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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.
E.g. having a university degree is "overqualified" for a barista job.
I spent my first three years out of college working as a backup cook for a restaurant. Why? I skipped high school and went into college, getting a college degree without getting a high school or G.E.D. diploma. Most entry-level employers focused on the high school diploma and refused to hire me even though I had a college degree. I didn't start my technical career until a roommate's company hired me on as an "intern" because they didn't have the budget to hire a full-time staffer. With the economy in the Great Recession crapper, I know a lot of "overqualified" baristas.
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).
business, management and public administration
social and behavioural sciences and law
humanities.
No surprises there ...
The pdf also states:
Conversely, the lowest rates were found in education; architecture, engineering and related technologies; and health and related fields (with percentages varying between 9% and 13% in all three cases).
Those are the fields you should shoot for.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And some people go a completely different path away from their chosen academics.
A former boss of mine has owned her business for 30 years. She was a psychology major turned self-employed mom who built and sold furniture, eventually creating a product as a manufactuer. Her business is valued well into the 10's of millions, and is still privately owned. Not bad for a 'small business.'
This.
Let brains be the decider, not money. If we make sure everyone can get into college, we can up the requirements in terms of skill and brain power and end up with the same amount of graduates but at a FAR higher skill level.
This is actually how it was in my country from the 1970s until about ten years ago. Around 1970 (forgot the exact year), our "socialist" government decided to make university free. You wouldn't BELIEVE the outcry. And of course the university were flooded with new students the next year, but the flood soon vanished as professors noticed that they have to weed out most of the students because there simply was not enough room to even educate them properly. This in turn meant that anyone who got a passing grade before because, well, we need doctors, would not stand a chance anymore. Only the upper sliver, the cream of the crop, went on. The rest was left in the dust.
What came out of our universities in the coming decades was pure gold. We, a small, insignificant country in Europe, had some of the most renowned universities on the planet. Free universities, too. Anyone could get in. Getting through, though, was a completely different matter. And that contributed in no small part to the reputation of the degrees. If you made it here, you'd have made it anywhere.
Things changed big time when politics changed in the early 2ks and they decided we really need more people with a university degree. And we got them. And HR is already catching on. You already get asked "You got your degree from $university before or after 2004?" when applying for a job. 2004 was pretty much the "cut" where we suddenly had a surprising leap in graduates...
Employers ain't dumb. They know what degrees are worthless. Just 'cause you can wave a sheet of paper means jack. What matters is what that sheet of paper means to your employer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
German style with numerus clausus on fields that are overrun is not the worst idea, but also not the best. Because it depends on your former achievements, not how you fare in a university environment. And given how German schools and universities are vastly different in education style, I don't know whether this is the right way to do it.
Personally I'm more inclined to let everyone in and use the first year to find out whether the people have it or not. My math prof used to work that way. Allegedly 90% of students failed with him in their first try (personally I don't think it was that many, but it's not far off). What I do believe, though, is that he was responsible for more than 50% of the dropouts. His style was grueling. He didn't hold your hand. "Here's the curriculum, this is what you should know, here's the book, read it. If you understand it, come to the test. If not, you have no reason to be here and coming to the test is wasting your time as much as mine" was basically his lecturing style.
That's where I not only learned math, but also how to get information on my own because, as I said, he didn't hold your hand. And I think the latter part was even more important than the former. What I expect from a university degree holder is that he's able to organize his own work, to dig up solutions for his problems on his own, to know how to look up stuff, to find solutions.
I expect him to not need me to hold his hand. And that's something that is SORELY missing in what's coming out of the degree mills of today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.