Posted on 02/07/2014 5:29:22 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It is hard to know exactly how to interpret the plight of the modern college student. The term "lost generation" isn't exactly original, having been used to describe grads during the three "jobless" recoveries of the interest rate targeting age, but the current predicament is much more dire and unrelenting. At least the graduate population after the dot-com recession had a housing bubble to look forward to, as the current iteration of asset inflation holds little such "hope."
The labor force participation rate for those people 25 years and older with a Bachelor's degree peaked around 1995 at 81%. After the 2001 recession it was about 79%, but fell to 78% during the 2002-03 "jobless" recovery.
From there it held steady throughout the housing bubble fiasco. At the official end of the Great Recession in the middle of 2009, the participation rate had dropped down to 77%, and has fallen at the steepest pace in the years since - now only 75%.
As bad as those results are, and they are in direct conflict with statistics that show an improving economy, they are not significantly different across the labor spectrum. The participation rate for those 25 and older with no college at all peaked in 1997 around 66%, about 15% below those with a Bachelor's degree. By 2002, the rate had fallen to about 64%, a 14% spread to college grads. By the middle of 2009, the spread was again at 15%. The participation rate for those with no college is down all the way to an astonishingly low 58.5%, but that rate progression has largely been in tandem with college grad cohort.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
ONE KEY STAT TO PONDER ON:
From the staff report of the NY Fed Branch:
In 2010, only 62% of college grads were employed in a job that required a college degree.
Of those 62.1%, only 27.3% were in a job that matched their degree or major.
Is Grant’s white horse white?
“Professors” used to make reasonable dough. But they wanted to be on the gravy train, so they started agitating for more dough. The parents of the college kids get to pay.
From the staff report of the NY Fed Branch:
In 2010, only 62% of college grads were employed in a job that required a college degree.
Of those 62.1%, only 27.3% were in a job that matched their degree or major.
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I wonder what the stats would be for ‘real” majors. Let's say we went back to the degrees offered in 1960, before all the victim studies majors, and how much higher the employment rate for those graduates would be?
I don't think anyone would be surprised that real problem is colleges offering degrees that produce graduates with job skills no one want to pay for.
Not really. Professors’ salaries have been pretty flat. That’s not what’s driving up tuition. It’s mainly cuts in state funding and more administrative hires required by increased government regulation.
http://m.chronicle.com/article/Administrator-Hiring-Drove-28-/144519
Give me a break, over 100K to “work” a few hours a day with summers and sabbaticals? lol
Not many job ads out there specifically looking for Women Studies degree holders.
The parents of college kids are guiding the kids into an average AVERAGE $20 G debt. These aprents allow their kids to choose majors that do not assist them in getting employment after school.
The parents allow their kids to go to college, prolonging their adolescence, sitting in classes with substandard, often non English speaking, liberal brainwashing teacher, with no complaints whatsoever
Parents allow and guide their kids into paying nearly one thousand bucks for a course in which the ked sits and wastes a LOT of valuable time with out a complaint. Just a shrug of the shoulder.
And they get our with what? an addiction, at least to theth control pill, a couple of abortions, no job, no real education.
It is pure stupidity.
These parents are taking our country, its future and doing what with it?
And no blame for the “professors”, the “TAs”, the fat cat Presidents of the university?
Just blame for the poor parents who bought the snake oil?
Admin hires, bloated expenses and new buildings and monuments...
One community college instructor I met in an industrial design capacity said something telling, “they spend all their $ on buildings and monuments and awards, we spend our little $ on cool stuff for the students to build and design with...our buildings may be ugly but I’ll put our students against MIT’s any day in designing and R & D”...
I paraphrased, but you get the gist.
University funding will crash and there will be empty buildings like in China soon around campuses...they keep building and building...
I believe the problem is “graduates” seeking jobs that did NOT exist even when they started their academic career. This “you have to go to college” business is a more dire rip-off than anything Bernie Maddof ever did.
I have a “mere” high-school diploma, in addition to an old-fashioned trade. At the age of 79 I am semi-retired and working only at least 50 hours a week. People drive 75 miles to bring their (XXXXX) to me for repair.
Young people, who historically learned a trade are now the holders of useless degrees in useless “studies”.
Most foolish are the intellectuals who look down on the mere ‘tradespeople’ who are in reality, the very people who alone have the knowledge and ability to keep this world functioning.
if I buy snake oil, no one is going to blame anyone but me if I try to whine about it.
if I blame the snake oil salesman I’m not going to buy from him. Not if everyone else whines about him, walking away poorer, stupider, jobless, and in debt.
College staff members are snake oil salesmen.
Parents who advise their children to buy from them are to blame for keeping them in business.
Parents should get together, create a good (classical education) high school. Hire an authoritative principal, keep the kids busy with academics and sports, supervised dances, cohesive curriculum, take any construction they can find, raise funds as they go, build a good building and sports facilities as they go, forget about public school, put AP and dual credit classes in place.
Send their child to college for three years, intent on a career.
Oh. And tell the child in eighth grade that the child will pay for his own school. No negotiations.
The child will become a consumer, watch his grades, and college professors will have to work (if everyone would do this).
In an every man for himself scenario, this kid and his parents are not whining.
They’ve spent 20 G or so on high school. the kid is educated, and can go to college if he wants to or not.
“As bad as those results are, and they are in direct conflict with statistics that show an improving economy, they are not significantly different across the labor spectrum.”
Ahhh... those “other” statistics showing an “improving economy”? Those are the fake ones put out by the administration to keep the sheeple quiet.
Right now, I would not encourage anyone to go to college unless they could pay cash up front without a loan.
If they need more practical skills, they should get them in a community college, which is a much better choice, and far less expensive, for lower division courses in any event.
This reduces for years of debt to just two, which is a LOT more manageable. Unfortunately, some universities are catching on to this trick, so are puffing degree requirements to make them 5 or 6 years in length. This is done solely for the money, and has nothing to do with education. Note: if they try this trick, that degree is likely not worth it.
The bottom line for students is that their biological track is to get a job and get married right after college or the equivalent. Then with a few years of money, but NO debt, they can consider getting a mortgaged home and having children.
Student debt fouls this up, as do inflated home prices and the legal and cultural costs of raising children. Once all three are in operation, it becomes exceedingly hard to have and raise children, so many good people are refusing to do so, not wanting to make life hard for their children.
The way around these problems are first, to avoid student loans at all cost. Second, to use inherited housing instead of mortgaged housing. The third part, the expense of raising children the way the government and culture demand they be raised, is the hardest one to overcome.
More government DOES NOT HELP, and just makes things far worse. As a nation we desperately need LESS government involvement in all things.
Hehe... Did you read the article? I don’t know many professors who make six figures working a few hours per day. Most of those who make that much are bringing in research dollars and running big labs year-round. Also, sabbaticals are quickly becoming a thing of the past...
mmm...
There are few professors/associate professors at state universities who DON’T make six-figure salaries.
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