Posted on 04/27/2012 7:24:15 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
WASHINGTON (AP) — The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.
A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees.
Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.
While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.
Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Not saying to pay their entire way through, but at least enough to pay for maybe books or other expenses instead of just having a free ride, to party all the time.
Obama keeps promoting college education for everyone while also hinting that the government will pay for it if he gets another term.
What percent of jobs in the U.S. actually require a college education?
I doubt if it’s a large percent. It would be interesting to know.
Too many kids have been brainwashed into thinking they have to go to college to get a good job.
For the most part, a college education is overrated, particularly in view of the liberal agenda and the soft subjects being taught.
Obama does ‘his people’ no favors.
***There ya go..is this the new fancy diploma for capuccino maker?****
My thoughts is everyone who wants a college diploma in some off the wall field should first have a background in trades.
Welder-Machinest, Electrician, Plumber-Pipefitter, Heavy equipment operator, truck driver, diesel mechanics, Auto Mechanics, Crane Operator, and many other REAL JOBS.
That way when your pipe dream of a high dollar management job right out of college falls through, you will have a REAL JOB to fall back on.
Now that there is funny I don’t care who you are . . .
To increase empoyment, America has to change.
To begin with, our employees must get the same pay and benefits as China. Further, all corporations would have to pay a the same tax as GE. All corporations must not have unions like IBM. The nation would have to live with the same environmental regulations as China. This would make us the lowest cost country in the world.
One more thing. Before starting to work, you would have to become proficient in Chinese. You might not have to relocate.
Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example
A degree doesn’t equal talent and work ethic. Half of the college graduates don’t deserve to even work at McDonalds.
I graduated high school in the early 80’s - even back then it was drilled into everyone’s minds that you needed a college diploma because having a high school diploma was useless.
A college diploma is the new high school diploma - that is the educational systems plan...
I do understand that young people have kind of been bamboozled by Big Education and growing up thinking EVERYONE goes to college. Well, welcome to reality—it can be harsh. Not everyone should go to college. I'd say half at state unis should be learning a trade. Oh, but their poor widdle self esteem! Seems they were raised by the idiots in the schools that gave everybody a trophy for “participating” and never got a big fat F on their crappy book report because...why, that would damage widdle precious.
I can't tell you how many people I know with a CHILD of 25 living in the basement, asking for $$$ to go out and being absoutely livid when Mammy and Pappy tell them to at least go get a job at Target while waiting for that $85,000 per year position—with massive benefits...the one they got trained for with that fab Gender Studies degree: Diversity Coordinator for a crappy Big Education college.
I heard a guy on a touchy-feely NPR financial program call in and say he had...drum roll....$450,000 in student loans. I kid you not. It made my jaw drop. He had quite the attitude...explaining how he was going to be quite the surgeon in a JUST A FEW MORE YEARS. AND this dope had 2 kids and a wife...seems like the wife is a tad worried and wants him to knock of the additional medical school specialty and GET A JOB. I just don't understand the lack of living in reality lately.
My wonderful Doctor is hanging it up and moving to a little ranch in NM. He can’t take it anymore.
I hate Obama.
Become a Doctor of Social Justice! Go to riots, protest Whitey, attend sit-ins, read screeds from history’s greatest communists and America-haters, demand Israel be destroyed, demand slavery reparations, assault campus conservatives! All this can be yours, probably tuition-free if you are of an Officially Oppressed Minority. Once a doctor, you will be in high demand by NBC and CBS to appear on their networks and condemn America for not giving you a $200K/year job. Apply today!!
**
ROFl!!! I hear the capstone experience can be found at any OWLS gathering in one of our nation’s city parks ...
Our dear daughter is employed now 2 years after graduation, thankfully. And she worked dang hard for it.
But even she is experiencing a stagnant wage, no raises (just be glad your’e still employed type of attitude), and watches everyday as colleagues say 5-7 years ahead of her who have reached a certain level are increasingly canned once they become “too expensive” for the company to retain.
In other words ...work hard, advance, and they will pull the rug out from under you anyway a few years into it.
Ha ha ha! Hilarious!
But absolutely true. As pointed out elsewhere, the great novelists and poets of all time--how many of them had "Creative Writing" degrees? If you want to write creatively, do so. You may eventually become a success. Of course, if you want someone to foot the bill while you're writing creatively, you may want to get another job, just in case you're not as creative as you think.
Submitted here is an example of student reaction to one of his visits this week to UNC-CH. Clearly, this student cannot appropriately relate the facts disclosed on this thread to the campaigning President in Chapel Hill.
Had students been taught that the debtor is slave to the debtholder, and that the role of government is not to enslave people, but to provide a framework of laws to protect their freedom, they might not be attracted to shallow "rock star" leadership, but to someone who would tell them the truth about their Constitution's limits on power in government.
Sadly, the facts presented in the articles on this thread are not presented to these students, who, likely will not find jobs available because of the "taking" and "spending" philosophy of the redistributionist policies of the past 3+ years, and decades of government's ignoring Constitutional limits on spending, deficits, and debt.
Yep. The people I know have some nice credit card bills to go with their student loans. lol
It’s terrible.
Capstone clap or crabs? Or both?
This is exactly the information we need to keep hammering Obama with, non-stop through election day. High unemployment, 50% of college graduates can’t get a job, rising energy prices, lower and lower home values, etc.
Obama and his folks have no answer for these numbers, other than try to demonize us. Even the MSM, which has been complicit with Obama all along, can’t fudge the numbers enough to make Americans feel better about the direction this country his headed.
Like him or not, Romney has chosen the right path to the White House, focusing on Obama’s failures. I expect the notoriously thin-skinned Obama to react wildly.
To understand why so many people are pursuing degrees (even in fields that make no sense), look up the 1971 Supreme Court decision Griggs v. Duke Power. This set in motion the excessive demand for college education as employers, denied the right to winnow out applicants via such means as IQ texts, sought a proxy. That proxy was the sheepskin. They figured that anyone who had graduated from college possessed a certain degree of intelligence.
I am sure that other factors played a role but this makes sense to me.
I might mention that one additional factor is the maturation of the baby boomer generation and their desire to send their children to college.
That should be “IQ tests.”
That would not be good
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