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>The company receives about 500 applicants per job opening. This succinctly demonstrates everything that is wrong with the entry-level labor market, especially

by ruswick 13y ago

>The company receives about 500 applicants per job opening. This succinctly demonstrates everything that is wrong with the entry-level labor market, especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors. There are a deluge of incompetent graduates competing for a negligible number of jobs. They are either forced into menial shift jobs for years or, if they're fortunate, will have the privilege working 70 hours per week in an unpaid internship before taking a jobs marginally above the poverty line.

jseliger 13y ago
especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors Actually, according to Louis Menand's book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in American Universities, the absolute number of English majors has declined over the last 40 or so years: "Between 1945 and 1975, the number of American undergraduates increased 500 percent, but the number of graduate students increased by nearly 900 percent. On the one hand, a doctorate was harder to get; on the other, it became less valuable because the market began to be flooded with PhDs. This fact registered after 1970, when the rapid expansion of American higher education abruptly slowed to a crawl, depositing on generational shores a huge tenured faculty and too many doctoral programs churning out PhDs. The year 1970 is also the point from which we can trace the decline in the proportion of students majoring in liberal arts fields, and, within the decline, a proportionally larger decline in undergraduates majoring in the humanities. In 1970–71, English departments awarded 64,342 bachelor's degrees; that represented 7.6 percent of all bachelor's degrees, including those awarded in non-liberal arts fields, such as business. The only liberal arts category that awarded more degrees than English was history and social science, a category that combines several disciplines. Thirty years later, in 2000–01, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in all fields was 50 percent higher than in 1970–71, but the number of degrees in English was down both in absolute numbers—from 64,342 to 51,419—and as a percentage of all bachelor's degrees, from 7.6 percent to around 4 percent. What field has taken its place? Business, which now accounts for about a quarter of all degrees awarded. Moreover, according to the research done by Arum and Roska in Academically Adrift, undergrads in the hard sciences and humanities (including English) tend to show substantial increases in their reading comprehension skills, writing skills, and math skills over their first two years of college and over their college careers.

by ruswick 13y ago

jseliger 13y ago

especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors Actually, according to Louis Menand's book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in American Universities, the absolute number of English majors has declined over the last 40 or so years: "Between 1945 and 1975, the number of American undergraduates increased 500 percent, but the number of graduate students increased by nearly 900 percent. On the one hand, a doctorate was harder to get; on the other, it became less valuable because the market began to be flooded with PhDs. This fact registered after 1970, when the rapid expansion of American higher education abruptly slowed to a crawl, depositing on generational shores a huge tenured faculty and too many doctoral programs churning out PhDs. The year 1970 is also the point from which we can trace the decline in the proportion of students majoring in liberal arts fields, and, within the decline, a proportionally larger decline in undergraduates majoring in the humanities. In 1970–71, English departments awarded 64,342 bachelor's degrees; that represented 7.6 percent of all bachelor's degrees, including those awarded in non-liberal arts fields, such as business. The only liberal arts category that awarded more degrees than English was history and social science, a category that combines several disciplines. Thirty years later, in 2000–01, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in all fields was 50 percent higher than in 1970–71, but the number of degrees in English was down both in absolute numbers—from 64,342 to 51,419—and as a percentage of all bachelor's degrees, from 7.6 percent to around 4 percent. What field has taken its place? Business, which now accounts for about a quarter of all degrees awarded. Moreover, according to the research done by Arum and Roska in Academically Adrift, undergrads in the hard sciences and humanities (including English) tend to show substantial increases in their reading comprehension skills, writing skills, and math skills over their first two years of college and over their college careers.