Free Republic

The college class of 2020 entered one of the most hostile labor markets in recent history. During the first year of the Covid pandemic, employment decreased across the country. By many measures, college graduates fared best during this period, but as time passes, research is capturing just how difficult conditions are for young workers. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) recently analyzed the outcomes for 563,000 bachelor’s graduates across 337 colleges and universities and found that only 50.2% of the class of 2020 had full-time jobs with a traditional employer (meaning they are not working as a freelancer...

As summer approaches and school comes to a close, many college graduates (if they aren't already) will be hunting for jobs. And they'll want to put their college degree to good use. According to data collected by LinkedIn, some of the top college majors that lead to the most "different kinds of jobs" include business administration and management, marketing and psychology, among others. It's not a bad time to search for career opportunities, either. In April, U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs — the 119th month of straight gains — and unemployment fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest rate since 1969....

Three out of four college-educated Democrats seem to believe that a man can be a woman if he just says so, regardless of his biology, genetics, and genitalia, according to a skewed survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Around this time of year, college seniors are thinking about what they want to do with their lives. It’s not an easy decision, and passion for a particular type of work should always be a major factor in what path you choose. But it’s also helpful to know what industries are hiring the most.  Michigan State released the results of its 47th annual “Recruiting Trends” survey. It polled 3,370 employers seeking college talent and asked about their hiring expectations for the 2017-2018 academic year. To see the top 10 industries showing the most growth since last year, open the slideshow...

Nearly 10 percent of college graduates think television's Judge Judy serves on the Supreme Court, according to a new report released this month. The report, titled "A Crisis in Civic Education," was based on a survey of 1,000 adults in August and concludes that "recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage." "They cannot identify the term lengths of members of Congress, the substance of the First Amendment, or the origin of the separation of powers," the report said, referring to college graduates. The lack of civic knowledge extended to the Supreme Court, where 9.6 percent of...

There are currently 6.5 million more students in the U.S. with bachelor's degrees than there are jobs available that require such degrees, including jobs expected to be created by 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but the Obama administration is still expanding programs to encourage even more foreign students to stay in the U.S. and work after graduation. There were 35,632,000 Americans age 25-64 with bachelor's degrees in 2014. If you include people age 20-24 and 65 years and older, the number grows to 45,176,000, according to the BLS statistics, reported The Washington Free Beacon....

*Nearly 10% of college graduates think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court.*.... WASHINGTON, D.C., September 8, 2015 — The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) today released a survey that shows how little college graduates and the general public know about the Constitution. According to the study, nearly 10% of college graduates think Judith Sheindlin — commonly known as Judge Judy — is on the Supreme Court; one-third of college graduates can’t identify the Bill of Rights as a name given to a group of Constitutional amendments; and 32% believe that Representative John Boehner is the current president...

Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students. The test, which was administered at 169 colleges and universities in 2013 and 2014 and released Thursday, reveals broad variation in the intellectual development of the nation’s students depending on the type and even location of the school they attend. ... many still graduate without the ability to read a scatterplot, construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy. The exam, known as the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, measures the intellectual gains...

Vice President Joe Biden tells University of Delaware graduates they’re stepping into a rapidly changing world that presents profound dangers and challenges as well as incredible opportunities. […] Biden says the threats the world faces include international terrorism, pandemic disease, climate change and global inequity. But he said Americans have always risen to challenges…

Parents have more options as overeducated young people turn to baby-sitting. Ashley Newhall of Philadelphia has a law degree and a master's in agricultural law, and she passed the bar in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These days, she's working with some extremely demanding and exacting clients. Most of them are less than 3 years old. Newhall's primary income source for the past few years has been baby-sitting. Parents, said Newhall, are "blown away. They're like, 'Oh my gosh! You're the most overeducated nanny I've ever had.' " But jobs are scarce, and all that education came with six-figure debt for...

"Google has spent years analyzing who succeeds at the company, which has moved away from a focus on GPAs, brand name schools, and interview brain teasers...Google looks for the ability to step back and embrace other people’s ideas when they’re better. “It’s ‘intellectual humility.’ Without humility, you are unable to learn,” Bock says. “Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure....Those people have an unfortunate reaction, Bock says: “They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s...

Scratch one more bullish thesis for the housing recovery, and the economic recovery in general.Over the past several years, optimists had often cited household formation as a key component of pent up demand for home purchases. So much for that.Recall that last August, the WSJ noted that in a report on the status of families, "the Census Bureau said 13.6% of Americans ages 25 to 34 were living with their parents in 2012, up slightly from 13.4% in 2011. Though the trend began before the recession, it accelerated sharply during the downturn. In the early 2000s, about 10% of...

The weak economy is helping to drive thousands more college graduates into the U.S. military. Since the recession began in 2007, there's been a steady increase in the number of college graduates joining the armed forces. The Navy and Army have seen the biggest jumps. About 60 percent more college grads joined the Navy last year than in 2007. For some of them, it's a job some would never have imagined for themselves just a few years ago. Not 'What I Thought I'd Be Doing' Louis Lam fits that bill. He's your typical good college student. He's on the dean's...

(CNSNews.com) - There was a net decline of 406,000 in the number of Americans age 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher who were working in the United States in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A net of 309,000 in this demographic simply dropped out of the labor force, which means they neither had a job in June nor actively tried to find one, according to BLS. The number of Americans age 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher who were “unemployed”—meaning they did not have a job but did actively try to...

The USA Today reports graduating class of 2012 is in for a rude awakening as Half of new graduates are jobless or underemployed. 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. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from...

The link is to an AP study so I won't quote directly from it. But the bottom line is that, after going to college and getting a degree in the arts or humanities, the chances of getting any kind of well paying job when you graduate that will help ease the student debt burden are practically nil.Young graduates with a bachelors degree are likely to be working as baristas, waiters, waitresses, or other low paying jobs. This is partly the result of the elimination of mid-level management positions as well as jobs becoming far more specialized so that a...

A recent informal survey of 500 post-grads primarily between the ages of 22 and 28 — 83 percent of whom voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 — found just 27 percent of Obama’s previous youth supporters plan to vote for him again, The Daily Caller reports. That’s a drop of almost 60 points.In contrast, of those who voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, a vast majority — 80 percent — said they would vote GOP again. An 80 percent majority of those newly disillusioned by Obama said they would consider voting for a Republican in 2012, too.Why...

Within the past year Sarah Schupp has hired five new employees with freshly minted college degrees. She fired one on his first day for inappropriate sexual comments to a co-worker. Another lasted a week before getting a pink slip. ..." you can't call in sick at 7:45 a.m. just because you don't want to come to work at 8 a.m." Jeanne Achille also was disappointed with the hiring of a recent college hire, promoted by a university professor as a "superstar" and fired after three weeks when it was discovered she spent hours online at work visiting a dating site....

Oakland -- An Alameda County judge ordered the administrator of the Medical College Admissions Test to overhaul its policies for accommodating people with learning disabilities. Superior Court Judge Ronald Sabraw issued the order to the Association of American Medical Colleges Tuesday after finding that its policies for disabled test takers violate state civil rights laws. Sabraw gave the AAMC 60 days to revamp its policies for reviewing requests from people with disabilities and to provide accommodations for the MCAT that could include providing extra time, different test settings or special devices or equipment. The initial lawsuit, later expanded to cover...

Grads find few jobs; experience is key By Stephanie Myers myers@gomemphis.com June 19, 2003 Vania Lam graduated with a bachelor's degree in consumer science retail from the University of Tennessee last month. Now she's looking for a job, and the outlook is so bleak, she's already considering returning to school in the fall. "It's just not going so great," she said. "I'll probably have a better chance of finding a job after I graduate from design school." Although temporary staffing agencies are noticing an upswing in job placements, the job market for college graduates remains tough. "The current market for...