8 ms·

The Growth of College Grads in Dead-End Jobs

57 points by grej 13y ago

Pxtl 13y ago
Well, this isn't incompatible with the perception that a lot more college grads are stuck in dead-end jobs. Let's imagine three tiers of college grads: winners, middling, and losers, depending on how employable they were when they graduated. Before, the winners and middling grads got real jobs, and the losers went to Joe-jobs. Now, the winners are still getting real jobs, the middling folks are now in Joe-jobs, and the losers are unemployed. And nobody cares about losers because we're all callous that way, so all we've noticed is that people who used to get the real jobs are now stuck in the Joe-jobs.
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the data. A slightly larger percent of graduates are working the "Joe-jobs". College graduates have increased as a percent of the population. Everything looks to be in order here.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
I just had several friends who were Architects take menial jobs after the housing market busted. These were guys who were 2 years removed from college, thinking they had paid their dues and were in their chosen fields. Two are still trying to catch on to another firm somewhere and another completely changed fields to find a job. I wonder if they're including these people in those stats?
ChuckMcM 13y ago
What a silly article. It ignores that you can get a college degree in anything. Do the analysis for art majors, literature majors, business majors, and various STEM majors. Look at 2 year degrees, 4 year degrees, and graduate degrees. Sadly there are enough variation that you can almost make any statement technically true. You could say more people with college degrees are unemployed now than ever before in history. In absolute numbers sure, as a fraction of the available workforce not so much.
thatthatis 13y ago
Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so that second 5% is a lower number. 2) The 5% total attainment measures the full pool, not the delta in the pool as would be appropriate to use in comparison to the recent college grads numbers in the article. A lot of this "college grads now worse off" seems like partial views of the statistics that ignore the meteoric rise in enrollment over the same period. One stat I haven't yet seen, that would make a great paper for anyone still in college, is: What percent of these numbers can be explained by higher GI bill usage following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
- ye 13y ago
  The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of future graduate trends, etc.
  - adharmad 13y ago
    It is not just young gullible kids but even experienced folks. Note the oncoming glut in the Phd market. If people who work towards doctorates in highly specialized fields cannot forsee the supply-demand mechanics then younger people surely can be excused for making similar mistakes!
  - angersock 13y ago
    Yes, we really need to make sure that there is a square hole for every peg to get hammered in to! Or, better, we could try to figure out how to keep costs from spiraling so high that they prevent a "useless" degree-bearer from ever leaving their dead-end job.
rayiner 13y ago
These graphs ignore the fact that from 1992 to 2009, the percentage of people over 25 with a college degree rose from ~20% to ~27%: http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf (page 3). Meanwhile, the first chart in the article shows from 1990 to 2012, consistently just over 30% of college degree holders had a job that didn't require their degree. That means that in 1990, 0.7 * 0.2 = 14% of the population had a college degree and a job that required one, while in 2009, 0.7 * 0.27 = 19% of the population had a college degree and a job that required one.
zwieback 13y ago
The document one link down is really interesting: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes.2013.2.pdf http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes.... Apart from the usual suspects (sociology, anthropology, archeology) "Information Systems" doesn't fare well but CompSci is still ok and Math is good.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
aestra 13y ago
Many are by choice, aren't they? I know a lot who studied "just anything" in college, because, well, I've gotta go to college, don't I? They didn't have a career path or anything planned out, just picked something, took some classes and graduated. Then they decided what they picked wasn't anything they wanted to do for the rest of their life. I know someone who studied business but soon realized she hates the business world, because you have to be cut throat to get ahead.
Futurebot 13y ago
We've had a few previous discussion on this and peripheral subjects. Here's a good one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982 I'd also invite you to read my comment on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836 The "studied the wrong subject" stuff has surprisingly come up in this thread, so I'll just sum up the answer to that one here: 'About the suggestions that these people studied useless subjects: true, many of them did. What, however, would happen if they all decided to go into STEM instead? Assuming they all did amazing, we'd wind up with a glut of people with degrees in "good" subjects, which does nothing to magically create jobs (having a STEM degree does NOT mean you're going to start a company!) - it only helps where there are shortages. Once those are filled, we're back where we started (and wages may get pushed down due to a talent glut.) That's the best case scenario, too. What would be worse? What would the reality likely be? If everyone did rush into STEM, a good portion would fail out (not everyone is cut out for it. Really, some people just do not have the attitude, mindset, demeanor, worldview, interest, etc.) and be left with no degree (or they'd switch to one of those useless ones) and still be debt - right back where we started again. For some real world examples, just look through some other discussions on HN about this subject about people in countries who DO exactly this and they're stuck with unemployed and underemployed STEM grads up the wazoo.'
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > (having a STEM degree does NOT mean you're going to start a company!) Having studied STEM subjects sufficiently to get a degree increases the probability of you being able to serve as technical (co-)founder for a company in a technology related field. It doesn't do anything magically, but there is plenty of reason to expect that, ceteris paribus, more-STEM graduates => more and better innovative technology companies.
- EpicEng 13y ago
  You'd probably end up with a lot of people who have the degrees but, in practice, aren't very competent. I don't subscribe to the belief that anyone can do anything they chose as long as they try hard enough. Individuals have individual skill sets, and some simply aren't all that skilled. My thought is that many of the people enrolling in college should actually be pursuing a career in skilled labor.
robodale 13y ago
Find a pain and solve it. This can be applied to a college degree fairly easy. Do you want increase your value to potential employers after graduation? Be able to solve painful problems. Where are the painful problems? STEM.
pnathan 13y ago
I can not count the number of college students I met while I was in college (2001-20010ish) who did not have a clear vision of how they would pay off debt and maintain a living after graduation. Following your dream, being passionate, etc were the proverbs being lived by. Not a realistic analysis of how they would survive in non-minimum wage jobs. It should not surprise anyone that following your dream without counting the cost results in very high costs for most people - the penniless genius and starving artist is still a proverb.
aridiculous 13y ago
For context: I spent my time across the arts and sciences at a top 20 school and graduated with a very high GPA — all without ever writing a paper longer than 12 pages. A lot of this was my fault, but it should not have been close to possible for me to graduate. The problem to me is larger than which degree someone graduated in. It's that college isn't rigorous enough in general, and the only people who see the real benefits of education are people that study the sciences AND are curious and motivated. See, with science, business, and technology, the worst case scenario is that the teacher is terrible and the textbook takes over the responsibility of pedagogy. This, along with a motivated student, is enough to salvage an education. In the humanities and the social 'sciences' (which, in my opinion aren't really science in how we tend to define it these days — and I say that as a great admirer of sociology, political science, psychology, and economics), motivation from the student isn't enough to save them from the worst case scenario: the student graduates underdeveloped, unfocused, and scattered with only the seeds of critical mind if the curriculum and teaching is poor. And that worst case scenario happens A LOT since, as previously mentioned, lack of rigor and inconsistent teaching quality is poor across all departments at the university level. With very few exceptions, my social science peers didn't have even a high level understanding of the alternatives to a intellectual framework like positivism. I doubt they would even know what I would mean by an intellectual framework or positivism. Technical students don't need to know this (though they should), but as a social science student, you can't do your most basic work without an understanding of such topics. College has become a replacement for high school, because high school has become a daycare. University teaching is inconsistent because universities are confused on their role in society. This teaching problem is cross-discipline. However, with the sciences, the textbooks can more or less set an expectation of learning. Other subjects require a very disciplined teaching method to be valuable — the professor must direct the path. Humanities and social sciences require boldness and direction from its teachers, which they can't do because the university is a hostile environment for professors. The only solution I see to this problem (on a personal level) is to encourage aspiring college students to choose the HARDEST college (the reading difficulty and writing quantity should terrify the applicant), which explicitly and forcefully values teaching, and has the highest level of prestige (for when it comes time to showing that resume around). If you're a humanities or social science major, you should be reading at least a book every week (I'll give you 2 weeks for Das Capital ;) and always MULTIPLE books on any topic. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and money. I wish someone told me this, so I hope a high school or current college student comes across this comment and thinks about transferring to a serious institution.

57 points by grej 13y ago

Pxtl 13y ago

Well, this isn't incompatible with the perception that a lot more college grads are stuck in dead-end jobs. Let's imagine three tiers of college grads: winners, middling, and losers, depending on how employable they were when they graduated. Before, the winners and middling grads got real jobs, and the losers went to Joe-jobs. Now, the winners are still getting real jobs, the middling folks are now in Joe-jobs, and the losers are unemployed. And nobody cares about losers because we're all callous that way, so all we've noticed is that people who used to get the real jobs are now stuck in the Joe-jobs.

Domenic_S 13y ago
I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the data. A slightly larger percent of graduates are working the "Joe-jobs". College graduates have increased as a percent of the population. Everything looks to be in order here.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

I just had several friends who were Architects take menial jobs after the housing market busted. These were guys who were 2 years removed from college, thinking they had paid their dues and were in their chosen fields. Two are still trying to catch on to another firm somewhere and another completely changed fields to find a job. I wonder if they're including these people in those stats?

ChuckMcM 13y ago

What a silly article. It ignores that you can get a college degree in anything. Do the analysis for art majors, literature majors, business majors, and various STEM majors. Look at 2 year degrees, 4 year degrees, and graduate degrees. Sadly there are enough variation that you can almost make any statement technically true. You could say more people with college degrees are unemployed now than ever before in history. In absolute numbers sure, as a fraction of the available workforce not so much.

thatthatis 13y ago

Perhaps the problem is that people who are destined for a dead-end job are now going to college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_... In 1990 ~20% of the US had bachelors degrees. In 2009 ~25% did. In the same period, the % of college grads in low wage jobs also went up by about 5% (according to the OP). Caveats: 1) That second 5% is from the population of grads not the total population, so that second 5% is a lower number. 2) The 5% total attainment measures the full pool, not the delta in the pool as would be appropriate to use in comparison to the recent college grads numbers in the article. A lot of this "college grads now worse off" seems like partial views of the statistics that ignore the meteoric rise in enrollment over the same period. One stat I haven't yet seen, that would make a great paper for anyone still in college, is: What percent of these numbers can be explained by higher GI bill usage following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?

ye 13y ago
The real problem is people studying bullshit that nobody really needs. Young people got sold the idea that they can be anything they want to be, they they are all special snowflakes. The reality is quite a bit more brutal. What we really need is mandatory career counseling, once a year, for every student. The counselors must be familiar with the state of the market, the market trends, technology trends, number of future graduate trends, etc.
- adharmad 13y ago
  It is not just young gullible kids but even experienced folks. Note the oncoming glut in the Phd market. If people who work towards doctorates in highly specialized fields cannot forsee the supply-demand mechanics then younger people surely can be excused for making similar mistakes!
- angersock 13y ago
  Yes, we really need to make sure that there is a square hole for every peg to get hammered in to! Or, better, we could try to figure out how to keep costs from spiraling so high that they prevent a "useless" degree-bearer from ever leaving their dead-end job.

rayiner 13y ago

These graphs ignore the fact that from 1992 to 2009, the percentage of people over 25 with a college degree rose from ~20% to ~27%: http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-566.pdf (page 3). Meanwhile, the first chart in the article shows from 1990 to 2012, consistently just over 30% of college degree holders had a job that didn't require their degree. That means that in 1990, 0.7 * 0.2 = 14% of the population had a college degree and a job that required one, while in 2009, 0.7 * 0.27 = 19% of the population had a college degree and a job that required one.

zwieback 13y ago

The document one link down is really interesting: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes.2013.2.pdf http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/HardTimes.... Apart from the usual suspects (sociology, anthropology, archeology) "Information Systems" doesn't fare well but CompSci is still ok and Math is good.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

aestra 13y ago

Many are by choice, aren't they? I know a lot who studied "just anything" in college, because, well, I've gotta go to college, don't I? They didn't have a career path or anything planned out, just picked something, took some classes and graduated. Then they decided what they picked wasn't anything they wanted to do for the rest of their life. I know someone who studied business but soon realized she hates the business world, because you have to be cut throat to get ahead.

Futurebot 13y ago

We've had a few previous discussion on this and peripheral subjects. Here's a good one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224982 I'd also invite you to read my comment on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226836 The "studied the wrong subject" stuff has surprisingly come up in this thread, so I'll just sum up the answer to that one here: 'About the suggestions that these people studied useless subjects: true, many of them did. What, however, would happen if they all decided to go into STEM instead? Assuming they all did amazing, we'd wind up with a glut of people with degrees in "good" subjects, which does nothing to magically create jobs (having a STEM degree does NOT mean you're going to start a company!) - it only helps where there are shortages. Once those are filled, we're back where we started (and wages may get pushed down due to a talent glut.) That's the best case scenario, too. What would be worse? What would the reality likely be? If everyone did rush into STEM, a good portion would fail out (not everyone is cut out for it. Really, some people just do not have the attitude, mindset, demeanor, worldview, interest, etc.) and be left with no degree (or they'd switch to one of those useless ones) and still be debt - right back where we started again. For some real world examples, just look through some other discussions on HN about this subject about people in countries who DO exactly this and they're stuck with unemployed and underemployed STEM grads up the wazoo.'

dragonwriter 13y ago
> (having a STEM degree does NOT mean you're going to start a company!) Having studied STEM subjects sufficiently to get a degree increases the probability of you being able to serve as technical (co-)founder for a company in a technology related field. It doesn't do anything magically, but there is plenty of reason to expect that, ceteris paribus, more-STEM graduates => more and better innovative technology companies.
EpicEng 13y ago
You'd probably end up with a lot of people who have the degrees but, in practice, aren't very competent. I don't subscribe to the belief that anyone can do anything they chose as long as they try hard enough. Individuals have individual skill sets, and some simply aren't all that skilled. My thought is that many of the people enrolling in college should actually be pursuing a career in skilled labor.

robodale 13y ago

Find a pain and solve it. This can be applied to a college degree fairly easy. Do you want increase your value to potential employers after graduation? Be able to solve painful problems. Where are the painful problems? STEM.

pnathan 13y ago

I can not count the number of college students I met while I was in college (2001-20010ish) who did not have a clear vision of how they would pay off debt and maintain a living after graduation. Following your dream, being passionate, etc were the proverbs being lived by. Not a realistic analysis of how they would survive in non-minimum wage jobs. It should not surprise anyone that following your dream without counting the cost results in very high costs for most people - the penniless genius and starving artist is still a proverb.

aridiculous 13y ago

For context: I spent my time across the arts and sciences at a top 20 school and graduated with a very high GPA — all without ever writing a paper longer than 12 pages. A lot of this was my fault, but it should not have been close to possible for me to graduate. The problem to me is larger than which degree someone graduated in. It's that college isn't rigorous enough in general, and the only people who see the real benefits of education are people that study the sciences AND are curious and motivated. See, with science, business, and technology, the worst case scenario is that the teacher is terrible and the textbook takes over the responsibility of pedagogy. This, along with a motivated student, is enough to salvage an education. In the humanities and the social 'sciences' (which, in my opinion aren't really science in how we tend to define it these days — and I say that as a great admirer of sociology, political science, psychology, and economics), motivation from the student isn't enough to save them from the worst case scenario: the student graduates underdeveloped, unfocused, and scattered with only the seeds of critical mind if the curriculum and teaching is poor. And that worst case scenario happens A LOT since, as previously mentioned, lack of rigor and inconsistent teaching quality is poor across all departments at the university level. With very few exceptions, my social science peers didn't have even a high level understanding of the alternatives to a intellectual framework like positivism. I doubt they would even know what I would mean by an intellectual framework or positivism. Technical students don't need to know this (though they should), but as a social science student, you can't do your most basic work without an understanding of such topics. College has become a replacement for high school, because high school has become a daycare. University teaching is inconsistent because universities are confused on their role in society. This teaching problem is cross-discipline. However, with the sciences, the textbooks can more or less set an expectation of learning. Other subjects require a very disciplined teaching method to be valuable — the professor must direct the path. Humanities and social sciences require boldness and direction from its teachers, which they can't do because the university is a hostile environment for professors. The only solution I see to this problem (on a personal level) is to encourage aspiring college students to choose the HARDEST college (the reading difficulty and writing quantity should terrify the applicant), which explicitly and forcefully values teaching, and has the highest level of prestige (for when it comes time to showing that resume around). If you're a humanities or social science major, you should be reading at least a book every week (I'll give you 2 weeks for Das Capital ;) and always MULTIPLE books on any topic. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and money. I wish someone told me this, so I hope a high school or current college student comes across this comment and thinks about transferring to a serious institution.