Posted on 01/29/2013 12:03:09 PM PST by drewh
With record numbers of college graduates underemployed in jobs that don’t actually require degrees, economists are joking that even aspiring janitors may soon have to get master’s degrees to compete for jobs.
A study released Monday by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that 37 percent of employed graduates didn’t need to attend college at all to successfully perform their current jobs.
The study was co-authored by Dr. Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of CCAP; Jonathan Robe, a CCAP researcher; and Christopher Denhart, an economics student at the university.
“Just as a bachelor’s degree gives current applicants for bartender jobs an edge over those with just a high-school diploma, so a master’s degree holder will have an advantage over those with a mere bachelor’s degree,” the authors write in the study.
If trends continue, graduates will become more educated in order to compete for jobs that should belong to less-educated workers, they predict.
“We jokingly predict that colleges will offer a master’s degree in Janitorial Studies within a decade or two, and anyone seeking employment as a janitor will discover no one will hire unless proof of possession of such a degree is presented,” they write.
For many workers, a degree isn’t adding anything to their necessary skill set beyond a credential, said Robe.
“If the new normal for janitors becomes possession of some sort of higher education credential, the only way to advance yourself is to continue to pursue more education, and the problem there is the education doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your actual skill set,” said Robe, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Robe blamed government spending — such as federal student loan subsidies — for exacerbating the underemployment problem.
“Particularly recently, there have been a lot of government programs which are specifically targeted at increasing government spending on education, and increasing college attainment as a result of that spending, and what we’re saying is maybe we should question that and say, ‘to what end?’” said Robe. “If we were to, as President Obama wants to do, increase the number of Americans with college degrees, but there aren’t the jobs for them, are we actually making things worse off?”
President Obama has repeatedly pledged to make the U.S. the most college-educated country in the world by the end of the decade.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/29/study-37-percent-of-employed-college-graduates-didnt-even-need-their-education/#ixzz2JOcUXoyg
While....I'm very far, far away from being a public ed. defender....I don't think the median avg. salary for MA degree'd teachers is 70-80k....
Maybe I'm wrong..as I don't track them...so let's just be accurate in our numbers.
I’ve got pretty decent credentials and I agree wholeheartedly.
And the study was probably skewed to show as low of a percentage as possible. See the likely subjective ones who did it.
Push that a RN needs a BA...when a AS in Nursing was just fine.
Plenty of other examples.....
It's all about $$$ for the E.E.C. ( Education Establishment Complex )
And considering "teachers" are mainly Union...they have their "supporter's" in D.C.
Anything subsidized via 3rd party payer tends to be exorbitantly overpriced.
(Healthcare ‘insurance’ ,college, Medicare, etc.)
My mother and her grandmother immigrated to the US in 1920, she was twelve years old. It took her about six weeks to learn English, granny never learned. Mom attended "normal school" through eighth grade and then attended "Teachers College" which amounted to high school.
Most kids did not attend beyond eighth grade but if you ever run across the comprehensive exam they had to complete to graduate you'd be impressed by the difficulty level of the questions. I'd think that few if any college graduate English majors would pass.
Regards,
GtG
Different times, unfortunately. Different times. I try lots of that with my classes - the older stuff that’s completely out of fashion today. I don’t care much about what the books say they *should* know for their age. I try to give them whatever they can get their hands on.
Makes me sad. So many struggle with the basics these days, like reading and spelling. I could spend all my time on just that and the kids would excel.
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