Posted on 07/01/2012 3:24:51 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Andi Meuth earned a history degree from Texas A&M in May and has applied for 150 jobs, so far with no luck.
Jon Ancira graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology last year, but can't find work that uses his degree. After six months of searching, the 26-year-old did finally land a job — at a bank.
Alex Ricard, 21, is grateful to be using his electronic media degree from Texas State at a social media startup company, but it's an unpaid internship.
He says he's sent out three to five resumes a week for the past two months, with almost no response from prospective employers. When he does hear back, he says, it's most often that he doesn't have enough experience.
While the particulars for each graduate are different, the overarching narrative has become familiar.
Up to half of all recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, doing low-wage work outside their chosen fields, according to a widely reported analysis this spring by the Associated Press.
These young women and men still have high expectations — as do their parents — that a college degree will pay off, despite rising tuition and the resulting debt.
But increasingly, say economists and workforce experts, there is a mismatch in today's job market between graduates' skills and those needed in the fastest-growing career fields.
The recession changed the economy permanently, economists say. In this largely jobless recovery, millions of mid- and entry-level positions are gone, the work now automated.
Many of those with college degrees who do find jobs can expect lower salaries and reduced earning potential over their working lives. Rising debt — the average graduate carries about $25,000 in loans — can push the often-necessary advanced degree out of reach.
Locally, the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-olds has been about twice as high as the overall rate.
Psych degree overload
Ricard still holds out hope that his degree will eventually lead to a job, given the increased importance of social media and digital technology, but he has his limits: August.
“If I haven't found something by then,” he said, “even though I'd like to think my days of fast-food jobs are behind me, it becomes less about the job I want and more about the job I need at that point.”
Not all graduates face such dire straits. Those with in-demand degrees in areas such as engineering, information technology and nursing enjoy much brighter job prospects.
Kevin Davis, who earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin, had three job offers before he graduated in May. He took a job with Toshiba in Houston.
John Hollman will graduate from Austin Community College in December with a two-year associate degree in nursing. The San Antonio native already has two job offers, one from his current employer of nine years, Texas Oncology.
But employers and workforce agencies say the labor market is suffering from a jobs-skills mismatch.
Psychology, for example, is the third-most-popular four-year degree in Texas and one of the fastest growing, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, a public agency that works to bring people and jobs together.
Problem is, there's almost no demand at that level, said Eva Esquivel, communications manager with the agency.
More than 5,000 people graduated from Texas colleges and universities with bachelor's degrees in psychology in 2010, she said, to compete for four job openings in the field, with an annual salary of $22,000.
“That's not even enough to pay student loans back,” Esquivel said. Most psychology jobs require a higher-level degree — and there still aren't many positions available.
Ancira, who saw some of his psychology research published while studying at Northwest Vista, one of the Alamo Colleges, said he found fewer research opportunities after transferring to UT.
Disenchanted, he looked into changing majors or getting an advanced degree, but the burden of $36,000 in student loans put him off.
Meuth, who lives in San Antonio, said she knew the job market for history majors without a master's degree or teaching certification was limited but decided to go for a major she was passionate about, even in a slumping economy. She wants to work in a museum eventually, which requires a master's, but is putting it off for now to avoid taking out any loans.
Conversely, Texas colleges graduated far fewer engineers than psychology majors in 2010 — just 271 petroleum engineers, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, and demand far outstrips supply, especially as the Eagle Ford Shale continues to boom.
Starting pay for petroleum engineers averages $85,000, Esquivel said. For the 405 chemical engineers who graduated in 2010, it's about $60,000.
Skills in short supply
Chris Nielsen, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Manufacturing in San Antonio, said the company has struggled to fill engineering positions and points to the healthy starting salary as proof of the competitive nature of the field.
But perhaps more crucially, Nielsen said that in the six years the company has been building trucks in San Antonio, it's never been able to fill all its trade positions, or what it calls “skilled job” positions.
Those include maintaining assembly-line robots, which Nielson said requires training in programming, hydraulics and pneumatics.
These are good, career-track positions, he said, many that pay in the $60,000 range.
Toyota is hardly alone.
Manufacturers surveyed in the latest “Skills Gap” report from the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, reported that roughly 5 percent of current jobs go unfilled because of a lack of qualified candidates. That's as many as 600,000 unfilled jobs — machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors, technicians and more — that manufacturers say hamper their ability to expand operations, drive innovation and improve productivity.
Those surveyed said the national education curriculum is not producing workers with the basic skills they need, and the trend is not likely to improve in the near term.
Tom Pauken, appointed to the Texas Workforce Commission by Gov. Rick Perry in 2008, has become a passionate advocate for greater vocational and technical training.
He laments what he calls a “one size fits all” approach to higher education, which assumes that everyone needs a four-year degree.
Those who do are often saddled with enormous debt and still can't find good jobs, he said. “Meanwhile, there is a shortfall of qualified applicants for those with skills training as welders, electricians, pipe fitters and machinists.”
Entry-level salaries for those jobs in the San Antonio area begin in the low- to-mid-$20,000 range, according to Workforce Solutions Alamo, and rise to the upper $40,000s at the expert level.
In San Antonio, Alamo Colleges runs Alamo Academies, which aims to train high school juniors and seniors for skilled employment in fast-growing local industries, including aerospace, information technology and security, manufacturing and the health professions.
The academies, which are a partnership among the community college district, local industry and workforce agencies, also provide college credits, and expose students to occupations that require a college education. Students stay in their high schools, take about half their classes at the academy and participate in a paid internship in their chosen field.
After high school, graduates earn an average starting pay of more than $30,000 and will have earned a couple dozen college credits.
“I tell students they need to do career planning even before education planning,” said Esquivel, who travels a 12-county region talking to high school students about where job growth will occur in the coming years. “I wish more students would take advantage” of the information her agency has to offer.
Luisa Ramirez, the on-campus recruiting coordinator at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said she's seen an increase in freshmen who come to the career center seeking advice, rather than waiting until they're seniors.
“They've seen their parents go through the recession,” she said, “So they're more aware.”
Ancira said many recent graduates might be in for a rude awakening.
“You go to school thinking you're going to graduate and there's going to be a job in an office waiting for you,” he said, “but a few years into it, you realize that's not really going to happen.”
They borrowed money from countries like France.
Unfulfilled self-esteem is the path to violence and destructiveness. They have an entitlement mentality coupled with an inability to succeed by merit. It could get ugly.
At the same time their disillusionment may lead them toward reality and conservatism. We don’t need all of them, just enough to swing the Presidency and Congress our way for a generation or two, just like the Dems had during the 20th century.
Keep in mind that Gen Y is very big, bigger than Gen X and bigger than the Boomers. If they become more conservative it’s over for liberalism. Boomers are aging and become more conservative naturally. They’ll fight for their benefits, but can be allied with for many political goals we all share. Gen X is more conservative than the Boomers. If Gen Y becomes as entrepreneurial as this market indicates they will you’ll see them become fiscal conservatives for certain.
The challenge is culture. Our children are indoctrinated to see America as Howard Zinn sees it. Peruse your local library and you’ll see graphic novels extolling the virtues of Che and telling the story of Zinn’s America. That doesn’t bode well for liberty, but there’s nothing like a freed slave. That’s why we must continue to fight and expose the lies of the left.
Generation Y is the most economically educated and astute generation yet. The Debt and its associated philosophies are cultural. Expose that fraud and things start looking pretty good for America.
I have kids and so I tend toward optimism - realistic optimism - if such a thing exists.
Idiot. I loved and love history but I knew a degree in it is useless. So I majored in economics taking tha hardest courses available including econometrics, beefed up on the math and onlky after that did I take some history courses as a "dessert" and to fulfill requirements. Worked hard and got a free trip to graudate degrees in economics. Never had a problem finding a job. With my free time I read history book and listen to history podcasts.
It's not hard to see what happened and who they might have been taking advice from. When I was college age, the advice I heard from my father was to get a degree. My dad didn't have one, but the guy in charge at his job did- in Physical Education. They worked in a manufacturing plant.
While I was in school, what I heard most often is that most people do not end up working in the field of their degree. So, for a long time the only point was to get the diploma itself. The training behind it was really immaterial, and that was true- for that time.
The problem isn't that everyone turned stupid, it's that the world changed and they didn't quite notice.
Yet, you still can't find one on the Supreme Court. How many graduates of our top state schools have ever been on the Supreme Court?
This is going to sound perhaps horrible but she needs to take that history degree hit the dating marker and because she is cute and I bet makes nice conversation find a husband who has the STEM degree and good job prospects who like history too. Going on a European trip with this nice girl might be a fun experience as she can appreciate what one is looking at.
No, no no! Work at a Chick-fil-A, make sure you get in REALLY tight with your Pastor so that you can be selected by the Up Top guys when you're young enough for them to take an interest in you. It's MUCH more to do with personality and character than actual work.
That was true when getting admitted to a college meant something but now with everybody going to college and the people who can't handle STEM getting a BA the value of a liberal arts degree has been severly diminished. Also, with the cost of tuition skyrocketing is it worth going six figures into debt for a BA degree.
I agree, and things are still changing. The "check in the box" for a degree is still worth something, although it may not be worth what was paid. My friend up the street has a daughter in college; her grades aren't that good, and she's taking psychology or sociology or something like that.
Should she continue, my friend asked. My advice was that, with a year to go, she should stick it out if her grades are good enough to graduate. It's only a little more debt than if she dropped out after 3 years, and she'll have that credential. My friend left college after 3 years to get married, and still doesn't have a degree 20 years later. She wishes she did.
The daughter is very smart, just not very mature or motivated, at 21.
College degrees in many majors don’t indicate that an applicant has actually learned to DO anything useful...
I’m simply talking about people who have destroyed their bodies with hideous tattoos, piercing and engage in bizarre gender-bending. My point had nothing to do with morality, bikers or American patriotism. It’s about an endless supply of freaking-looking young people who don’t understand why they have trouble getting jobs. Plus, I’m tired of looking at these people on the subway.
I'd like to give him good advice but honestly, I have no clue what the world is going look like even 3 years from now.
My oldest boy is a lifeguard. They’re in demand! Some facilities offer lifeguard training starting at age 15 (second son is taking it this summer). First-aid training is also valuable, and reasonably priced at a county Red Cross facility.
Maybe if you let his computer get so messed up it didn’t work at all, he’d be motivated to learn more about its operation and maintenance. My reply for any electronics issues is “Don’t talk to me, I have no idea.” They either figure it out on their own, or get help from their Dad, but he makes them pay with extra labor.
How would it be legal—let alone moral—for you to be paid at that level?
Actually, due to our government benefit structure, old age now tends to bring a defense of big government.
Why go to one of the best engineering schools and major in History? She is hot, but those geeky engineering students weren’t good enough for her I guess. No MRS degree for this idiot.
Eventually, that will happen. The "Home Schooling" movement is (was?) the start. The thing that the "ed biz" has previously provided was some "up front" measure of how well an individual was equipped to function in/at some kind of work that prospective employers could count on. They have successfully diluted/denigrated that function to the point where they/it no longer serve(s) that purpose. Guilds and unions once did this task, but they abandoned it (mostly) to the "professional educators".
One proposal that I saw that actually makes a kind of sense is some (or a group of) certified testing facilities. An individual would go to one of them, take a written plus practical comprehensive exam, and be "blessed" as skilled to a certain degree in a certain subject, thus divorcing the mode of obtaining the skill from the proof of possessing it.
But it's a BIG ship, and changing direction will take time. I think the end result will be exactly as you postulate.
Thank you for you long and thoughtful response. I learned a lot.
“In today’s world its all about a SURVIVAL PLAN and if you aren’t immediately flexible you are dead meat.”
Point is, while all these other kids have no clue what they are doing with their degree, my kid is already looking at how she is going to use her degree when she gets out of school. Most of the libs minor in something like literature or sociolgy. Mine is already taking business classes.
Frankly, when she told us her plan, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “dayem, that’s good.”
I’m not married or have kids, but I’d tell mine, “I know it’s tough. But right now, just get in the game. Start somewhere!”
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