liberal arts majors generated by western education systems. Those who are useful to the market will have gainful employment, the surplus can scramble for the gleanings.
Think of liberal arts majors as the 'Artiests' of the new millenium. Like musicians, they are a dime a dozen, and while colorful and fun to watch in their antics, there are way too many competing for a small market.
Oh yeah. This works. We should totally let the entire economy continue to spiral downwards and dramatically decrease the nation's overall social welfare simply because some people made some shortsighted decisions...Because you know, making sure people suffer for their mistakes is far more important than actually trying to do anything to improve a situation.
Yeah. This works. We let the entire economy suffer, dramatically decrease the nation's overall welfare because of some shortsightedness on the part of these people. Because you know, making sure people pay for their mistakes is far more important than actually trying to do anything to improve the situation.
How does one improve the situation of people who insist on spending money from taxpayer backed loans pursuing degrees that have little relationship to being able to pay for the knowledge acquired?
How does one improve the situation of people who insist on spending money from taxpayer backed loans pursuing degrees that have little relationship to being able to pay for the knowledge acquired?
I have a feeling you are sort of missing my point. You can't force companies to hire people they don't need, and you can't force people to get degrees in things that have a guaranteed employment potential (if there even is such a thing). But overall, what you really cannot do is maintain a system that is leaving millions of people without effective options for fair employment, education or advancement. Wide scale unemployment/underemployment is bad for everyone. It is very much a public problem and saying "Well screw them, they should have got a better degree" is not a very good answer.
I personally don't have an answer, and that's what my post was specifically about. What do we do with millions of people who are most likely going to be unemployed/underemployed? I'm really not sure.
I do know that simply trying to simply write them off will have very bad results.
I have a feeling you are sort of missing my point. You can't force companies to hire people they don't need, and you can't force people to get degrees in things that have a guaranteed employment potential (if there even is such a thing). But overall, what you really cannot do is maintain a system that is leaving millions of people without effective options for fair employment, education or advancement. Wide scale unemployment/underemployment is bad for everyone. It is very much a public problem and saying "Well screw them, they should have got a better degree" is not a very good answer.
I personally don't have an answer, and that's what my post was specifically about. What do we do with millions of people who are most likely going to be unemployed/underemployed? I'm really not sure.
I do know that simply trying to simply write them off will have very bad results.
Yep.
Writing off unproductive people is little fun. Gets the job done though.
I suppose one alternative is to tax the remaining workers heavily enough to keep the loiter class quiet. Depending on how fast the loiters breed, that might work.
We do something like that with social security now, with the receipients expected to die off fairly quickly and keep the costs down.
My question is how many of the remaining workers will put up with the outrageous taxes used to finance the system, or just quit the hassle of work and join the dole.
Yep.
Writing off unproductive people is little fun. Gets the job done though.
I suppose one alternative is to tax the remaining workers heavily enough to keep the loiter class quiet. Depending on how fast the loiters breed, that might work.
We do something like that with social security now, with the receipients expected to die off fairly quickly and keep the costs down.
My question is how many of the remaining workers will put up with the outrageous taxes used to finance the system, or just quit the hassle of work and join the dole.
The inherent volatility of the market makes attempting to pinpoint certain groups of people as "unproductive" solely on their choice of major unbelievably naive, in my opinion. The difference in both time and in space in regards to what jobs are the most required is immense. My father was told not to pursue engineering back in the 1980s because there wasn't any job potential in it. Right now the government is massively clamoring for more students to go into engineering.
Even ignoring this, though, I'm not entirely sure what the numbers are for the United States, but here in Belgium pre-crisis data had engineers at 95% employment after a year, and political scientists (my major) at 89%. Most other liberal arts majors had numbers around this area, the darkest foresights were I believe for art history majors, who only got about 80% employment if I recall correctly. In all cases, this difference is marginal in comparison to the shouting being done about the uselessness of liberal arts majors, and quite frankly not much to be worried about. Although I'm nearly completely certain that a far larger portion of the engineers got jobs specifically within their field, most political scientists made themselves useful in other kinds of careers, and nearly always ones more applicable to their educational level than part-time department store work.
People with talent, education, and motivation find their ways somehow or another. It might take a while, it might include plentiful setbacks, but there is a way. To deride all of us as being leeches off society is so over-the-top that it sincerely makes me doubt whether or not you're simply attempting to troll here, but in case there be any remaining doubt, the real world proves you wrong, alas. Don't worry, maybe next time your gut feeling will be able to provide you with more concrete statistics and research.
Oh yeah. This works. We should totally let the entire economy continue to spiral downwards and dramatically decrease the nation's overall social welfare simply because some people made some shortsighted decisions...Because you know, making sure people suffer for their mistakes is far more important than actually trying to do anything to improve a situation.
It serves as a hard warning for those entering the higher education system now to put some thought into the connection between what they study and their employment goals, and perhaps compromise a bit on both to achieve a realistic result.
This goes for STEM too. Cato mentioned the government pushing engineering. They are doing that because they have decided STEM = GOOD!!! The problem is not all engineers are created equal, and not all engineering sub specialties are either. All the environmental law majors are learning this right now.
And then there are the ones who have employment, but whose expectations as to what that would mean are completely disconnected from reality. I will use my sister as an example, who is a teacher and constantly laments how she never knew salaries would be that bad. She could only possibly have known that if she lived under a rock for the six years of her higher education. I am all about people pursuing the job they want, but that many times means forgoing being rich, or sleeping late, or being able to travel. I am in the military, and I know quite well I will never be rich.
It serves as a hard warning for those entering the higher education system now to put some thought into the connection between what they study and their employment goals, and perhaps compromise a bit on both to achieve a realistic result.
Oh no doubt, but as Cato mentioned, it's very difficult to be able to predict how useful or in demand a job will be years down the line, and if someone is taking the time to get an education, leaving them be as nothing more than the example of what you should not do seems not only bad policy, but extremely inefficient. These people might very well be good workers if they could get jobs. Letting them rot in unemployment/severe underemployment is just not good from any perspective.
This goes for STEM too. Cato mentioned the government pushing engineering. They are doing that because they have decided STEM = GOOD!!! The problem is not all engineers are created equal, and not all engineering sub specialties are either. All the environmental law majors are learning this right now.
You're right. That's the other problem. Even if everyone got these "better" STEM degrees, there would just be less demand for STEM degrees in the job market and companies would be able to be more choosey than they even are today, so you would still have unemployed people.
And then there are the ones who have employment, but whose expectations as to what that would mean are completely disconnected from reality. I will use my sister as an example, who is a teacher and constantly laments how she never knew salaries would be that bad. She could only possibly have known that if she lived under a rock for the six years of her higher education. I am all about people pursuing the job they want, but that many times means forgoing being rich, or sleeping late, or being able to travel. I am in the military, and I know quite well I will never be rich.
This is sort of a whole other problem all together, but I think it's sort of inevitable that a certain number of people will decide they are not satisfied with the track they have chosen. The only thing I can think here is that maybe instead of the norm being that people should go straight from high school to college, that perhaps taking a year off to figure out what they really want to do might be better.
This goes for STEM too. Cato mentioned the government pushing engineering. They are doing that because they have decided STEM = GOOD!!! The problem is not all engineers are created equal, and not all engineering sub specialties are either. All the environmental law majors are learning this right now.
There should have been a line between that. The point, however, is like STEM people have decided "law degree" = money, and when in law school also decide to chose their focus based on their interest instead of well known market pay scale differences between lawyers. Suddenly they end up a poor or unemployed environmental lawyer and then fain surprise that that is the case.
Basically what I am saying that despite the lack of a crystal ball telling us the exact job market picture ten years from now as bombshoo mentioned, nearly everyone can still walk into college with a pretty damn good general expectation of the reality of that market four years later. If you have given your degree a lot of thought and choose and accept the known consequences of majoring in basket weaving or becoming yet another computer graphics guy more power to you. Doing what you like is sometimes worth a pay cut. But what I don't accept is people whining about the foreseeable consequences of their choices whether it be job satisfaction or money wise and then expect me to step in (more like be pushed in) to fulfill their fantasies.
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