"Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
Posted on 05/15/2009 6:49:48 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
The bad news for this spring's college graduates is that they're entering the toughest labor market in at least 25 years.
The worse news: Even those who land jobs will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared to those lucky enough to graduate in better times, studies show.
Andrew Friedson graduated last year from the University of Maryland with a degree in government and politics and a stint as student-body president on his résumé. After working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign for a few months, Mr. Friedson hoped to get a position in the new administration. When that didn't pan out he looked for jobs on Capitol Hill. No luck there, either.
So now, instead of learning about policymaking and legislation, he's earning about $1,250 a month as a high-school tutor and a part-time fundraiser for Hillel, a Jewish campus organization. To save money, he's living with his parents.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
This doesn't seem like a very useful degree. Why aren't we encouraging people to learn actual job skills?
Get a skill.
Plenty of people need stuff fixed.
Not very many people need someone who can write a term paper.
A damn useless degree. He should have gotten an engineering degree in mechanical, electrical, chemical, or nuclear engineering. My company is hiring every college grad engineer they can lay hands on.
No sympathy for him on my part.
Let’s see, he could always join the military.
Maybe he could work as a Diversity Coordinator at a hospital. That’s a good way to “give back” to society and get off the greedy corporate treadmill. And the salary is $300,000 or so. Hey, it worked for Michelle.
If they could have, they would have.
< whine > Engineering is TOO HARD. < /whine>
Maybe you can hire Art Appreciation grads and teach them AutoCAD. :-)
Yep. Both my kids just graduated from Yale and UNC Chapel Hill and neither have a job lined up. My oldest graduates from Yale next week with 2 Masters in Harp Performance and she is afraid that she will have to move and leave her boyfriend who is also attending Yale in a Musical Doctorate program.
My 2nd kid just graduated for UNC with a dual major in liquistics and photo journalism. She is number 3 in the graduating class and has nothing lined up. With all of the newspapers closing down including our local paper, her job prospects are bleak.
I also mentioned the military (Air Force) but was poo pooed. Sure am glad I didn’t co-sign any of the student loans. My wife and I are making preparations for their moving back home.
He just shrugged.
Under the current system if you don’t have parents that are willing to take out 50k in loans or are minority it’s near impossible to get an engineering degree. There’s no way you can work 40 hours a week and take a full time engineering class load and do well. You might struggle and make it through but does anyone really wanna hire a engineer that graduated with a 2.2 GPA?
“After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for a few months, Mr. Friedson hoped to get a position in the new administration. When that didn’t pan out he looked for jobs on Capitol Hill. No luck there, either.”
LOL, poetic justice considering what a worthless, silly degree he earned.
"Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
Eventually some of these kids who avoided “hard” degrees (engineering, math, etc.) will figure out there’s little they can do with their poli sci, communications or “XXXX studies” degrees.
The brighter graduates will realize they have to go back to school to get degrees which lead to jobs that pay a decent living. The duller graduates will never figure this out; they will remain whiney victim liberals in dead-end jobs. Or they’ll go to the work for the government. :0)
I see enough exceptions so that I am not totally discouraged. My niece graduated a few years ago from a trendy school with dual Chemistry and Physics majors. Here parents had little money. She worked and saved her money, hustled her own scholarships, obtained a SMALL student loan, and worked year round at the college.
Of course, she IS a Conservative, so we should not be surprised.
College was highly disagreeable to her because of the Leftist political advocacy.
Wonder how my dad's age cohort co-workers managed to get their degrees while married with children and working full time. Granted they had GI bill help, but they worked as draftsmen and went to school nights. Our basement was used as an adjunct architectural studio for 4 of his co-workers as it was close to Catholic University. All of them did freelance/moonlighting work producing renderings and extra work. Every one of them went on to establish their own firms. Took a bit longer but provided a more stable and varied real world knowledge and experience base.
What were people thinking? "Get a degree in ANYTHING...it doesn't matter what"?
Needless to say, their prospects would have been much better if they had studied Automatic Transmission repair, or welding.
..Or just invested the tuition and sold out a year ago.
I talked recently with a friend in the medical field (currently employed, fortunately), who has $400,000 in student-loan debt.
Are you saying someone who is NOT an M.D. degree racked up $400k in student debt? That’s incredible.
Thanks for the honesty. Unless people end up ensconced in the government funded sector (directly or indirectly) many degrees are of questionable economic worth, although they may be laudable as an avocation. For most it is time misspent at best.
About half of our R&D Group did that in the '70's. It took a long time and hard work, but not only were they respected for it, they were never "New Graduates".
The Company had Tuition Assistance programs. Good grades, one got more help. Everyone won.
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