5 ms·

Talking about underemployment as a problem for college graduates in general doesn’t seem very insightful to me. It seems obvious that not all degrees have probl

Talking about underemployment as a problem for college graduates in general doesn’t seem very insightful to me. It seems obvious that not all degrees have problems with underemployment. So which ones do? Why are people doing those degrees? Are they under the mistaken impression that those degrees will lead to employment opportunities that don’t actually exist?

_carl_jung 7y ago
I believe (partially anecdotally and partially from reading articles over the years) that a big part of this problem is more like "mis-education", rather than "under-education". In primary and high school education in the UK, computing is a dire situation. It's clear that being good at using a computer is a huge asset in modern society, so why don't we gear education towards it? Programming ought to be seen as vitally important as English and Maths.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  I wouldn't put programming as valuable than English and Math. It's clearly good to know, but honestly since we're talking about exploding debt, how about fiscal education in schools??
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    You'd need to put that as a 4th year class - if you do it first semester, people would run the numbers and start asking questions.
  - _carl_jung 7y ago
    Which do you think is more valuable knowledge, solving for x or summing the columns in an excel spreadsheet?
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Solving for x, because it actually rewires your brain to think logically vs typing a pre-built function with zero understanding. Besides, a huge part of programming is thinking about variables.
      - _carl_jung 7y ago
        OK, maybe bad examples. My point is that it's underemphasised in school.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    Practical fiscal education in schools is almost a political nonstarter. If you were to educate high school freshmen on how savings, loans, investments, taxes and retirement planning works for a semester it would greatly alter the voting habits and priorities of that generation.
    - cf141q5325 7y ago
      Just giving out a brochure "What are taxes and how do you pay them" would already be an enormous leap forward. I would assume going into some of the topics you suggest would lead to school getting swamped by insurance sales people.
qntty 7y ago
If people are trying to pay loans back with degrees that don't lead to good jobs, surely that's a problem, right? If you think that large amounts of people being unable to pay loans back is a problem, that is.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Sure, but that could be a problem for any number of different reasons, and the article doesn’t provide any insight into what they might be. Are people being deceived in some way into thinking that particular degrees are more marketable than they actually are? Are degrees that are thought to be very marketable (and perhaps once were) no longer very marketable? Are people knowingly choosing to do degrees that are known to be unmarketable? All of those things are completely different problems. The article doesn’t give me any insight into what the problem might be, and doesn’t actually provide much more insight than I could have gotten from looking at two graphs.
  - qntty 7y ago
    This isn't an article about the morality of student loans. It's about the economy. If the economy is struggling because of people unable to pay student loans, that's a problem. Doesn't matter whether it was 'right' that it ended up this way. The problem is that people have student loans that they are unable to pay. How to solve it is another issue.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      The article doesn’t make any case for the economy struggling. ‘Struggling’ in this context would mean that there’s less skilled employment opportunities available than there used to be. The article doesn’t put forward any argument to say that’s the case. With increasing enrolments, the economy could be doing great and still produce underemployment. The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? The article provides no insight into what the answer to the question might be. ‘Many degrees are less marketable than the used to be’ is one (partial) explanation. But it’s not the only potential explanation, it’s not obviously the correct explanation, and it’s not an explanation that the article provides any content to support.
harimau777 7y ago
I think that you make a good point, but on the other hand it seems like the number of degrees which are "safe bets" are decreasing. For example, my understanding is that a business degree is much less likely to get you into the middle class than it used to. Similarly, I think there was a time when BS degrees in the sciences were enough to get decently paid technician jobs. Now it seems like engineering and medicine are the only degrees with a guaranteed return.

_carl_jung 7y ago

I believe (partially anecdotally and partially from reading articles over the years) that a big part of this problem is more like "mis-education", rather than "under-education". In primary and high school education in the UK, computing is a dire situation. It's clear that being good at using a computer is a huge asset in modern society, so why don't we gear education towards it? Programming ought to be seen as vitally important as English and Maths.

chrisco255 7y ago
I wouldn't put programming as valuable than English and Math. It's clearly good to know, but honestly since we're talking about exploding debt, how about fiscal education in schools??
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  You'd need to put that as a 4th year class - if you do it first semester, people would run the numbers and start asking questions.
- _carl_jung 7y ago
  Which do you think is more valuable knowledge, solving for x or summing the columns in an excel spreadsheet?
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Solving for x, because it actually rewires your brain to think logically vs typing a pre-built function with zero understanding. Besides, a huge part of programming is thinking about variables.
    - _carl_jung 7y ago
      OK, maybe bad examples. My point is that it's underemphasised in school.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Practical fiscal education in schools is almost a political nonstarter. If you were to educate high school freshmen on how savings, loans, investments, taxes and retirement planning works for a semester it would greatly alter the voting habits and priorities of that generation.
  - cf141q5325 7y ago
    Just giving out a brochure "What are taxes and how do you pay them" would already be an enormous leap forward. I would assume going into some of the topics you suggest would lead to school getting swamped by insurance sales people.

qntty 7y ago

If people are trying to pay loans back with degrees that don't lead to good jobs, surely that's a problem, right? If you think that large amounts of people being unable to pay loans back is a problem, that is.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
Sure, but that could be a problem for any number of different reasons, and the article doesn’t provide any insight into what they might be. Are people being deceived in some way into thinking that particular degrees are more marketable than they actually are? Are degrees that are thought to be very marketable (and perhaps once were) no longer very marketable? Are people knowingly choosing to do degrees that are known to be unmarketable? All of those things are completely different problems. The article doesn’t give me any insight into what the problem might be, and doesn’t actually provide much more insight than I could have gotten from looking at two graphs.
- qntty 7y ago
  This isn't an article about the morality of student loans. It's about the economy. If the economy is struggling because of people unable to pay student loans, that's a problem. Doesn't matter whether it was 'right' that it ended up this way. The problem is that people have student loans that they are unable to pay. How to solve it is another issue.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    The article doesn’t make any case for the economy struggling. ‘Struggling’ in this context would mean that there’s less skilled employment opportunities available than there used to be. The article doesn’t put forward any argument to say that’s the case. With increasing enrolments, the economy could be doing great and still produce underemployment. The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? The article provides no insight into what the answer to the question might be. ‘Many degrees are less marketable than the used to be’ is one (partial) explanation. But it’s not the only potential explanation, it’s not obviously the correct explanation, and it’s not an explanation that the article provides any content to support.

harimau777 7y ago

I think that you make a good point, but on the other hand it seems like the number of degrees which are "safe bets" are decreasing. For example, my understanding is that a business degree is much less likely to get you into the middle class than it used to. Similarly, I think there was a time when BS degrees in the sciences were enough to get decently paid technician jobs. Now it seems like engineering and medicine are the only degrees with a guaranteed return.