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Value of University Degree Continues To Decline (www.cbc.ca)
BarbaraHudson writes: Following up from an earlier report from Statistics Canada (pdf), the Parliamentary Budget Officer warns that an increasing number of university graduates are overqualified for their jobs. The CBC reports: "Last year, 40 per cent of university graduates aged 25-34 were overqualified for their job. Five years ago, that percentage was only 36 per cent. In 1991, it hit a low of 32 per cent, or less than one out of every three university graduates. The problem is bigger than that, because those young workers spent money, time, and resources to get those qualifications.
We've seen what comes out of school and 40% is still less than what I would expect
"Everyone" says you'll go nowhere without a college degree. But guess what? This is neither what many kids want nor society needs.
Vocational schools need to amp up the sales pitch. Machinists of the Tools and Die variety make 40$ and 50$ an hour, and that ain't bad.
Some people just are not interested in the 4 year menu.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
University graduates were rare. There were far fewer universities and university places. Thus the intrinsic value of having a degree was higher, all other things being equal. And the difference in education between someone who had finished university and someone who had not was readily apparent. Nowadays the lines have become blurred. The sheer volume of graduates means that you are competing against many people who have exactly the same educational qualifications as you, whereas before it was a distinct advantage.
A degree is no longer a guarantee of a decent job in your field. In fact nowadays a Bachelor's is almost a minimum requirement for many jobs. On the other hand, NOT having a degree can be a disadvantage. It's up to the individual to weigh themselves carefully and judge whether the time and effort and debt required to receive higher education are worth it. A brilliant person will shine through even when covered in mud, and you can polish a turd as much as you want but it will remain a turd. So are you brilliant, or a turd? This should influence your decision.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I mean, if 32% were overqualified in '91, 40% really isn't *that* big of a swing. It's still alarmingly high, though.
If so many people are overqualified, then why all the complaints about not being able to find qualified workers and why all the foreign workers in both Canada and the US.
It couldn't be because of the crappy wages being offered, could it?
...does "overqualified" mean "has a degree but can't be trusted to change a lightbulb"?
Because ya. Holy hell, ya.
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The percentage by subject would be good to know. While it's the right of a student to study what they wish, let's not complain about being overly qualified for a job in retail because you have a degree in "Ancient Polynesian mating ritual poetry as influenced by the visits of Captain Cook".
I mean the 40 percent of the jobs that the university grads had to settle for. Robots will soon be doing most of them better, cheaper, faster.
If I was that age I would still go to college (a decent one, not online, where you have to work) and major in a STEM field. It's a LONG term investment. You can't assume everything is going to be handed to you just because you have a college degree.
In the context of the article, it seems to me "overqualified" means - you bought an education which you cannot use / do not need for your work.
E.g. having a university degree is "overqualified" for a barista job. Sadly, there are many (usually non STEM) degrees for which there is literally zero demand by employers. Where are the counselors on the front end of the university acceptance process? Hmm, seems like they just take students for the good of the school, not the needs of the student, or society.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I've seen multiple studies showing that in the longer run a degree more than pays for itself on average, even liberal arts.
This seems like a contradiction to TFA. One possible theory to reconcile this is that it takes time to find or become ready for positions that use education.
The idea that you'll be doing more than just grunt work out of college is perhaps unrealistic. Employers want educated AND experienced employees. It takes a while to get sufficient experience.
Even if you start in grunt work, learn what you can around you, pick up tidbits, listen and learn in meetings, go out of your way to do extra, read the policy & procedure manuals, practice your people skills, understand how your little corner of the work-load affects the rest of the org. Clues are all over the place. Education doesn't end out of college.
Table-ized A.I.
From The Option Value of Human Capital: Higher Education and Wage Inequality
"...we find that subsidies inducing marginal students to attend colleges will have a negligible net benefit: Such students are far more likely to drop out of college or become underemployed even with a four-year degree, implying only small wage gains from college education."
This is a Canadian study. I'm Canadian and the university experience I had both white and male were the minority (and vastly so in some fields: humanities women, math and CS asians). More women graduate than men. More women than men work in professional jobs. Asians make more than whites on average (ever wonder why they aren't included in affirmative action check boxes in most schools?)
Agreed having a degree doesn't equal qualified. Switching jobs out of your field and taking something else for example. Study music because you like it but then end up working as a social worker instead. Etc. The other thing is fields that cross education levels like IT and programming. I have a masters degree (and got it for my amusement not for any desire to use it for a job qualification) but have worked at places were my colleagues only had college. It didn't really matter, whoever was the more experienced or otherwise better code monkey was more senior regardless of education.
Underwater basket weaving? Well, that would be okay if it taught my relief to show up on time...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The problem is not that most folks are overqualified with university degrees, BUT
corporation don't train their employees anymore for their job nor future needs via corporate strategy. Instead candidates must guess what the industry needs (via hype by marketing agencies and wall st) and go with the university degree since it guarantees some level of qualification--which is also what the universities advertise and push their high tuition costs (profit!).
If corporations provide a consistent and future proofing level of training to their employees, tuition costs would be lower, people would be qualified for their jobs, people & corporation would feel productive. Instead universities profit and corporate higher ups profit (due to the lack of training budget--and we know that's a big dent, just look at how much the gov't spends on training).
I've seen multiple studies showing that in the longer run a degree more than pays for itself on average, even liberal arts.
This seems like a contradiction to TFA. One possible theory to reconcile this is that it takes time to find or become ready for positions that use education.
The idea that you'll be doing more than just grunt work out of college is perhaps unrealistic. Employers want educated AND experienced employees. It takes a while to get sufficient experience.
Even if you start in grunt work, learn what you can around you, pick up tidbits, listen and learn in meetings, go out of your way to do extra, read the policy & procedure manuals, practice your people skills, understand how your little corner of the work-load affects the rest of the org. Clues are all over the place. Education doesn't end out of college.
I think it takes a lot of commitment and drive to finish college especially when older. Most do not finish college the last time I looked. I would argue those that finish a degree or more likely to engage and keep learning, getting certified, and following thru projects and all the things above than those that don't? Not that the piece of paper brings more value.
In IT you are always learning or you rot away in help desk. Degree or not you need a cert to touch the cisco switches. You need a math or cs degree to touch code in many fortune 500 companies. You need to work more than 40 hours a week and see projects theough if you want to keep your PM or manager job. College degrees may not be required but all require lots of learning and dedication which those who can and want to can get a degree as well
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... an increasing number of university graduates are overqualified for their jobs.... 40 per cent of university graduates aged 25-34 were overqualified for their job.... The problem is bigger than that, because those young workers spent money, time, and resources to get those qualifications.
It could be a problem, but we're missing some information. This is looking at people aged 25-34. A lot of them are taking crappy entry-level jobs. A lot of them don't have any significant work experience, and have trouble breaking into their preferred fields. A lot of them have student loans and other financial obligations, and just need to take a job - any job - to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. (That, in itself, is another kettle of problems that I'm not going to go into right now.)
An important question is, then, how many of them are still overqualified by the time they're into the 35-44 age bracket? Was the extra education actually "wasted", or did they eventually come out ahead because they didn't have to drop out of the workforce later on to go back to school to get the education they missed in their twenties? Did their extra "unnecessary" knowledge help them move up the ladder faster than they would have without it? (I'm not looking for anecdotes - of which I am sure there exist examples to suit any preferred narrative - but rather real data.)
And that leaves aside the rather more philosophical question of whether or not it's generally a Good Thing to have more university-educated individuals in it, even if they don't need those degrees specifically as job training. Are universities now only vocational schools, and only of value to society in that context? If I can't cash in my degree for a high-paying job, is it worthless?
~Idarubicin
the job market is. Outsourcing + H1-Bs (insourcing? idk...) means it's hard to get a job in your field and you settle for something that pays less. This is what happens when countries swing so far right they stop protecting their working class.
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back in the old days you couldn't just declare there were no qualified applicants and bring over an H1-B. You had to settle for someone without a college degree. Because of this there was still a future for people who didn't finish college. Now outside of diesel mechanic it's a death sentence. You'll never make more than $15/hr (give or take for your region) because why the hell would I take a risk and spend money training some punk without a degree when I can get an H1-B fresh off the presses, run him/her into the ground for 4-8 years, ship them back a broken person and move on to the next one. Work life balance? Who the fuck cares? Just bitch about precious little snowflakes or something and everyone will turn a blind eye to how I treat people...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The U.S. is arguably the most capitalistic and market oriented country on the face of the earth yet amazingly we manage to produce vast swaths of the electorate that somehow think economy is some strange kind of magic run by dragons and fairies.
What did anyone think would happen if we produced more degrees without insuring there would be demand for them ?
On the one hand you had simple supply and demand hitting the prices http://www.wsj.com/articles/co...
Simplified tuition aid was mostly a handout to universities not students.
Then you have depressed pricing for the labor of people who earned a degree.
Seeking knowledge is not, and should not, be based on cost benefit equation. It is about broadening horizons not making more cash to feed the machine. It is about making one capable of critical thinking and not be a mere receptacle for corporate propaganda.
The 50 largest businesses in Canada are all in the business of selling off natural resources to the US, or are banks which primarily exist to help fund selling off natural resources to the US. Of course they are not going to have as much need for college graduates as a nation with a more diverse, developed economy.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Maybe if asshole business people weren't importing cheap labor from overseas and hiring our own citizens for a living wage, we wouldn't have this problem. Subsequently we also wouldn't have the problem down the road of 'not having qualified applicants', which is their lame-ass excuse for importing cheap-ass labor from overseas on H1-B's in the first place! MEMO TO CORPORATE AMERICA: Stop shitting on our citizens!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Back in the day these jobs would take on people, train them, teach them the job, invest time money energy. Now it's degree +5 years experience. How does a grad get that?No idea. Schools offer no help to someone who spent 3-5 years getting a degree in psychology.
Now if these schools were on the hook for your success, "can't find a job in 2 years we refund your money". You'd see a shift in schools. There would be actual acceptance requirements, instead of now " hey you applied, you're in".
This is how the H1-B people get these jobs, baloney school degree in India that wouldn't carry over to North America in merit. Fake experience "over in India".
I've got to the point in I.T where I added fake experience just to get an interview.
I've found what makes me "marketable" is to have a broad knowledge of the skill.
It varies for disciplines.
In my case, having an ability to design both analog and digital circuits. An understanding of how to manufacture the product. The ability to work cross-culture and actually enjoy the process. To be able to converse with the folks on the loading docks, the R&D bunch, the suits (playing that game disgusts me as they're shallow and short term in some cases).
It's a choreograph but it can be done and one can have a great deal of enjoyment pursuing the art.
YMMV as they say.
If one simply "goes to college", the possibility of disappointment could result.
Pursuing a passion is most-important.
More women graduate than men. More women than men work in professional jobs.
Another Canadian here. The study confirms the truth of this in Canada, and ISTR that more women than men have been graduating in the US for quite some time.
However, pointing out these facts will get you labeled as a misogynistic bastard by the SJWs who are more interested in pot-stirring to keep the attention and money rolling in, than in acknowledging that in may ways, the pendulum has now swung back, and then some. Me, they'll just say I don't count.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> Degree or not you need a cert to touch the cisco switches.
Not that it helps that much. I've met any number of "Cisco certified" people whom I have to teach about bitmasks, and backup, and how to spell DNS.
Don't forget that if you do not have that diploma, you aren't qualified.
You're overqualified with it, but it's just as bad without the thing.
Fact of the matter is; they want to fill that position. They just don't want to PAY anyone they fill it with.
Another side effect of an oversupply of university degrees is the modern adjunct instructor -- a non-tenure track university teacher with a Master's or PhD now treated as semi-disposable cheap grunt labor. At many American universities, most courses are taught by these adjuncts, who bust ass for $35K-$45K, few or no bennies, and poor job security.
A "college degree" is a piece of paper. And from an employer's perspective, it is worthless. Pieces of paper do not solve problems. Employees solve problems. Employers have problems that need to be solved - that is the only reason they hire people - so if you want to get and keep a job, you have to be able to solve more problems than you create.
Lot of employers look for diploma's when evaluating potential hires, since there is a correlation between holding a diploma and being able to solve problems. But the correlation is less than 1.0 - much less than most college administrators, politicians, or social activists will admit. And the correlation is declining.
That's what this is about: Any value in a college diploma comes from its correlation to problem solving ability. And as that correlation declines, so does the value of the college degree.
Another way to say this: credentials!=capabilities. Employers want capabilities, but universities are in the business of selling credentials. Generating credentials is cheap - it costs perhaps $5 to print a diploma. But teaching capabilities is much harder. To increase their business, universities have found it expedient to decouple credentials from capabilities, so they can sell cheap credentials at huge markups, while using clever marketing to deceive customers (students) into thinking that credentials and capabilities are the same thing. Eventually markets will wise-up to this scam. We see that happening now with the "Value Of University Degree Continues To Decline."
If your goal is to improve your problem solving abilities, getting a university degree is still a good way to do that. But you must be deliberate in pursuing that goal. Problem-solving skills are not magically conferred by professors - they take discipline and practice. The classroom is a good place to learn problem-solving, but doing so is becoming more of an independent study. If you are just drifting through college, and doing the minimum needed to get buy, you will emerge from the university experience with no new skills but with a lot less money, and your diploma will be worthless.
Yes, Certain degrees are becoming worthless. But that isn't to say all. Most degrees are worthless as they are tailored to little Jimmy's or Amy's hearts desire.
I'm in my mid to late 40's now with a pretty good career. And I've been in the position of hiring today's grads upon occasion. Some are really, really smart. Most, IMHO, not so much. Sure, their abilities to do Powerpoint, make pretty Word docs and even crunch a few spreadsheets are okay in an academic sense. But, holy crap, I need a business sense. And more than a business sense: an ability to go and talk to a customer, build a business relationship, establish trust and do business! I don't need another dumbass talking about "social media" and "blah blah blah" that doesn't connect with the large majority of down-in-the-trenches-small-business-owners.
When I was in high school, most of the seniors worked part-time. Hell, before they even graduated or went to college or university, they already had more raw work experience than over 95% of today's grads. Today's high school grads (at least in Ontario) can't even drive a fucking car by themselves. Add that together with globalization (the fucking of the middle class), the destruction of the traditional retirement age of 65 (selfish prick babyboomers) and you're got a perfect storm of screwing today's generation. It isn't that there is no jobs available, it's that they are already taken and many of today's grads don't have the work experience that gives employer's any confidence.
It's fucking depressing when you think about it. Sure, I'm ranting a bit. I've got four young kids and I'm really concerned with what I see out there today. The politicians today are complete morons and out of touch with reality. Today's politicians are becoming "institutionalized" where you're now seeing dumb-ass dynasties occurring with people who have no sense of what's really going on.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Not all degrees are created equal.
I'm sure this varies with different fields, but it seems like many degrees involve spending a lot of money to learn copious amounts of extraneous material with no real world application to the career you are aiming for. I went to a technical college and had a couple of classmates who had previously been working on computer science degrees. They quit because they just plain weren't learning the skills that they needed for the IT careers they were pursuing. On top of that I have met people on several occasions who were flabbergasted to find out that I had obtained my current position with only an associates degree. I didn't have the heart to tell them about my co-workers who have nothing but their high school diplomas. Of course many of us have certifications as well. I dare someone to try and tell me those are a waste of money with this elephant in the room.
A: Lobbyists
Table-ized A.I.
I think by "overqualified" they mean that more people have a piece of paper that says they majored in some subject but are instead working in some "lesser" area.
But what about REAL qualifications - i.e. writing. t doesn't matter what field you are talking about either, except perhaps McDonalds burger flipper and I'll bet even THEY benefit from a higher standard of literacy.
I've met a lot of people over the years in companies who cannot express ideas in writing very well and it sure does not seem like that number is going north even as more people are "qualified" than ever before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is higher education vocational training, or is it it how we instill the broad knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary for an informed population? Vocational training doesn't belong in universities. Of course, people learn useful skills and develop specialization while in college, but the real end goal for students is to emerge as critical thinkers who then pursue their career of choice. In some cases, that means an advanced degree, and in other cases it means the job market, with on-the-job training.
A major problem is that a lot of people go to college when really they just need job training. They don't care for, and don't receive, the real education that college degrees represent.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I am not at all surprised at the falling value of university degrees because, as you have stated, those who are coming out of school are simply not as good as their elder peers, but this phenomenon works only in developed nations, based on my own experience of having business in several continents
Many of the recent college graduates from developed nations (yes, even in Eastern Asian nations such as Korea and Japan) are seriously lacking the will to think
I don't know if they are lazy to think or if they are afraid to think, I simply don't know
Compare to them, the college graduates from 3rd world countries, particularly from those we used to call 'banana republics', while they are lacking in ttraining (their colleges are simply not as good as the one in developed nations) they made up with their eagerness to try out new stuffs, to explore and to think
My present and future plan is to sustain the number of employees in developed countries, to provide services to our existing clients (most of them are from developed nations) but for those so-called 'banana republics' I will be looking for more talents, and will provide them plenty of training to bring them up on par with their counterparts from developed nations - they deserve every single penny of training I invest on them because they are eager to improve themselves
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That's interesting, because the cost of a degree keeps going up.
We need fewer white males and more women and minorities to go to college!
Hasn't that been exactly the trend for some time now?
Journalism, as a career choice is extremely popular. It is one of those jobs that can be so soul-satisfying that many people would do it for free if they could. Many people would rather do this than any of the other options available. So they "follow their dreams" right into lifelong debt and a job that isn't in their field and that they hate anyway.
College councilors don't try to scare people away from this major (by, say, giving stats on how competitive the industry is), because it brings in too much money for the school.
There is no smoked filled room where people are brainstorming how to make your life hard. Rich people aren't thinking about how to screw you over...they aren't thinking about you at all. Nobody tricked you into going to collge; you are responsible for your own decisions.
What does it feel like to be a cliche? You are making the same exact complaint that every generation since the beginning of time has made: "These kids today, no know how lift boulder, no good at hunt--makes me angry, makes gods angry, will have bad harvest and world will end".
Yet, somehow, the world has steadily improved. Try stepping out of your own personal anecdotal experience once in awhile.
if you're trying to take out a $200k loan for a culinary degree at a community college, that loan application should be DENIED.
Obviously that is an extreme example, but I think most of these loan requests should also have been denied.
The real issue is that so many kids today take degrees that society does not need. How many journalists, philosophers, artists, any business item esp MBA, Law, etc does a society need? Basically, too many ppl are pursuing easy degrees. What is needed are things like engineering, nursing, medicine, computer science, etc.
And yes, at the same time, we need to add more to vocational. So does Canada.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The unemployment rate for STEM jobs is around 2%. Many tech jobs are well into 6 figures. I really don't think H1B visas are causing an actual problem here.
On the other hand, there has never been much of a demand for "liberal arts" majors, but universities keep cranking them out, and parents keep going into debt so their kids can get these degrees.
What's happening is that people are starting to finally realize that a college degree isn't for everyone. We've been sold a bill of goods by the education institutions. They're riding high right now, but the roller coaster is about to come down the hill.
We have to step through a brief history lesson for this one..
This is the consequence of sending everyone to College.
The point in sending masses to college was to have a well educated public. Read Plato's The Republic and you will see that even 2,500 years ago Socrates knew that the only way for a society to succeed and be fair for everyone is by having a public with the best education possible. Some people would only be intelligent enough to be farmers, but everyone should learn as much as they possibly can. Back in the early/mid 1900s the public was sold a bill of goods here if the US Government controlled education we would have such a great public. But the people in power knew that a well educated public is also a danger to an elitist group who want's to control everything. So while the portion of the vision where the Government took over was done, and the amount of schools and universities increased. The quality of the education was diluted to the point it is today, where as the person above said I see people with BA degrees that can't perform basic math without a calculator and college students are demanding and being given "safe" spaces to hide from opinions they may not agree with instead of being able to debate a subject intellectually.
Some people are smarter the others.
Sure, some people are naturally smarter than others. That said, without the right education people can be convinced they are smart while in reality they are dumb as rocks too. The appeal to intellect has been very effective at turning our current "education" system into the shambles it is. With a good education system, even the lowest intellects can become extremely important members of a cohesive society.
College used to be the cream of the crop.
Nope. College used to be the cream of the wealthy ensuring they stayed that way (or putting in as much effort as possible to do so). College was never a fair place to go, and there was no testing among the public to see who was bright. If you farmed dirt you stayed a dirt farmer. If your family had wealth you went to college and got into the family business or politics. Hell, most of Isaac Newton's life was being a politician, or ass kissing to get there.
Now it's just a representation of the population in general.
People today have a crap education, so the fact that everyone one means very little. A few are going to get the most of their education and catch on to the game (if they can afford the right schools), but the majority won't. This is not very different than the days where only the wealthy went to college.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Lets cut the crap and call a spade a spade. There needs be a fundamental change in our educational system.Free tution for all would be start, as Bernie Sanders advocates.Instead we albatross our young people with thousands in debt right out of the starting gate.
At the end of the day, it is still considered as unskilled work.
Second, it faces the threat from unchecked use of illegals.
Third, it actually has a hard limit on age due to the physical nature of work.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Get a fucking engineering degree, and you're almost guaranteed a good paying job unless you're an idiot, completely socially incompetent, or obviously crazy.
Not true, but feel free to misplace benefit and harm.
Who really benefits from the protection: citizens of developed countries.
Who is really harmed: internationalists like yourself.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Then make it a Royal PITA to not run a company there.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Kill off the guest worker programs and then see what happens with a clean, distortion-free, pro-citizen market. See to it that there is no way not to hire a citizen in a direct hire, FTE capacity.
College will be for everyone until alternatives have a practical yield and are considered skilled work - something that votech cannot and will not do for the foreseeable future.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Before asking for a second tier semiskilled specialty, perhaps one might look at removing avenues to avoid hiring citizens.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Everybody knows that among the docks loaders there are Doctors of various fields who get a better salary from the export-import business than from being a teacher, or simply haven't taken the required studies in the field of education. There are only so many positions if one doesn't want to move to aboard and the competition is tough everywhere.
Of course you count, just like Italy counted in WW2.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One is one too many!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This!
Are they overqualified, or is the qualification the got worse than what it should convey? We're in an "everyone's a winner" world where it simply is completely unfathomable to NOT give someone a college degree. When I look at some bacc degrees I can't help but think they're a joke. Some master thesis I've seen lately would not even have been accepted for a pretext to one two decades ago.
It's by no means limited to America, too. In Europe a lot of fast track degree mills have been opened and accredited because "we need academics". Yes. We do. We need academics. What we don't need is more people with a worthless piece of paper that makes them think they're entitled. We had enough of that before.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's about time this happened. It's like Peter Thiel said back in 2010 or so: The housing bubble hasn't disapeared - it's just moved on to academic education.
I have no notable formal training or education in my field and yet I can outprogramm and outconfigure most of those with an academic background. Why? I'm an 80ies computer kid that learned most of this stuff from buddies and of the bbses and networks.
Whenever I go to an university I notice that they are 2 decades behind in technology and standards.
I'm all for hard subjects and fields getting a solid education and that includes academic education. But to much of that is happening in the isolated ivory tower. It is long overdue that the job market gets more diversified in terms of where the people come from. You have to be so specialized in todays world that even an academic training can be to general.
That's why certified SAP and Oracle experts often earn more than their purely academic counterparts.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm going to call a solid bullshit on that one. You can't attend an accredited College in the US without at least obtaining a GED. Which would be a rather simple matter for someone smart enough to skip high school entirely.
At Caltech, you don't need a High school diploma or GED to get accepted and attend. Although I didn't go this route (I did the boring 4-year HS route), I know several people in my class that got admitted and attended that way (generally the 14-15 y/o genius stereotype). Two were home schooled and one decided they had enough of school after their sophomore year of HS. I think you might safely say that they were smart enough to skip high school.
After a particularly hard semester and some poor grades, one of my friends was a bit worried that if he had to dropout of Caltech because his scholarship was revoked, that they would be stuck w/o a college degree or a high school diploma. Fortunately, he didn't have to find out, but it did get him quite worried.
On the other hand, when I attended, Caltech wasn't technically accredited by ABET** to grant degrees for Electrical Engineering (but were for Engineering and Applied Science by WASC). That was a slight problem for one of my scholarships, but they got over it, but I guess technically they aren't *fully* accredited (although the lack of accreditation isn't due to not requiring an GED for admittance, but the fact you can get an engineering degree w/ a thesis, and zero lab time).
** neither was MIT accredited by ABET at the time, but they were both retroactively accredited by the time I was granted a degree by requiring more lab courses
The value of college degrees decline because we hand them out for free today. Everyone's a winner, hooray! And because precious snowflake MUST have a degree, we can't simply accept that anyone could simply be too stupid to warrant getting one. So degrees get dumbed down to the point where they become utterly pointless. When everyone has a lump of gold, gold is worthless.
Governments all over the globe have been pushing for more academics. We need more people with a degree! University degrees used to be something the upper 10% (if that) of people had. That's not enough, we need AT LEAST 25%! And lo and behold, we got them. Did we suddenly get so much smarter that more than twice the people could get one? Or is it more likely that it was dumbed down until a quarter of the population is good enough?
This of course affects the job market. Because we sure don't get more jobs to fill. The requirements for jobs went up in turn. Suddenly every job needs you to have a college degree, even if it's at best ridiculous to require one. But we can get a college educated person for the same price as someone without, so why not require it?
In turn, jobs that used to require college education now demand additional relevant certification. Which makes sense for top level positions and positions where a certain experience and additional training is a given, but we're talking entry level positions here. And no later than that we're getting to where your wallet becomes more a factor than your skill. Because in some fields the relevant certs cost money on par with another year of college. Or, depending on your country, even more.
Of course that devalues university degrees.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What you get out of a school is equlivlant to what you put into it.
2 students who take the same major and get similar grades may still have a vastly different level of education.
You can major in say Comp-sci pass with over a 3.0 GPA and when they start work they are very green. Or someone can start work and quickly show that they deal with the big boys.
The difference is the amount they invest emotionally to their classes. Not just memorize for test and for the current project, but really let what is being taught sink into you. You don't go "why would I need this for my life?" But go "How can I use this to enrich my liffe?"
Problem is there too many students getting college degrees who really shouldn't be getting them, not because they are stupid, but they just care for such education. Which is fine, but our modern economy places values on the degree where for many cases it just isn't needed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I thought the reason we were forced to resort to H1B workers was because we didn't have enough qualified applicants.
Statistics can be made to support pretty much anything these days. I'd argue the opposite here. A graduate is overqualified for their job? Great, so that still means they have a distinct advantage over someone without a degree. Why hire someone without a degree when you can hire someone with one, who is overqualified? It's win-win for the employer.
This increased the value of a degree, not decreases it.
"We won't be able to treat you poorly and still keep you. And we might actually have to pay you what the job is worth."
I don't entirely disagree. But I would tend to make this a more generic statement in that you get out of life the equivalent of what you put into it.
I personally don't place much stock in university/college degrees. I'm one of those people that bypassed that system and am quite successful by simply learning what I need to excel at my job. I've met plenty of people with masters degrees and higher that couldn't think they're way out of a wet paper bag. I've also met people with lesser or no degrees that are quite brilliant.
That's not to say that there isn't value in colleges and universities. Some people thrive in those environments and learn very well in those environments. Others learn in much different ways. A degree alone is no measure of a persons aptitude.
yvan eht nioj
tech & trade schools need to be unliked from the degree system. So they can offer more / have better time tables.
They do get some what of a bad rap but they are have to due a lot of the BS from the old degree system.
college degrees are loaded with filler and fluff. Some school also trun out people with lots of theory with little real working skills.
Also don't forget about the loans and the way we made trade schools look evil / you need to get a degree vs going to a trade school.
Germany has a very good Vocational Education system.
I knew a man with an earned Ph.D. in a science.
He was out of work and included his Ph.D. on his resume. He did not get a position and was told, by some interviewers, that he was over qualified.
He said that he easily got a position wen he dropped his Ph.D. from his resume and only included his M.S.
I was refused employment for a similar reason for a position that I actually wanted. (Close to home, okay pay, great benefits, good hours, variety of tasks). My education was in the same area that I work in so this happens to people with degrees in their chosen professions as well as those who work outside their educational area.
You, as a college graduate can pass a GED in a single day. I did. No sweat. Depending on your degree, you may still find yourself unable to land a job that relates to that degree. This is not over-qualification, but a poor choice of which classes you took. If you leave it up to the universities to somehow guide you to the right degree, you get what you deserve. It is far better to have a focus while in high school as to what job area you want to go into, then focus on preparing yourself for that career from that point forward. Instead, many college people when asked what their major is after two years of college have not made a decision yet. If this is your situation, complaining that your education costs are high is tantamount to going to a grocery store, buying one of everything as you are not sure what you want, then complaining of high grocery costs.
This is not a "far right" thing, the far left love the H1B visa.
Remember the #1 supporter is the far left wing democrat congresscritter from Silicon Valley.
Seriously. Stop being such a partisan hack. This is not about political ideolgoy, this is about politicians (left, right, R, D whatever side you support) serving their cronies instead of the people.
I had a friend in university that admitted herself that she was an affirmative action dream. She came from out of province (not sure if technically an affirmative action issue more of a financial one as out of province tuition is about 2-3x "normal" tuition), was of Pakistani origin and a women. 3 checkboxes in one. Her marks sucked and it took her about 6 years to graduate (though she did end up with dual majors). Time for those policies to go away IMO. For women, the battle is won for education at least if not yet for salary equality, minorities at least in Canada, are over represented in post secondary education, again the battle is won.
It's not that the value of all university degrees is declining but rather that most fluff majors have no career path that requires an advanced degree. Universities crank out craploads of psych majors and most of them never become actual psychologists. STEM most certainly requires advanced education but the problem there is that the professors often teach subject matter that is outdated.
Now that going to college entails being screamed at for being a racist based on your skin color - non ironically - the value of a degree has certainly declined.
College used to be a place for the rich kids to go (back when it first got started) with the well round stuff and others did trades / apprenticeships (learning real skills)
All she was missing was lgbt and handicapped.
Now that more women are becoming professionals than men, I expect the income disparity to pretty much disappear. One hindrance is that women bosses tend to be harsher on their female workers ... there is going to be pressure for that to change as well.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Cheap airfare is the good befit of working for the airline.
ibm's watson is going after some of the college jobs as well.
Its not the university grads fault that the degree is undervalued. The students and degrees have full value, its just that they are not utilized fully. Corporations are squarely to blame. They put CXO's with business degrees in charge of absolutely everything. They should know better and get the hell out of the way and let the other grads do their thing. Instead, business grads in charge of corporations lead by following others who are likewise following them. And innovation suffers. And the company lags. And really good ideas get shelved because CXO's don't understand or don't know or don't trust their own people or (this one is most likely) they just won't listen. And then they take someone who knows a lot more about what's going on and give them a menial job, and try to train someone who 'took business 101 and aced it' and try and train them in the job "cause we wanna business guy there", and then lack foresight and innovation, and wonder why.
hand them out for free today??? no we debt load people and turn stuff that should be 2-3 years in to a 4-5 year thing.
Now days due to how classes fall / fillup you can need 5 years to get a 4 year degree.
also the book costs are out of control as well.
Well said.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Of course, but there are a lot of positions for companies that require the paper for the job where it really doesn't need one. Education is a value in itself. Self learning is useful, however when I work with purely self learned individuals they are particular gaps in their knowledge. It is like taking a book reading the first 2 chapters, then jumping to the last chapters with the advanced stuff. While missing a lot of minutia that is in the middle.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I quit high school in tenth grade - in October - and passed the GED the next day. Easily. It was barely a test at all. This was in the 1970's though... no idea if the current GED is similar. But at least in "my day" (cough) the GED wasn't much of a barrier if you could rub two brain cells together to light an idea.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I get it for the medical field, but most of the rest of the world is pretty much just hands-on experience. We have the internet, which is FULL of information. Textbooks and classrooms after high school is practically pointless. My entire 1st year of college was a recap of high school, and everything after that was just people teaching stuff from a book that anybody could buy. Why do we need this?
It's been a while since I was in University but more and more I am convinced that most jobs simply don't require a university degree. Success in any field is determined more by diligence, networking, experience and hard work than academic credentials. Sure, many university grads possess those skills but many of them don't.
I work with a woman that has an MBA (don't know where she went to school). She cannot write a coherent sentence. Her grammar and spelling are atrocious. Her communication and leadership skills are non existent. Yet she remains employed. How she even got hired in the first place is beyond me but I'm sure that the advanced degree had a lot to do with it.
I would take an eager high school kid over this bozo any day of the week and yet the kid without the degree is unlikely to even get an interview.
Certainly some professions require advanced training. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, electrician...those come to mind. There are others without a doubt. But for most jobs the skills required simply do not require 4 years of university education. Yes, there are lots of benefits that university provides aside from specific job training but the notion that a 4 year degree is required for entry level jobs is nonsense.
So basically, educated jobs are becoming like professional sports / entertainers / artist jobs. It's a dream that you can spend your entire life pursuing, but you're going to put in a whole lot of work and energy into it and not get much back unless you are one of the absolute best. So you had probably better enjoy it for the sake of doing it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I don't know about you, but I believe in HUMAN rights, not merely citizen rights. That person trying to get an H1B visa is a living, breathing human, who wants to make a decent living just like the rest of us who won the lottery by being born in the richest country on earth. The USA used to be all about welcoming everyone who wanted to come...that's what the Statue of Liberty is all about! But somewhere we've lost our way, and started trying to exclude everyone who was born in an unlucky gecode.
If you want to learn things, a college or university is a great place to do it. If you don't want to learn, well, as Dad used to say, you can bring a horticulture,. but you can't make her think.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Did you learn to write from a technical or trade school?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What you get out of a school is equlivlant to what you put into it.
So you are saying it is like a sewer.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
Just out of curiosity, what have you done lately to fight for your rights? Are you expecting the magic rights fairy to come down and tell you you did enough complaining online and now you get more privilege? The reason why anybody has rights is because they were hard fought and tempotarily won. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you but life isn't fair. If you want something you have to work for it. You have every right to complain but don't expect anything more than pity.
I've probably done more than you to fight for my rights. Run for office a couple of times, gotten arrested by the riot squad at one protest (and got punched in the face by a cop), led another couple of protests, participated in a few more. Lately? Well, I risked going to jail by refusing to obey a court order in the fight against the illegal methods of a developer that was going to put 100 families in the street, went to court three times to argue about it, got a public apology in the two largest newspapers for that same developer publicly outing me as a transsexual.
I believe that if you don't fight for your rights, you don't really deserve them, and are basically pissing on all the work of the others who have gone before you. .
So, what have YOU done to fight for your rights, Coward?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
College used to be a place for the rich kids to go (back when it first got started) with the well round stuff and others did trades / apprenticeships (learning real skills)
Then WWII was over, the soldiers came home, and were restless. There were not enough jobs, because the economy was transitioning to peacetime employment. To fix the problem of an excess of unemployed ex-soldiers, the GI Bill was passed. College prices have been going up steadily ever since.
My one grandfather was already a Dentist, so he used his GI Bill funds to get his pilot's license. The other was already 30 when the war was over, and wasn't interested in going back to school.
Ref: The Screwing of the Average Man
Look, its pretty simple. If the particular degree you are about to embark on doesn't have a co-op program designed around getting you 20 months of work in that field, then I would strongly argue that if your goal is to get a job, and you want to do that via getting a B.Sc. or higher, then you need to find a degree that does offer co-op, and then you need to bloody well get the grades to ensure you get into that co-op program.
Having said that, if your goal is simply to get a job, then I'll happily point you towards one of many vocational programs that are desperately seeking new blood? Don't like doing vocational? My aren't you picky. Well, then go to a college and get a 2 year degree.
If however, your desire is to get a degree in Women's Studies, then don't expect to get a job easily just because you have a degree. It's not discrimination, I simply have better candidates for the job, and you aren't one of them.
Let's face it, saying they are overqualified is business speak for "we want an excuse to import foreign workers, because we're unpatriotic scum".
Period.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
yeah, because just like in the military having more medals does not actually mean you are more competent. A degree is no guarantee of competence, but society (both Australian and US) have this tendency to just reward the mediocre, hence degrees for turning up, and medals for turning up. No wonder the value of these "awards" is diminishing.
They want overqualified, underpaid workers. They *REQUIRE* people to have those qualifications for jobs that will never use them. Go ahead and take a peak at job postings in virtually every industry.
Some elite kids just need the paper. Then they go get a management slot. As the tech pushes up this does not work out always.
But India. You notice a lot of top slots are going to them. I think this is evolution in action.
Scary?
Overqualified says good things about the educational system
or
Overqualified says the list of jobs with interesting qualifications is shrinking.
Years ago help desk folk had to read schematics and source code.
Now they read scripts designed to swap out idiot proof boxes.
Apple has an idiot proof magnetic quick release power connector (nice except for the patent).
Apple has a new lightening USB magic connector that cares not which way is up (nice except for the patent).
Apple has used the new lightening USB connector on a pen that is surely going to break off inside
the new big iPad. Someone will read a script and replace pen after pen at $99.99+tax each.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Or you could take out some government loans, go to med school, and then eventually become the leader of the most powerful cult in the US today. How many people will the free market allow to follow that path?
that "overqualified" is a code word for "[subclinically disabled] straight white christian male".