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.

Comments

Why Not Vocational?

[Frosty Piss]

"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.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[__aaclcg7560]

The construction trades are facing a critical shortage of electricians, plumbers and whatever else, as foreign workers had left the country after the Great Recession and older workers are retiring.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[BarbaraHudson]

Depends on which province you reside in. Fees vary greatly.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[__aaclcg7560]

The Great Recession ended in 2009 and the economy has been recovering since then. The illegals went home and they're not coming back.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[tlambert]

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.

In the massive factories that cover most of Canada?

The Tool and die machinist jobs I was able to find had 3 of them at $80K+ a year ($40/hour = $83,200/year), and all require more than 5 years experience, two of them in supervisory roles.

http://ca.indeed.com/jobs?q=Ca...

Manufacturing happens in China. Nice try on the selling of vocational ed, though...

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[RightwingNutjob]

More to the point, most people aren't cut out for what the 4 year institutions sell as their vision of themselves. Try as you might, if you're meant to be a truck driver, no amount of schoolin' is going to turn you into a philosopher, rocket scientist, or pure mathematician.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a CNC machinist. Tool and Die machinists are not representative of the salary you can expect as a college dropout gone tradeschool. You can expect to make $25-30 in a city or $18-25 away from a population center. Most of the people you're selling this idea to are going to become machine operators. It's a hard and competitive industry with razor thin margins and high stress. I'm convinced the 2 years I spent in that industry aged me by 5...

For those not in the know: Tool and Die makers almost universally have white beards and pass on sage advice to the younger generation from their 25+ years experience. You can go through an apprenticeship to become one in a union shop but for the most part: nobody is going to hire someone in to that position who has less than 5-10 years experience running manual machines/programming CNC equipment.

Contrast that you what you can make with a CCNA or doing plumbing: I do not recommend Machining as a viable career choice unless you loved metal shop in high school and want to turn a hobby in to something you hate. The best machinists are usually mechanical engineers who got tired of sitting at a desk.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[Opportunist]

It is? Great! No, I mean it. Free university is a great tool to improve the value of university degrees. If everyone can get in, you can up the requirements to get out. If you need 10k people with a degree, and instead of 20k starters you have 100k starters, you can weed out eight times as many people. Up the difficulty and allow only the brightest and the ones that are willing to work the hardest for it to get it.

Let brains be the limiting factor instead of wallet. What comes out of such a university with a degree must be gold!

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[Opportunist]

Most of all, never let your Chinese subcontractor make ANY decisions concerning the product. None. For one simple reason: Chinese education is one of obedience. Thinking for yourself is punished, not rewarded. You are given a task and you are given the instruction how to do it. And you are required to do it that way, and only that way. Doing it in a more efficient way will get you reprimanded because it was not what you were tasked with. Don't think, do as you're told.

This does not really make people question anything odd they come across. Something can be horribly inefficient or even destructive and they will not even think about remedying it. If your design means that the item produced will roll off the belt broken and useless, it will be broken and useless because that's what the design demands. They will not even ask you whether you really want it that way.

This in turn means that they will not consider the "spirit" of an order you give. They will take the order and fulfill it in the way that is closest to the letter of your order without consideration for the reason why you gave it.

In other words, if you want an additional switch in your product, you should specify that it should be on the outside where it can be reached...

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[byornski]

I think you're describing the German system. I'm not saying it's a bad system, but it does encourage more people who would be better off doing something vocational to do a year or two of it.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[byornski]

5 years experience! Imagine if that was a few years more than an apprenticeship!

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[tlambert]

5 years experience! Imagine if that was a few years more than an apprenticeship!

Pretty clearly, to get to that point, you have to go through all the normal union crap at $28K/year and so on through journeyman, etc., to get those 5 years under your belt in management. Unless it wasn't a union shop.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[TheRaven64]

It happens in the west, but it doesn't employ many people. Part of the reason that it's starting to come back, aside from QA concerns, is that cheap labour can't compete with machines (which work round the clock and produce exactly the same quality for all of that time). Even if the up-front investment is more, it's going to be offset over the lifetime of the factory and being closer to your consumers makes the supply chains easier to manage. That doesn't really help, if the capital is still controlled by very few people.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[angel'o'sphere]

Manufacturing happens in China.
Manufactoring happens all over the world. If you want to talk about economics and industries you should take a broader view.

E.g. why do Scandinavian countries still manufacture in Scandinavia? Why does Germany still has ship yards, or does manufacture its own cars? Same for Japan.

Funnily the US still manufacture their own planes an weapons ... and a few cars, like Teslas :)

I have no concrete idea what is going wrong in your country, but perhaps instead of looking at China, look at other successful nations and start copying.

Regarding social changes: my impression is, the US move like a glacier and everybody is super conservative, health care is an example. Why change a bad running system if there is a chance that it is even worse afterwards, seems to be the attitude.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[pipingguy]

A lot of large scale engineering work (at least whatever work is still going on, and it's not much) is being offshored. Big iron, advanced 3D design "hub-and-spoke" software and reliable internet in "developing" countries permit this.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[umafuckit]

In Switzerland there is a very established vocational path as an alternative to Uni. Here's the result

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[__aaclcg7560]

In my universe, everyone is ex-military and clean shaven.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[dj245]

"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.

Some don't need to amp up the sales pitch. All the technical schools I know [Houston area, welding / aircraft technology / millwright type programs] are full and have acceptance rates of ~25%. That's more exclusive than the university I went to. They can afford to be very picky also, rejecting anyone who has a criminal record, and expelling anyone or who shows up late (even 5 minutes late) 3 times within one semester. They don't have a problem finding students. Their students don't have problems finding jobs. They don't have a problem finding companies to donate training equipment either, in exchange for that company getting first dibs on their students.

In other parts of the country, maybe these are problems. But in my industry, in Houston, technical schools are constrained more by capacity than anything else. Maybe this will all come crashing down as the oil crisis drags on. Maybe it won't. One thing to keep in mind though is that with the competition for welders and technicians like it is, the welders and technicians have power. I am a white collar worker in a Houston manufacturing shop. You can't have a manufacturing shop in Houston without AC. Nobody will work there. You can't have a disagreeable foreman. Nobody will work for them over the long term. Companies are being forced to build up loyalty through good treatment of their workers. If you want the good workers, you have to be a good company too. A paycheck alone is not enough in this town.

We might very well have too many college grads. I think we do. We should be careful not to tilt the rudder too far in the other direction, however. Labor markets are like a slow-turning supertanker, results don't appear until long after the rudder has been turned. We've all seen, and are still seeing, the results of the "we need more IT workers!" movement. Too many workers in a given industry creates just as many problems as too few.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[tlambert]

Funnily the US still manufacture their own planes an weapons ... and a few cars, like Teslas :)

Military manufacturing generally occurs in your own country, unless you are very good friends with your arms suppliers, or the arms in question apply technologies that you don't have. And yes, the NSA has its own chip foundries, as well, for sensitive components, so that a foreign government supplying your chips can't just tell your military to "turn off", should it come to a conflict.

I have no concrete idea what is going wrong in your country, but perhaps instead of looking at China, look at other successful nations and start copying.

We have granted MFN - most favored nation - status to China; this means we can not tariff them more than we tariff anyone else.

This means we can not tariff products manufactured in China contingent on them following the U.S. Fair Labor Relations Act standards; this makes Chinese labor cost inherently less than equivalent U.S. labor, per work unit per hour.

It also means we cannot tariff them based on not complying with U.S. environmental standards; U.S. environmental standards are among the most stringent in the world, and as a result, operating costs for U.S. factories are higher, due to things like hazardous waste disposal; this makes Chinese production costs apart from labor costs inherently less than equivalent U.S. production costs.

The combination of these things means that we have shipped most of our manufacturing to China. Not ironically, our compact fluorescent light bulbs are manufactured in China because of the mercury component required prevents U.S. manufacture, yet dead bulbs go to U.S. landfills, where the mercury accumulates. Further, we are not permitted to use standard incandescent bulbs, which do not have this environmental pollutant, due to environmental regulations regarding energy usage (this is actually an energy production problem, not an energy consumption problem).

In addition, we have what is called "the NAFTA hole". This is where countries which would ordinarily be tariffed on these things which we cannot tariff China on, ship their nearly completed products to Mexico, where they go to a factory barely on the Mexican side of the U.S./Mexico border for final assembly, manufacturing, or processing. This can be as little as shrink-wrapping or other packaging for distribution of bulk-packed items. Then they are exported from Mexico to the U.S. with no tariff. These factories are colloquially called "Maquiladoras".

And *THAT*, my friend, is what is going wrong in my country.

Regarding social changes: my impression is, the US move like a glacier and everybody is super conservative, health care is an example. Why change a bad running system if there is a chance that it is even worse afterwards, seems to be the attitude.

You have a simplistic view of Democrat (liberal) vs. Republican (conservative) politics and embedded interests. This is to be expected, if you are not from the U.S., since it's fairly nuanced as to who "owns" which platform issues.

This is predominantly because the structure of our electorate is actually as a Representative Republic, rather than a Populist Democracy, as it's usually portrayed; we are much more the Roman model, than the Greek model.

Take your health care example:

Nixon, a Republican president, proposed in 1974 a national health care system much better than the one the ACA has imposed upon us; it was single-payer, rather than forcing us to be customers of insurance companies. It was a much better plan. On his deathbed, Teddy Kennedy, a powerful Democratic senator from the state of Massachusetts, stated that his one regret in his political career was not agreeing to help Nixon implement this plan.

The current ACA, which just raised my premiums another 25% to deal with the sunset clause on federal subsidies for the state health exc

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[tsotha]

Construction has not yet rebounded. Why would you think the illegals aren't coming back? When the demand is back, they will be too.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[mike4ty4]

Yet other people are interested in those things, and that's not a bad thing. The real answer here is that (gasp!) there is no one-size-fits-all blanket answer for everybody. Some should go to university; others shouldn't. It depends on the individual. Of course, that also means job requirements need to take that into account.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[mike4ty4]

(I am adding a response because Slashdot doesn't allow comment editing) In addition to this, I'd want to add my own experience and elaborate. At my college, I am going for a degree in Computer Science. But many of the people in this class are only majoring in Computer Science because they want the money, not because they are passionate about the subject, apparently. That is a problem. University should be for those who are passionate about the kind of intellectual fields it teaches, plus the necessary talent (though I tend to think those things are correlated, if you're no good with something you'll probably give up on it). I consider myself in this category. It should not be used for people who have no passion. For those who just want to earn a good wage, vocational school is better and should be a solid option. For those who want to pursue an intellectual topic in depth with passion, university is better. That's how it should go, and the society should accommodate that instead of either demanding university degrees for everything or swinging too far the other way toward some anti-college sentiment, and people should be able to go into the path that suits them best.

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[__aaclcg7560]

According to The New York Times, more Mexicans are leaving than entering the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/more-mexican-immigrants-leaving-us-than-entering-report-finds.html

Re:Why Not Vocational?

[tsotha]

Because the types of industries in which they work have never recovered from the recession. There's no reason to think they won't be back when the jobs are.

Back in the old days

[Dunbal]

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.

Re:Back in the old days

[rmdingler]

So are you brilliant, or a turd? This should influence your decision.

Likely as not, people suffer greatly as honest appraisers of their own self worth, and yet, without some unfounded self-confidence, there is very limited individual success.

We might infer, from that information, that those individuals gifted with inflated self worth are statistically more likely to succeed.

Re: Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

The more important thing to weigh is the opportunity cost (4 years down the shitter) and student loans (unless you're a desires minority or athlete and get a full ride for those reasons). In most cases, it's not worth it to go for a degree.

Universities have been dumbed down , hugely so. What used to be a place of higher intellectual discussion now is a 4 year party with some liberal PC brainwashing in between. And then these women's studies or English lit bozos come out of college and question why they can't find a job except Starbucks or McDonalds. But the other part of the problem is employers are demanding university degrees for things thatbdont require them, like secretary work or entry level positions.

Re:Back in the old days

[Dunbal]

Depends on your definition of trolling. Apparently for you it's "comments I disagree with". Karma: Excellent. But whatever :)

Re:Back in the old days

[Dunbal]

hat those individuals gifted with inflated self worth are statistically more likely to succeed.

Some people might call that "self confidence", and yes it is directly proportional to success.

Re:Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

There doesn't seem to be anything inflammatory in the post above yours (to me at least). Is there anything specific you object to?

Re:Back in the old days

[Dunbal]

If you're somewhere between turd and brilliant, I guess that means you'd better hurry up and pick one or the other?

I used extremes because it's an easy way to make an argument. But if you're "average", then you should expect average results. Another thing I have learned which ties in to the second part of your comment: It is almost impossible for an excellent person to continue excelling in a mediocre environment. It's much more likely they will become mediocre themselves.

Re: Back in the old days

[Dunbal]

Universities have been dumbed down

This I fully agree with. I've seen graduates who can't do basic arithmetic without a calculator much less the ability to apply their knowledge to a situation they have not specifically encountered before. I think it's because students are taught to pass tests instead of taught actual practical and applied knowledge.

Re:Back in the old days

[TheSync]

Likely as not, people suffer greatly as honest appraisers of their own self worth

Private banks might be better at doing an evaluation of whether you will make enough to be able to pay off your loans after graduation.

But in the US, the government first started guaranteeing private loans, then they just totally socialized them - although you can not use bankruptcy to get out of them.

Re: Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

That starts much earlier than university. Our whole education system is centred around passing pointless tests.

Re:Back in the old days

[ILongForDarkness]

Somewhat wishful thinking. My work for example hires 90% of our employees fresh out of school often after having done a 1 year coop placement with us at some point in their schooling. No schooling, no coop, no coop no hire, or at least very very unlikely. I imagine it is like that at a lot of companies. You put a job posting up and you have at least 10X the applications as the positions, you need a quick way to narrow things down. So: no degree, there goes a few, typo in the resume or too long/short there goes a couple more. Etc. Your degree exists to help prevent you from getting cut out of the stack before even getting an interview.

Oddly enough though, I guess people can kind of figure it out in the interview if you are too much BS, but I have a masters and have done several professional jobs (in different fields) none of which have asked me for my transcript and other form of proof that I actually am "qualified". It is enough to make you wonder if you should just drop out after second year and go right to work. Everyone expects a fresh out of school programmer to have some pretty crappy code for a year or so until code reviewers beat good practices into them anyways so ... Probably could have made another 150k or so in my lifetime if I'd known ahead of time. Oh well, what would life be without nuclear physics and complex analysis?

Re: Back in the old days

[__aaclcg7560]

My late father complained for years that kids don't know how to make change. When I worked in a restaurant as a backup cook after college, we had a three-hour power blackout that took down the ordering terminals and none of the wait staff could make change or write out an order slip. Management closed down the restaurant after 30 minutes.

Re:Back in the old days

[rmdingler]

But in the US, the government first started guaranteeing private loans, then they just totally socialized them - although you can not use bankruptcy to get out of them.

Right on. But in the grand scheme of things, is it better that the mean student loan debtor did not improve his/her position in life,

or, is it worthy to consider the exemplary student had access to the education that led to a workable artificial Martian atmosphere?

Re:Back in the old days

[rmdingler]

Heh heh, well played indeed!

Re:Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

"Qualification treadmill".

Re:Back in the old days

[FrozenGeek]

Also depends on the degree you receive. A degree in philosophy or polysci or whatever is not likely going to make you highly marketable. Normally, I would say that you're pretty safe with an STEM degree. However, I attended a conference this weekend that leaves me wondering. One of the speakers was a comp sci prof from my alma mater. The stuff she said sounded more like something I'd expect from a sociology prof. If that's what's passing for comp sci these days, I'd have to question the value of a comp sci degree.

For the record, I'm not a misanthrope. I just dislike people.

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

So are you brilliant, or a turd?

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. :-)

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

If the co-op was done for free, it's exploitative. The school benefits (they continue to collect tuition), the business benefits (free labor), the student gets screwed from both ends.

Re: Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the consequence of sending everyone to College. Some people are smarter the others. College used to be the cream of the crop. Now it's just a representation of the population in general.

Re: Back in the old days

[RightwingNutjob]

Which is why you look at choice of major, transcripts, and the reputation and quality of the university. You get to do that when you're on the hiring side of the desk.

Example: Hiring for a software job? Hint: don't pick the guy who majored in anthropology at some liberal arts school without an engineering program and got a C average for his time.

Hiring for a sales position? Don't go for the guy who barely slinked through an economics degree at middle-of-nowhere State where it's well known that the econ degree is rocks for jocks the Div I athletics program.

Re:Back in the old days

[Bing Tsher E]

A lot of people just aren't worth liking.

Re:Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

"So why a completely wasteful egoistic luxury holidays considered of so much more worth than learning for learnings sake."

Because for the non intellectually gifted, learning is work, and work is suffering. The vast majority of people hate school, they go because it is required of them to make it in life, not because they like mental stress and toil involved. Everyone forgets that learning, especially things you don't like or are not interested in is work. People tend to avoid doing what they have no interest in.

Try to remember the laws of nature, learning is biologically taxing. Human beings were really not made to be put in school for decades if we are honest with ourselves.

Re:Back in the old days

[Zontar The Mindless]

Humans were not made to live in houses, either. Get back in your fucking tree already. Nobody's stopping you.

Re:Back in the old days

[Hognoxious]

Some people might call that "self confidence", and yes it is directly proportional to success.

It can also get you into trouble. Yeah, of course I can fly this thing!

Re: Back in the old days

[Opportunist]

Not quite. TFA states that college graduates can't get jobs that a college graduate should get, conflating "college degree" with "being qualified".

Sadly, that isn't the case anymore.

Re:Back in the old days

[RogueyWon]

I'd say that in the UK at least, there's a twist on this.

Our graduate numbers have soared since the early 1990s, as a result of the policies of successive Governments (most notably the closure/rebranding of the vocational-focussed polytechnics and the Blairite policy of 50% of teens going to university). Alongside that, the average quality of graduate employment and the size of the average "graduate premium" on salaries has fallen sharply.

That said, when you look at the detail, the situation has changed a lot less than you might think. We have a very distinct hierarchy of universities here in the UK, with, I would say, even sharper differences than the whole Ivy League thing in the US produces. At the top of the pyramid you have Oxford and Cambridge, the elite of the elite. Then you have a small number of other "elite" universities (including several of the London ones). Then you have the traditional "red brick" universities; good, but not elite. Then you have the "new" universities and former polytechnics. It's also worth noting that the difficulty of degrees varies massively between those institutions. A BA from Oxford or Cambridge may require 15-20 hours of lectures or supervisions per week, a similar quantity of reading time, plus, depending on subject, an essay, piece of translation work, small coding task or other such exercise per week, as well as a more substantial piece of project work over the course of a term or a year. Fail the exams at the end of any year and they generally throw you out, unless you were seriously ill. At the "new" universities, on the other hand, there may be a couple of lectures per week, an essay or two per term and virtually unlimited resits on offer for exams.

When an employer looks at a CV, the expectation these days is indeed "degree by default". So the first thing said employer looks at is which university awarded the degree (the hierarchy of universities is pretty much imprinted in the minds of the British professional classes). The second thing is the subject the degree is in (anything with "Studies" in the name is taken as a bad sign).

Once you apply those filters, you can see that the impact on the employment prospects and salary increments of those going to university today who would have gone to university under the standards of 30 years ago have not actually fallen all that much (if at all, at the top level). The only difference is that with more people going to university, the grants system is effectively dead, so they are graduating with a lot of debt they wouldn't have had 30 years ago. That said, student loan repayment terms in the UK are exceptionally generous. Meanwhile, those who would not have been able to go to university 30 years ago, who go to the "new" universities, in most cases are gaining next to no benefit to their employability (and in some cases an outright disadvantage as they are competing with their peers who didn't go to university and have been in the workforce getting experience for 3 years), but are saddled with a similar level of debt.

Re: Back in the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Universities have been dumbed down

This I fully agree with. I've seen graduates who can't do basic arithmetic without a calculator much less the ability to apply their knowledge to a situation they have not specifically encountered before. I think it's because students are taught to pass tests instead of taught actual practical and applied knowledge.

What do you mean by basic arithmetic? Personally I consider basic arithmetic a convenient skill, but it's relatively meaningless in for example STEM jobs. Yes, there are cases where you can use it to do a quick check on results that they make sense, but you can just as well use a calculator if you're at your desk.

And really, while basic arithmetic is a practical skill, it's not very important anymore and it is rote learning. Algebra, calculus and logic actually stimulate thought, arithmetic really doesn't - it's a look-up table in your brain.

Re: Back in the old days

[Hognoxious]

Yeah. It's not like there are power sources other than electricity. Combustible vapours delivered via pipes? No way!

Re:Back in the old days

[rwiggers]

I really think there should exist a mod like "+1 disagree"...
Not exactly for the OP, but I ran across that multiple times. It's hard to hit insightful or informative because what's written is completely wrong according to my view, but brings important points for the debate. Even trolls could do that eventually...

Now, about the OP, he is mostly right, the bachelor degree is nowadays somewhat equivalent to the high school degree some 20 years back...

Re:Back in the old days

[Antique Geekmeister]

> If the co-op was done for free, it's exploitative.

Not necessarily. I've worked with unpaid interns whose job prospects and contacts in the field were vastly enhanced by direct experience. The interns were _in addition_ to their schoolwork, so benefits to the school were indirect: they weren't collecting tuition for the kids' work with us.

Re:Back in the old days

[Deagol]

Coprolites?

Re:Back in the old days

[pipingguy]

"It is almost impossible for an excellent person to continue excelling in a mediocre environment. It's much more likely they will become mediocre themselves."

I agree with that assertion, for the most part. Some of the problem we have today is that mediocre people have convinced themselves (or others have convinced them) that they are "excellent" (the "high self esteem"/"entitled"/"trophies for all!" generations, perhaps), and this type of person eventually somehow percolates up to a position of authority.

What's that old saying? An 'A' person tends to hire other 'A' people. 'B' people tend to hire 'C' people, 'C' people tend to...

Re: Back in the old days

[__aaclcg7560]

Comment by someone who never worked in a commercial kitchen. We had emergency lights to dimly illuminate our work areas for an hour, and gas-powered burners and steam tables to keep the food warm. A fully loaded line can serve food for 30 minutes. If power wasn't restored in 30 minutes, the restaurant would shut down.

Re: Back in the old days

[Gilgaron]

When I worked a restaurant we always closed for a power outage because of the health code. Besides which, you can't generally change the way semi-prepared restaurant food is cooked and have it turn out well.

Re:Back in the old days

[ILongForDarkness]

Not free and good (for student) salary, something like $25/hr. The way it is potentially exploitative though mutually beneficial too: my company insists on at least a 1 yr coop and 3rd or 4th year student. That typically means we are usually their last employer before graduating and often their only coop experience. I suspect when it comes time to hire them on full time that that kind of pegs their salary expectations somewhat low. Ie going from 25 -> $30/hr sounds like a good deal but is kind of low ball (in my experience anyways). The benefit to the student: they don't have to look for a new coop every 4mths and they have a high chance of getting an offer of a job afterwards. Might knock 10k off your starting salary but removes a lot of stress and the company is otherwise good (good benefits flexible hours, because we hire so many new grads all younger 20-30 somethings etc).

Re: Back in the old days

[Hognoxious]

So it's totally impossible to keep serving just a subset of the menu. You can do stuff on the gas grill that you'd normally do on the gas grill.

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

so benefits to the school were indirect: they weren't collecting tuition for the kids' work with us.

Did you ask them if they were paying tuition at the same time? Interns ae afraid to speak out because they don't want to be blackballed, but it's quite common..

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

As you pointed out, internships do lower the eventual salary for the intern holds true even for paid internships. Co-ops aren't necessary - the same experience can be gained working part-time, and there would be more paid part-time positions available if co-ops were removed from the curriculum. Since they're not in the classroom, why not just cut the time spent in a co-op off the credits necessary for graduation, and let the students make money instead of accumulating debt?

After all, 5 years later your co-op experience is worth nothing, your real work experience defines you.

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

Are you living under a rock? It's not exploitive, it's education. Students get real-world experience while the business gets free labor.

My alma mater requires that every degree has co-op time. Employers like that the graduates have real-world experience.

No, I do not live under a rock. People who do unpaid internships end up with almost no better odds getting a job than those who didn't do an internship, and their pay when they got a job was less.

It may make you less employable.

he National Association of Colleges and Employers recently conducted a survey that concluded that those who completed paid internships had an advantage over those who had unpaid internships. For starters, 63.1% of paid interns were offered a job after graduation, while only 37% of unpaid interns were offered a job. That figure is only slightly higher than the 35% who were offered a job with no internship experience at all.

It can result in a lower salary.

In that same survey, those who interned at a paying position reported earning more money as well. Paid interns reported earning a median salary of $51,930 at their first jobs. Graduates who did unpaid internships earned a median of $35,721, which is less than the $37,087 median salary for those who did no internship at all.

Obviously, if employers are paying more for people who haven't done unpaid internships, they see internships as just a supply of free labor, not worth anything when it comes time to that first paying job.

I wouldn't be surprised if students sue their universities, because the unpaid internship is discriminatory (people who can't afford to work for free are excluded). Unpaid internships didn't always exist ... they're just another way to get the equivalent of slave labor, without the responsibilities that a slave owner has towards their slaves even in biblical times.

Re:Back in the old days

[ILongForDarkness]

I went to Waterloo. The selling point was that your degree would take you about 8 months longer to get but during your coop you'd earn money and probably be pretty close to debt free when you graduated. The school would help you find positions (job boards only coops can apply to, counselors to help you (not sure what kind of counseling they could give as, pretty much by definition they are an expert in a field that you probably aren't looking to work in). They also pushed that you'd end up ahead because you'd have experience and might get hired by one of your coop placements.

I didn't go the coop route and did find it hard to find any sort of work requiring my skills till I was finished my 3rd year (then did RAs, TAs and such). But I guess that might be the same for coops since a lot of employers are like mine and don't want to waste time with someone that only has their first year done. Similarly getting a non-academic job in my field was hard for me too for about 8 months or so out of school but once I got one I haven't ever been unemployed since and typically if I want to change jobs have several competing options within a few weeks of looking. So I guess: coop forces you to look, gives you access to pool of jobs that the school is trying really hard to scale with the number of coop students and might mean you graduate with the "untested in the market" problem already dusted off of you.

Re: Back in the old days

[Gilgaron]

Not necessarily impossible, but not worth the effort on the business owner. You'd probably end up comping everything served due to wait times, versus just sending everyone home with some coupons and saving the supplies. Even assuming you were allowed to keep running the gas grill without air handlers, the work environment is probably going to also be below OSHA lighting requirements. The food warmers are going to be off, which the health inspector wouldn't like, and offering a subset of the menu is probably against your franchise license. The coolers are off but will hold temp if they aren't opened. Making change is really the least of the worries.

Re:Back in the old days

[Antique Geekmeister]

They were paying tuition for their _classes_. The internships were not part of their course work, and they did not receive grades. It was still very helpful on their transcripts, and good experience in the field.

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

Many of the students were required to continue paying tuition even if they were working for free the entire semester, as a requirement for getting course credit. See the link I posted above.

Re: Back in the old days

[toddestan]

I was in a Perkins that lost power once. Our breakfast was on the grill when it happened so we got our food, but no one behind us got theirs. We chatted a bit with the manager. The burners and grill were gas powered, but electronically controlled so when the power went out they all shut down. They did stay open though as they could still make change, but it was pretty much only bakery items at that point.

Re: Back in the old days

[toddestan]

Actually, I would say the opposite. Employers don't seem to care too much about hard science and math degrees. You may be smart and have a lot of knowledge, but they don't want to train you, so they only care about what skills and experience you have. So in terms of employment, you're better off with a degree like engineering that focus more on teaching you how to do things rather than high-level knowledge - at least at the bachelor's level. If you want to take that degree and pursue a masters or PhD in science and math then you'll find more jobs that want a scientist or mathematician. Or you could always teach too.

Re:Back in the old days

[Antique Geekmeister]

The link you mentioned does list some cases. The interns I worked with were _not_ abused this way.

Re:Back in the old days

[BarbaraHudson]

Neither is the one currently renting my spare bedroom, but it happens, it's unethical, and it needs to be stopped, especially since there are businesses that take on unpaid interns because they don't want to hire someone.

Re:Back in the old days

[Antique Geekmeister]

You're quite correct, such an internship is abusive. Someone interning at a "branding company" and being abused seems to be exactly the sort of life lesson that would be better learned in an internship than as a college graduate. But the experience for some students of "work free for a semester and get no classes, no income for it, and still pay tuition" sems to be an abuse by both the company providing the internship, and the school.

32 percent is a low?

[Fwipp]

I mean, if 32% were overqualified in '91, 40% really isn't *that* big of a swing. It's still alarmingly high, though.

Re:32 percent is a low?

[BarbaraHudson]

It's 25% more, whereas it would have been hoped that it would be 25% less as things evolve. 2 out of 5 graduates not being able to find jobs that their education was supposed to prepare them for is a huge waste of human potential.

Re:32 percent is a low?

[ranton]

It's 25% more, whereas it would have been hoped that it would be 25% less as things evolve.

Some may hope that but it would be fairly silly to expect the value of a degree to go up when more people are getting them. I would think it is obvious that the value of anything goes down the more common it becomes.

2 out of 5 graduates not being able to find jobs that their education was supposed to prepare them for is a huge waste of human potential.

Its only a waste compared to a fictional world where 100% of them find jobs that use their potential to its fullest. When compared to the more likely alternative, where they don't get a degree and simply have less total potential, it doesn't seem like a waste. I know I have been able to do a far above average job at the positions where I was overqualified for in the past. College may not be as good a deal as it was a couple decades ago, but it is still far better than the alternative for the vast majority of those who obtain them.

Re:32 percent is a low?

[CaptainLard]

low of 32 per cent, or less than one out of every three university graduates.

Whatever the percentage, it's good to know we're still qualified to verify the math in the summary! Suck it Vo-tech grads!

Re:32 percent is a low?

[BarbaraHudson]

I would think it is obvious that the value of anything goes down the more common it becomes.

And that's exactly what has happened - a degree ain't worth what it used to be ...

When compared to the more likely alternative, where they don't get a degree and simply have less total potential, it doesn't seem like a waste.

And yet, skipping the degree phase and starting out on the labor force immediately allows them to accumulate capital instead of debt. And we can't discount the value of an extra five years of experience. Between the glut, robots, and offshoring, it's only going to get worse

Re:32 percent is a low?

[angel'o'sphere]

I would think it is obvious that the value of anything goes down the more common it becomes.
Which is surprisingly wrong in all cases, where we are talking about kniwledge and special abilities, like martial arts or playing an instrument.
Sure, we can put a monetary value on my ability to teach martial arts, however most teachers on my level are no competition, as every teacher has his unique approach.
Also the rate with which new demand is created is much higher than the rate of growing 'competition'.
The mindset that everything has a monetary value and that this might decrease is just bollocks.

Then why all the Temporary foreign workers?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Then why all the Temporary foreign workers?

[Mashiki]

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?

In some cases yes, in others it's the company abusing the process to push the workers out so they can pay less in wages. This is happening here in Canada with Welders and Pipefitters who make in the $30-70 range depending on your location.

Re:Then why all the Temporary foreign workers?

[Kellamity]

Because university graduates need on the job training, but an imported worker comes to you custom picked for their experience? Why train a grad to be your next SAP developer when you can get one from India who already knows how to do it?

Re: Then why all the Temporary foreign workers?

[Kellamity]

Well I never said they were any good! They seem to be able to get jobs somehow though.

I spent most of my time as a graduate 'junior' developer debugging and re-writing garbage code that was churned out by our 'specialist' contractors who got paid more than me. Oh wait, I'm still having to do that...

Reading between the lines here...

[grasshoppa]

...does "overqualified" mean "has a degree but can't be trusted to change a lightbulb"?

Because ya. Holy hell, ya.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[mark-t]

No.

Overqualified typically means ones technical training and qualifications would rightfully be deserving of higher pay than the employer wants to spend.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[Thunderf00t]

Well, it could mean that: Those who can't be trusted to change a light bulb personally would undoubtedly perform well if given the opportunity to leverage efficiencies already in place like they probably did in college (get someone else to do it). The type of analysis used to reach that conclusion is exactly the type necessary to increase quarterly earnings per share, since such a person can excel in identifying run-rate synergies and the like. Given this person's potential, your light bulb work is surely beneath their analytic abilities, and they'd better serve your organization in a managerial capacity, preferably at the division level.

So, yeah, "overqualified" seems like it could apply.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overqualified on paper is different than truly overqualified. I recently had a position where I interviewed a lot of candidates, probably more than 100 in a year. Of those highly qualified (on paper) candidates, including PhDs, only about 3% were truly qualified for the technical jobs I had on offer and were properly described in the description. Most of those candidates that passed through the resume screening when questioned about their resume failed. If you're the lead architect for project xyz and oversaw the SOA, you should at least know what framework you chose, for instance.

AC because of moderations

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[sexconker]

So how's the job search going?
Have you been able to apply to any positions between customers complaining about the red cups?

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[drinkypoo]

Overqualified typically means ones technical training and qualifications would rightfully be deserving of higher pay than the employer wants to spend.

Which is only a problem because employers a> want to spend less than a job is rightfully worth and b> are willing to poach one another's employees.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[Oligonicella]

Ka-friggin-whoosh!

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[Nidi62]

...does "overqualified" mean "has a degree but can't be trusted to change a lightbulb"?

Because ya. Holy hell, ya.

Not exactly. I have an MA in International Relations, a BA in History (yes, I know, non-stem, I'm a clueless humanities major, etc, etc). However in high school I was in a science and tech Magnet school and took AP Bio, Genetics, and honors math courses. Almost went to Ga Tech to get a degree in biomedical engineering, but decided to do something different.

In any case, my first full-time job out of grad school was working cargo for a commercial airline for less than $13 an hour. The only reason I even got that job was I had been working for that company part time all throughout college and had built up seniority among part-timers. I was about ready to join the military because I couldn't find any other work but developed a chronic back injury that prevented me from doing so. Did that for about 1.5 years until the beginning of this year when I got a new position with the same company, for which I in part credit my graduate degree. So yes, it is perfectly possible for intelligent, skilled people to end up in a job well below what they are qualified and able to do.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[grasshoppa]

So yes, it is perfectly possible for intelligent, skilled people to end up in a job well below what they are qualified and able to do.

Not saying it's not. However, as you broached the topic, I would agree; it's entirely possible for someone to be employed well below what they're qualified for...for a short duration.

That doesn't seem to be what we're talking about here, however.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[angel'o'sphere]

That is not insightfull but wrong.
Overquallified means what the word implies. You have either more quallifications or more experience than the job actually requires.
I earn right now $77, you hardly find one who would do it cheaper (except you indeed can outsource it to India), perhaps I could have even streched the paymen to $100, no idea, did not really think about it when they asked me if I like the job.
I do about ten times the work my previous man did. And I have bottom line nothing much to do, 6h free time very often (during work times). Today was one rare exception where I worked 5,5h in a row without a break and _worked_

Actually I had no job the last 20 years where I was not overquallified. OTOH I have like 32 - 33 years expericence in IT/computing/programming.

So what is my above job worth? Depends how you look at it. If I had not worked there the last 2 month, the last rollout/going life had failed. So the company likely made millions with my help. However, bottom line I only worked 20% of that time. So actually they either could try to utilize me more, or try to cut my hours down to 20%. If they came to the idea to cut my paymemt, I would laugh and leave.

It is not my fault that the hire me and have not enough work for me. (And that is basically true for most of my friends ... we walk around in establishments with the hands clasped behind the back like a chinese general, to avoid facepalming every 15 meters)

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[mark-t]

You have either more quallifications or more experience than the job actually requires.

Which is different from what I said how, exactly? It is always the case that either an employer is willing to pay what your qualifications deserve or they are not. Being overqualified for a position only means that the employer isn't willing to pay you as much as your qualifications might deserve. This is not necessarily the employer always being cheap, because the job that they have available might genuinely not require the full extent of qualifications that you have, but that still always reduces to not wanting to pay what your qualifications deserve. If they *were* going to pay you what your qualifications deserved, then you wouldn't really be overqualified at all, because your qualifications would merit what they are willing to pay you.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[rastos1]

A fresh engineer gets a job in a factory. On first day the foreman hands him a broomstick and asks him: "Sweep the floor, from here to the other side of the hall." "But, ... but, ... I'm an engineer!" says the young man. The foreman sighs, and says: "Ok, give it here. I'll show you."

That's is what "overqualified" means.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[angel'o'sphere]

It is different in what you say and repeat here again: if I'm overqualified, that is my "problem". Not the issue of the boss giving out the job. It has nothing to do with money at all. It is a question of tasks and skills. If the tasks are super simple and my skills exceed those task why should the boss pay me more?
Your idea is the typical frensh and english attitude: I'm comming from ivy leage university X and by that alone I deserve more pay. No, you don't. You deserve the pay the job you do is worth paying. That is all.

Re:Reading between the lines here...

[mark-t]

It is different in what you say and repeat here again: if I'm overqualified, that is my "problem". Not the issue of the boss giving out the job. It has nothing to do with money at all. It is a question of tasks and skills. If the tasks are super simple and my skills exceed those task why should the boss pay me more?

He shouldn't, obviously... but that's what I'm saying... if somebody is overqualified, then the employer won't generally pay what the person is qualified for. This is entirely independent of whether or not they are paying fairly for the work the employer actually want done.

This

[NotQuiteReal]

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.

Re:This

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Re:This

[TWX]

There are more journalism graduates per year than there are journalism jobs in the totality of the profession.

I blame two things on creating this situation- a college degree requirement or strong preference where it does not actually contribute anything, and a glut of people going through programs in college to get any degree in order to satisfy the unnecessary requirements.

Now that there's a bubble in the number of those seeking college, colleges charge more for tuition. That in turn means students take on a greater debt-load or their families spend disproportionate money on something. Those that do not finish college or can't find the work that they trained for effectively wasted tens of thousands of dollars or more. It also means unscrupulous businesses operating as colleges can collect tuition money so long as they manage to squeak-by with their accreditation, and I'm not entirely certain that the ratio of enrollees-to-graduates factors into accreditation.

I think that we need stronger rules for accreditation and we need employers to stop pushing so damn hard for college-graduates for jobs that do not need them. We also need to be more realistic about the sizes of programs based on the actual growth of fields they train for and to put an end to churning out orders-of-magnitude more graduates than there are jobs. I'm looking at you, music schools, journalism schools, business schools, and your ilk.

Re:This

[gstoddart]

E.g. having a university degree is "overqualified" for a barista job.

Well, part of the problem is the economy has been changing.

Employment trends have been losing full-time jobs, and people have been moving to more and more part time jobs.

Because companies are downsizing and offshoring, and generally not hiring people with skills any more.

Essentially since 2008, economies have been cannibalizing themselves, and more and more jobs are getting crappier and crappier.

So, ask yourself why those people are working as baristas ... the answer is MBAs and CEOs have been carving the jobs out of the economy to turn it into "shareholder value" and "cost savings".

This has nothing to do with university acceptance policies, and everything to do with globalization gutting jobs and leaving very little skilled work domestically. Because we've been following the idiotic policies of cutting corporate taxes in the hopes they'll create jobs, and not tying to cuts to actually driving the economy instead of gutting it.

And the jobs which do exist are being driven down in value to 'temporary foreign workers'. We've given corporations everything they want, and in return they've fucked all of us.

Welcome to the New Fucking World Order, bitches. It's all downhill from here.

Re:This

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Or, it can mean that the only jobs available for most college grads are shitty jobs.

How in the world do you use the percentage of students who are overqualified for their first job as a measure of the value of an education instead of as a critique of the corporate workplace?

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have lied more then. No job I've ever had required me to provide proof that I graduated high school.

Re:This

[NotQuiteReal]

How many of these degrees look like they will lead to a job? To be sure there are many, that are good degrees, and if it weren't considered a microagression to point it out, most sane people can also point out those degrees that one should probably not go into debt to acquire. Or certainly not complain about it if that is one's choice.

Re:This

[__aaclcg7560]

The only job I ever got fired for was punching the boss's grandson because he was an idiot on the job. I'm not going to lie to get a job and then get fired for that.

Re:This

[khallow]

Essentially since 2008, economies have been cannibalizing themselves, and more and more jobs are getting crappier and crappier.

And yet China and India don't have this problem. Maybe you should ask yourself why, when you've gotten everything you've wanted for labor policy for the past century, that this problem exists in the first place.

Re:This

[__aaclcg7560]

California has a different set of rules about college enrollment via the community college system.

In California, you only need to be 18 years or older to attend a community college. A high school diploma is not required, though you may have to take remedial courses offered by the college and some majors, such as engineering, may require a GED before you can transfer to a four-year university

http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/pub10-NoHSDiplomaOptions.pdf

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

I have, just recently I was hit with the "We need you to provide proof of High School graduation." I handed them my transcripts and a copy of my PhD. There response was "Thats great but we still need a copy of your High School diploma or transcripts."

They had a fit when I told them I was home schooled through High School and there was no diploma to show them and no transcripts. The college took a signed affidavit and then placement tested me back 30 years ago. I have never been asked to provide proof before that job.

I guess with the interconnected information and extensive background checks that companies want, it was only a mater of time.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

I have, just recently I was hit with the "We need you to provide proof of High School graduation." I handed them my transcripts and a copy of my PhD. There response was "Thats great but we still need a copy of your High School diploma or transcripts."

They had a fit when I told them I was home schooled through High School and there was no diploma to show them and no transcripts. The college took a signed affidavit and then placement tested me back 30 years ago. I have never been asked to provide proof before that job.

I guess with the interconnected information and extensive background checks that companies want, it was only a mater of time.

What you ran into was proof that there are also many people who are under-qualified for their jobs.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

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'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.

I'm not skeptical of his claim.
You can go that route if your first year or two is at a community college - I taught classes in physics at one and many people had no GED or high school diploma. Refugees often have that problem.
We had a few like the two Russians who claim PhD's in physics and math (and seemed to know a lot) and no paperwork could be had. They just wanted a degree on paper from here so they could get a job. Also, their English was better than most of the students we had from here.
Plus, if someone showed a transcript written in Magyar, it could have been a page torn out of a newspaper for all we knew.
We tested the non GED/diploma people for initial placement.

We also had a steady flow of Asians with no paperwork that started in the ESL classes and moved up on from there.
One surprise to me was that many of them were peasants and dumb as dirt. All they really wanted to do was drink and have sex with anyone. No idea how they got over here; they probably didn't know either. So much for stereotypes.

Some four-year schools will take transfer students with the community college degree in lieu of GED etc. (especially for older students). Once you get in a 4-year, and if you're competent, your history doesn't matter.

Re:This

[Tablizer]

There are more journalism graduates per year than there are journalism jobs in the totality of the profession.

But journalists have skills that can be used in other areas, such as HR (interviews); research, such as marketing or competitive research; and business writing. Just because you don't get your target profession doesn't mean you can't use any of your major.

Re:This

[FlyHelicopters]

How old are you?

I'm in my 40s, if someone asked me to prove I graduated high school, I'm not even sure how I'd do that at this point.

In any case, if that was a requirement, for something from 25 years ago, then I'm not interested in working there, that is just silly.

Re:This

[FlyHelicopters]

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.

This is actually true... A GED can be done in an afternoon, you simply go take the test, and if you're not completely stupid, you'll pass.

Re:This

[lgw]

I actually had a company do a background check on my high school diploma. It was easy enough to provide them with details on the school, thanks to the internet. The school records (paper only, of course) had long been lost. The company hired me anyhow, as apparently that was an OK outcome, but it was still an odd thing to check. (In Cali, you can get a copy of any background check results if you find the right box to check - it's fascinating.)

Re:This

[Your.Master]

What sort of entry level employer ever gave a shit where you went to high school? I could have sprung fully formed from the head of zeus with my degree in hand for all any employer ever cared.

Re:This

[Hognoxious]

If journalism schools capped their enrolment even more tightly then they already do, then the cost of tuition would have to go up, or costs would have to be cut.

Or there could just be fewer courses. Why not have three good ones rather than two good, ten mediocre and four crap?

Re:This

[khallow]

For starters, the working conditions in India and China are mostly miserable.

India and China started from really bad starting positions. So it doesn't matter if working conditions are "mostly miserable". You completely miss the obvious change, that working conditions, their economies, their standards of living, etc are much better than they were around 1950. Why does your supposed problems exist for your country, but not for these countries?

Secondly, an entire political system that favours trickle down economics over meritocratic incentives.

Another place where you don't seem to be paying attention. What trickle down economics? What meritocratic incentives?

Neo liberalism has screwed us, not labour policy, you twat

Neo liberalism seems to be code for global trade which would have happened anyway. It has elevated many billions of people out of poverty.

Why are you willing to ignore evidence of vast, global improvements in peoples' lives? What's so compelling about this fake story that you peddle that you prefer it over reality?

Re:This

[Antique Geekmeister]

> What sort of entry level employer ever gave a shit where you went to high school?

The same employers who care about your last 3 employers. It provides a chance to check references, and make sure you weren't expelled with cause.

Re:This

[angel'o'sphere]

I'm not sure how much of your 'perception' of your economic situation is true, or FUD or simply your perception.
Are there statistics suporting your point of view?

In Europe the landscape of economics has not changed much the last 20 years. I really wonder why america should be so much worse (looking at all the comments on /. from recent years)

Corporate taxes are an issue ofc. Especially where big corporations do _legal_ tricks to move money into tax heavens. However the idea of 'modern corporate taxation' is that in the end the corporations are owned by people. And as soon as the money flows to the shareholders, the owners, that is taxed as income tax.

So the bigger problem seems to be that the super rich can do _legal tricks_ to, to pay very low taxes or none st all.

You simply have to face that the states are a money aristocraty ... you are ruled by the rich, no idea how that actually affects your employment markets.

Re:This

[ICA Jobguarantee]

Nowadays Employment goes down due to lack of confidence amongst students who wants jobs. So they need to be more focussed to regain their seats.

Re:This

[AmiMoJo]

The higher level of employee turnover has also made companies reluctant to invest in training and skills. If they knew most people would stick around they wouldn't mind taking on people without degrees and training them, but when the CEO's answer to a 3% dip in profits is layoffs and removing the free coffee, and wages are set as low as possible they have to assume everyone will see them as little more than a temporary gig. Training is either wasted in layoffs or just helps the employee get a rise by switching jobs (because paying people more after levelling them up would be ridiculous).

Re:This

[ortholattice]

So instead of spending a couple of hours taking the GED test to satisfy potential employers, you spent 3 years working at a lower paying job you hated? That doesn't seem very smart to me.

Re:This

[pauljlucas]

People finishing school might have fairly poor communication and maths skills, to the point where employers have to give them a lot of extra training.

Sounds like we should fix current high school then. High school's point is supposed to be making people ready for the world.

Re:This

[__aaclcg7560]

I didn't hate working in a restaurant, just the minimum wage pay. Three years as a backup cook in a hot kitchen gave me the endurance I would later need in my technical career. As a project lead I worked 40 hours straight without sleep and 10-hour days for 14, 21 or 28 days at a time.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

How old are you?

I'm in my 40s, if someone asked me to prove I graduated high school, I'm not even sure how I'd do that at this point.

In any case, if that was a requirement, for something from 25 years ago, then I'm not interested in working there, that is just silly.

I have a friend who had a similar thing happen during an interview, they were asking questions about high school which for her was at least 20 years ago by that time and she had a Masters already. To her it was a sign to end the interview rather than give those morons more of her time.

Re:This

[pnutjam]

That's too rational. You want people to be able to compare jobs? The whole point is to make it impossible to tell if your 15% raise will be more then eaten up by benefits when you change jobs. At least in the US, it's impossible to accurately compare two offers from different companies. Health insurance costs vary so significantly between companies in different industries or companies of different sizes.

Re:This

[KingOfBLASH]

I call bullshit. I also hated high school, and went to college instead. The college classes translated back to high school requirements, and I only needed to take the regents (state exam). And, after college level english / history / physics this was a joke, and I scored in the highest percentile.

While I would have liked to have skipped physics, it was a requirement I had to take, and they wouldn't let me into college unless I agreed to this weird course schedule

Re:This

[kilfarsnar]

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'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.

I know a guy who went straight from 8th grade to UCLA. So it can be done. I'm not sure what had to happen between the schools, but he never went to High School.

Re:This

[kilfarsnar]

having a university degree is "overqualified" for a barista job.

Not if you were a liberal arts major.

BURN! Hey wait, I have a Liberal Arts degree!

Re:This

[tehcyder]

They had a fit when I told them I was home schooled through High School and there was no diploma to show them

Don't you have to take exams in the US before you leave school then?

Maybe it's socialism or something, but here in the UK, everyone has to be able to prove what GCSEs (taken at 16) or A levels (at 18) they have.

Assuming there was something wrong with you and you were home-schooled, you'd still take the same exams.

Re:This

[tehcyder]

How old are you?

I'm in my 40s, if someone asked me to prove I graduated high school, I'm not even sure how I'd do that at this point.

In any case, if that was a requirement, for something from 25 years ago, then I'm not interested in working there, that is just silly.

You might need a job requiring security clearance, which will go back over your whole adult life.

Re:This

[tehcyder]

How many of these degrees look like they will lead to a job? To be sure there are many, that are good degrees, and if it weren't considered a microagression to point it out, most sane people can also point out those degrees that one should probably not go into debt to acquire. Or certainly not complain about it if that is one's choice.

For fuck's sake, university is not supposed to be a job training programme. People who graduate in Medieval fine art, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian philosophy or whatever do not expect to be working in those fields once they leave college, except for the few who go into academia.

If this seems hard to understand, consider someone who does a degree in Pure Maths or Theoretical Physics: they are just as likely to end up as a lawyer or banker as any sort of scientist.

Re:This

[Jakune]

Been there, done that... however spent my time as a dishwasher in high school (to pay for my paintball addiction). Granted I think my time in college better prepared me for the long hours style of work (ahhh, fond-ish memories).

Re:This

[oakgrove]

Half of those "degree programs" look like hobbies.

Re:This

[khallow]

And where did you suppose the US was off loading its workforce?

They "offloaded" several times more work than the US's total workforce.

I submit that having a population pissed that they can't get decent liveable jobs is preferable to slave labour in the face of no labour policy. That way, at least the greedy will cut their own throats with the peoples hand in a more timely fashion.

And I would disagree because ultimately the latter "slave labour" get paid more, have a better standard of living, and more freedom. This is all about how developed world labor competes with the rest of the world.

Developed world standard of living will decline somewhat, no matter how much a pissed off population wriggles on the hook because it simply is several times more expensive. But it is just not that hard to create systems and regulations that make the problem worse rather than better y making that labor even more expensive or lessening demand for that labor.

And why would the "greedy" be cutting their throat when they can move somewhere else out of reach of a clueless but enraged public?

Re:This

[Archangel Michael]

we need employers to stop pushing so damn hard for college-graduates for jobs that do not need them.

Your focus is wrong. The reason why employers want college degree, is that too many high school graduates can't function in a minimum wage job because they can't read or do math. The problem is that we want kids to graduate through high school, to the point where you can get passed along from grade to grade without actually mastering grade level proficiency.

The problem with "Failure is not an option" is that eventually everyone passes, regardless of proficiency. See, no failures! Everyone gets a "participation" trophy (High School Diploma), making it meaningless. At least college makes people actually pass classes to get a degree.

This is why Employers require college degrees. The requirement of having a minimum set of skills is met with a college degree, not with a High School Diploma.

Re:This

[ADRA]

There are only so many jobs, and despite popular belief, jobs don't just materialize when there's a qualified applicant to fill it. If you're career is in-demand, then you're a rock star but for people who sadly chose careers have too many applicants, you're not getting employed unless you're the exceptional candidate (or at least know someone on the inside).

Universities in Canada are moderately cheap (compared to US equivalents), largely open in terms of enrolment in dead-end programs, and taxpayer subsidized. The last two point are the contentious point for me. IMHO, we should certainly allow anyone into the courses they want to take, and we should be subsidizing education, because its a net benefit to society even in its currently inefficient state, but I'd say we should only be subsidizing N students yearly which can realistically eventually get a job in their fields. This numeric 'cap' can vary wildly from industry to industry, but ultimately if you're an scores are well below the average student in a program over-producing, that subsidy/(even loans?) go away and it should put the cost of almost inevitable failure in front of the student while they have a chance to change careers instead of years after with 10s of thousands of dollars in debt.

Re:This

[orgelspieler]

I've never really understood that either. I have a buddy with security clearance. The FBI interviews me every so often about him. It's always the same stupid questions. The funny thing is, I only see him a few times a year, since we live in different towns. So he could be a complete lunatic 90% of the time, and I'd never know it.

Re:This

[orgelspieler]

Assuming there was something wrong with you and you were home-schooled, you'd still take the same exams.

I don't understand your meaning. In the UK is there normally something wrong with home-schooled kids?

Re:This

[orgelspieler]

One surprise to me was that many of them were peasants and dumb as dirt. All they really wanted to do was drink and have sex with anyone. No idea how they got over here; they probably didn't know either. So much for stereotypes.

I guess the best way to combat stereotypes is with a new, funnier stereotype!

Re:This

[scamper_22]

The problem is that it has a lot to do with universities.

Are CEOs and other corporations cutting workers or using foreign labor? Yes.

But universities and the education industry are also culprits encouraging the excess education deserves more money.

Just ask yourself this one question.
Should a person with a master's degree be paid more than someone with a high school education?

I don't see any reason that should be the case except that the person with a master's degree has some talent/skills that allow them to do a job that a person with a high school education cannot.

It might generally work out that way. But there is no intrinsic reason.

We really don't need so many educated people. Note I said need, as in job. It's great for people to be generally educated, but they are no more deserving of a job or more money. My brother-in-law is a prime example of the product of this mindset. He's not the brightest kid, but took political science and wants to write public policy. He's having a hard time finding such a job.

There even a lot of education inflation. A lot of professions from nurses to teachers now need a bachelor degree and often post grad work. Are these teachers any better than the ones I had? I don't see the evidence for it? But they manage to negotiate in their contract that a master degree gets you more money or whatever.

All this does is drive students into more student debt and time, while providing little value to society.

Yes, corporations are a problem, but the education industry is also a problem.

Re:This

[__aaclcg7560]

I had no control over the schedule for that project and got it done right the first time. Tits.

Re:This

[FlyHelicopters]

That may well be true, but do you honestly think the FBI is going to require 25 year old proof of a high school diploma?

If I have a Masters Degree in CS, does my HS diploma matter?

Re:This

[erapert]

Employment trends have been losing full-time jobs, and people have been moving to more and more part time jobs.
Because companies are downsizing and offshoring, and generally not hiring people with skills any more.

I got an idea! Let's tax the businesses more and then give that money to people that don't work. And while we're at it let's raise the minimum wage to an insane level because people who don't pull their own weight should be guaranteed a widescreen TV and fast internet connection just like people that are actually productive.

There. That should fix everything. Oh wait, I forgot about free education. We should add that on, too.

Re:This

[khallow]

Let's look at actual "throat cutting".

The report says just twelve countries (the USA, Germany, Canada, China, Brazil, France, Mexico, India, the UK, Spain and Australia) account for 90 per cent of US multinationals' âoemissingâ profits.

Those profits get processed through various implementations of the âoeIrish-Dutch sandwichâ to be booked in low-tax countries like the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Bermuda.

If the numbers are accurate (the report's authors put a number of caveats on the data), then between $500 and $700 billion gets shuffled around in this way, which is how Bermuda found itself home to $80 billion worth of profits in 2012 (its GDP in the same year was a paltry $5.47 billion).

That's a fair bit of neck that's not getting slit and a fair bit of impotent rage in comments for any tear collectors out there. I also see from a link in the discussions that this may be the tip of a very large iceberg.

A new report finds that around the world the extremely wealthy have accumulated at least $21 trillion in secretive offshore accounts. Thatâ(TM)s a sum equal to the gross domestic products of the United States and Japan added together.

But sure, lecture on how the rich will get their throats slit when they and their wealth are out of reach.

Re:This

[david_thornley]

I have no idea where my high school diploma got to, and the high school is gone. There is no high school any more in that part of the city. I suppose I could ask the school district if they have the records from over 40 years ago.

Re:This

[toddestan]

I know a guy who did. He went to a community college for his final year of high school. Didn't complete the requirements to graduate high school and get his diploma. However, since he was already in the community college's system, he could still sign up for classes so stayed there and completed his associates degree. He then took that degree and transferred to a four year college and they never questioned his lack of a high school diploma or GED.

Re:This

[khallow]

All I need to show was how a non-zero amount of necks could be slit. I did that. Having to give one of your 50 vacation villas is still a loss.

The use of these terms does not imply a minor financial setback. Words have meaning. I think it's a retarded argument to say that you'll do all sorts of terrible things to the greedy rich and then we find out that your idea of terrible things is to burn down their summer mansion or a factory that they had written off a decade ago, and then say bad things about them.

But they're still rich and you're still poor.

My argument remains unchanged. A class war against the imaginary "greedy" and the mobile rich is just going to turn the hole you're in into a grave. In the end, you'll still have that lower standard of living. It's time to make choices that work in the long run.

Re:This

[RespekMyAthorati]

People who graduate in Medieval fine art, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian philosophy or whatever do not expect to be working in those fields once they leave college, except for the few who go into academia.

And the ones that don't get into academia wind up as debt-laden baristas.

consider someone who does a degree in Pure Maths or Theoretical Physics: they are just as likely to end up as a lawyer or banker as any sort of scientist.

Beats a barista.

Re:This

[Whorhay]

I think tuition costs have sky rocketed because the Fed has gotten too lenient in their lending policies for education. As more and more students are able to take out large loans to pay for a degree the schools simply charge more and more. It's a pretty basic capitalist principle that you find a price that maximizes your profits by selling all of the product you can at the highest price the market will bear. So long as the Fed keeps pumping more money into the economy ear marked for college degrees, colleges will keep raising tuition to capture as much of that money as possible.

Restricting how many students a college can take on for any given degree path reeks to me of strong central planning. Especially when you realize that a college degree isn't specialized job training, it is purely an educational thing. Do we really, as a society, want to say who may and may not learn about whatever subject because there simply aren't enough job openings in that field?

Re:This

[Bengie]

I was home schooled in the USA, and there are accredited home schooling programs. They can graduate you. School is mostly a waste of time. I wish I could have just gone strait to college, but I thought college was difficult because of how people talk it all up. Turns out it's easy, just a lot of people seem to have issues with it.

Re:This

[Frosty Piss]

When I underwent my security clearance investigation, the FBI guys was most definatly interested in what I had to say about my bona fides. Of course he already knew the answers even if I had long forgotten.

Instant Gratification Error On Line 3487

[Tablizer]

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.

Marginal students do not benefit from college

[TheSync]

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."

Re:The obvious answer

[ILongForDarkness]

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.

What kind of degrees are we talking about?

[fustakrakich]

Underwater basket weaving? Well, that would be okay if it taught my relief to show up on time...

It's the corporations stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Causation & correlation

[Billly Gates]

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

Missing information...

[Idarubicin]

... 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?

Re:Missing information...

[BarbaraHudson]

If 40% of those university graduates are still overqualified by their mid-thirties, they've already been typecast by their experience in the 25-35 range.

Re:Missing information...

[Idarubicin]

If 40% of those university graduates are still overqualified by their mid-thirties, they've already been typecast by their experience in the 25-35 range.

That's certainly a problem with the data provided--it bundles together the fresh-out-of-school 25-year-olds with the decade-plus-in-the-workforce 34-year-olds. There's a lack of resolution. It could be that 40% of 25-year-olds and 40% of 34-year-olds are "overqualified". Or it could be that 60% in the 25-29 age group are overqualified, and just 20% of the 30-34 bracket.

Actually, that brings to mind another confounder to the interpretation of these data. As more young people get more years of formal education (3-year college diploma to 4- or 5-year bachelor's degree to 7-year bachelor-plus-master's degree) they enter the workforce later. A 25-year-old with a high school diploma might have been working for 7 years (and is also more likely to be working in a job for which they are not "overqualified" by their lower level of formal educational attainment). A 25-year-old with a master's degree might have graduated this summer and could still be job-hunting.

The value isn't declining

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:The value isn't declining

[laserhead]

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.

Who will be benefit from that protection: a small amount of workers, union leaders, and politicians. Who will be harmed: American consumers, poor suckers from 3rd world (Yes, born outside US is your fault, sucker!)

Re:The value isn't declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Protecting the working class does not help, in fact, it creates a very similar problem.
I come from the socialist kingdom of Norway, where the working class has gained so many benefits, that we are no longer competitive on the global market. It is simply too expensive to run a company here.

Re:The value isn't declining

[gl4ss]

sure it is declining.

look for the price of university education in USA now vs. say 1980. in 1980 the university education would allow you to buy a mcMansion, now you can buy the mcMansion for the price you could save by not paying the stupid tuition fees and working mcdonalds for the 4 years from your mothers basement.

Re:The value isn't declining

[pipingguy]

Are you implying that the US has "swung right" under eight years of Obama?

Uh... no

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:Uh... no

[liquid_schwartz]

... after all there are less than 100k H1Bs and on other hand there are 121M citizens 25 years and over with no college degree...

There are many more than 100k H1B visa holders. I looked online and found an article on how both the bad number of ~65k came to be as well as more accurate numbers:

http://cis.org/estimating-h1b-population-2-11

... These issues are caused by moving almost all manufacturing offshore. ...

"Free trade", which today means move all jobs overseas while not letting us buy cheap drugs overseas and with little to no tariffs on the imports from regions with lower environmental or worker standards, is definitely the nail in the middle class coffin. Remember that only 3 candidates are against this - vote Sanders or Trump or Paul (if Paul can actually stay in and get that far). The other Republican candidates are all for free trade and the Clinton's gave us a huge middle class reduction via NAFTA and giving China MFN status.

Citations: http://www.history.com/this-da...

http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N27/c...

Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[__aaclcg7560]

What did anyone think would happen if we produced more degrees without insuring there would be demand for them ?

They were the lucky one who won the lottery and everyone else was screwed. It's the American way.

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[binarstu]

Then you have depressed pricing for the labor of people who earned a degree.

The cynic in me wonders if that was the intent from the very beginning: Create a narrative that "everyone needs to go to college", create loan programs so that just about anyone can go (and rack up massive debt in the process), then sit back and watch as the value of having a college degree, and the wages of workers with degrees, both decline. At the very least, that is surely not a disappointing outcome for wealthy business owners, CEOs, etc.

A cynic might also wonder if that is the intention of all of the recent "everyone needs to learn how to code" initiatives, too.

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[binarstu]

not a cynic, a conspiracy theorist.

I don't think you understand what those terms mean. It is a fact that wealthy tech business leaders (Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.) are funding and lobbying for "everyone needs to code" initiatives. There is no question of whether or not those people are "conspiring" to push these initiatives; it is a well-publicized fact that they are. They only question is what their motivation might be. A cynical viewpoint is that their primary motivation is to flood the market with a glut of "coders" in an effort to drive down wages and increase profits (as many other slashdotters have also speculated), hence my original comment.

To review: "Conspiracy theorists" question which individuals or groups are behind a series of events. Cynics question the motives behind peoples' actions and usually believe that they are motivated by greed.

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[pipingguy]

"Simplified tuition aid was mostly a handout to universities not students."

And caused hugely inflated university administrations. And idiots screaming for "safe spaces" due to "micro-aggressions".

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[fluffernutter]

"A cynical viewpoint is that their primary motivation is to flood the market with a glut of "coders" in an effort to drive down wages and increase profits"

You are asking us to believe that they actually care about this cause?

Re:Cause meet effect, effect say hello to cause

[binarstu]

You are asking us to believe that they actually care about this cause?

I'm not sure I understand your question. I am suggesting that they might be primarily motivated by increasing their own profits, and that creating an excess supply of coders is a means to that end. What "cause" are you referring to?

Because it's Canada

[kamapuaa]

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.

Re:Because it's Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

As of 2012 the Canadian GDP worked out by percentage of the total GDP per industry was something like this:

12.34 Real estate and rental and leasing
10.86 Manufacturing
07.96 Mining quarrying and oil or gas extraction
07.03 Health care and social assistance
06.90 Public administration
06.55 Finance and insurance
05.41 Wholesale trade
05.41 Retail trade
05.38 Educational services
05.21 Professional scientific and technical services
04.20 Transportation and warehousing
03.31 Information and cultural industries
02.58 Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services
02.46 Utilities
02.10 Accommodation and food services
02.04 Other services (except public administration)
01.59 Agriculture forestry fishing and hunting ...

Add up all the primary resource extraction and you don't have a whole awful lot. Not a trivial amount, sure, but it's hardly definitive. Canada has plenty of primary resources, but so do a lot of countries. Canada stands out among most resource-rich nations in that the resource-richness isn't really the primary business if you look at the money - if it were then Canada wouldn't be a top 20 most developed nation.

Re:Because it's Canada

[TheSync]

If you look at the list of largest companies in Canada, it is true that a huge number of them are resource-oriented. Of course all the big banks are on the list. Bombardier is #42, and Rogers & Shaw cable, and Telus are there as well.

Blame H1-B's?

[kheldan]

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!

Re:Blame H1-B's?

[Anonymous Coward]

"MEMO TO CORPORATE AMERICA: Stop shitting on our citizens!"

Memo to the average working stiff, learn some history. Everything you took for granted had to be fought for against the capitalists, now that they have no counter weight politically they are just nakedly exploiting you all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

Re:Blame H1-B's?

[fluffernutter]

Really? Because every time I say something that would go against capitalists, I get dismissed as a communist. I immediately want to rob people of their hard earned wealth, as if there is no other way redistribution can happen over time.

Re:Type of degree important?

[BarbaraHudson]

If you click on the last link, you'd have read that the following fields are the worst:

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.

Don't overspecialize

[hambone142]

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.

Re:The obvious answer

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Diplomas are all but worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's the work experience

[RazorJ_2000]

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.

Re:It's the work experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop complaining that the kids don't have business experience. They have an education. It's up to employers to give them business experience. You are what is wrong with corporate America/Canada

Degrees in What

[Pete Venkman]

Not all degrees are created equal.

Inefficient

[Dega704]

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.

Re:Inefficient

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are correct about the worth of certifications, I'd bet you started during the dotcom boom or slightly afterwards. At that time anybody with an MCSE or MCP or whatever it was back then could get a programming/networking gig. Today it's a different story. It's become institutionalized and bureacratized and in a scenario like that the barriers to entry are artificial raised because in truth most of the jobs are bullshit to begin with and nobody wants anyone to realize the emperor has no clothes.

Re:Inefficient

[Dega704]

Not a bad guess, but wrong. I got most of my certifications in 2012 or later. I got my first sysadmin job in 2013. My current job I started just over a year ago, and fortunately is a new enough company that they leave aside most of the bullshit and grill candidates with brain teasers and actual technical questions. There was once a time when I pursued MS certifications, but decided I didn't enjoy working on Windows systems; and Linux is now a much more valuable skill to have anyway.

Q: Then why all the Temporary foreign workers?

[Tablizer]

A: Lobbyists

In what way "overqualified"

[SuperKendall]

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.

What is higher education?

[Atmchicago]

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.

Re:What is higher education?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.'

Re:What is higher education?

[binarstu]

Well said. I wish I could mod your comment up.

Re:What is higher education?

[binarstu]

Well said. I wish I could mod up your comment.

The lack of will to think

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Re: The lack of will to think

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite interesting really. Personally I believe that developed countries standard of education has fallen compared to past generations but the kids are willing to learn on average whereas the will to learn in developing countries is spotty - I've come across some grads who are keen as mustard and very smart from China and India - but the vast majority of them actually are lazy and you can tell surely never truely studied.

Here in Australia if you're a foreign student you can buy your way through school, and they don't teach you much anymore for that priveliege.

Re:The lack of will to think

[parkinglot777]

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

Do you really believe that college kids from 3rd world countries and getting education in their countries are really that eagerness to try out new stuff? I don't see it in the country I am from and those that are from countries around mine. If they can afford to go to a college especially nowadays, it is because most of them or their parents have got enough wealth to keep them in school. Only a few percentage would be able to attend with scholarship. There is NO real financial aid system that is similar to the US, and there is no grant. Scholarships are a few for only those in the really top.

I am still not sure what you mean by "try out new stuff" because what I have been seen (and now it is worse) is that they simply buy/try new stuff that they can't really afford but rather to show off that they have new stuff...

Re:The lack of will to think

[bingoUV]

Ok, but in 2 largest countries India and China - quality education especially in STEM is simply not too expensive. Access to it depends less on money and more on luck, performance tough entrance examinations and not dropping out of college due to stupidity.

So while scholarships are not as good and not as available as in the US, most of them don't need the scholarships.

Re:The lack of will to think

[pnutjam]

That comment is just there for a future H1B argument.

Re:The obvious answer

[kelemvor4]

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?

There is no puppet master.

[Brannon]

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.

Did you try telling them to get off your lawn?

[Brannon]

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.

Re:Did you try telling them to get off your lawn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet, somehow, the world has steadily improved. Try stepping out of your own personal anecdotal experience once in awhile.

Ah, I'm not sure "steadily" is the word you should be using. Improved? Yes. Steadily? Eh.

Given the number of civilizations that have utterly collapsed, history suggests that some generations were actually *correct* when they said their successors weren't up to the task.

Not really accurate

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Not really accurate

[david_thornley]

Degrees that society doesn't need? Universities are not job training programs, and subjects that are not of immediate use can be vital at some point down the road. You hire a bunch of people who know only what you think important, you're asking to be blindsided. Also, MBAs and law degrees are not easy to get.

Not H1Bs

[Tony Isaac]

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.

Wrong, maybe, sure, and kind of.

[s.petry]

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.

Re:Wrong, maybe, sure, and kind of.

[Opportunist]

Yes, we should send everyone to college. Or, more to the point, everyone should have the right and means to go to college. Meaning that the cost must not be the limiting factor to entering college. Or can you explain to me why your parents' wallet should be the deciding factor of whether or not you should be allowed to get an education?

But we should not carry everyone through it. College should offer to everyone, but handing out degrees for free is not leveling the field, it just ups the ante. Because that now means that people have to get additional, "real" qualification (which in turn again costs a LOAD of money) to distinguish themselves from the rest. Because HR ain't dumb either, they quickly catch on if a degree is nothing more than a worthless sheet of paper.

Re:Wrong, maybe, sure, and kind of.

[s.petry]

You seem to lack comprehension of past tense. If you had such comprehension you would realize that your argument is fallacious.

Re:Wrong, maybe, sure, and kind of.

[david_thornley]

Why do have such a low opinion of government-controlled education? It succeeded admirably in raising things like literacy rates.

Paper Mills

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Paper Mills

[Opportunist]

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.

Unskilled work.

[sethstorm]

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.

Re:Unskilled work.

[lgw]

You're thinking of construction gruntwork (largely replaced by equipment these days), not the skilled trades. There are strict licensing and apprenticeship requirements that limit supply (and also make it hard to get started, of course). The jobs pay well enough, but you do need to be a bit entrepreneurial to keep doing it as you age. If you can get past a "1 truck company", however, you'll earn a fantastic living in middle age.

Re:Unskilled work.

[sethstorm]

That's how they get treated.

Re:Unskilled work.

[lgw]

Oh? Try treating your plumber like shit, and see who gets the shit at the end of the day. No one tells an electrician how to do his job (except perhaps a more senior electrician), unlike my job where every manager, PM, and random passerby thinks I need to follow their coding advice.

Re:Unskilled work.

[cwsumner]

That's how they get treated.

Some uneducated rich people talk about Tradesmen as if they were monkeys or something. But that is just an insecure ignorant person trying to make others think they have some status. And perhaps some just repeating what they have heard.

The truth is that the "Working people" are usually smarter and often more educated than the management types. And more entrepreneurial, often having their own businesses. How many low level managers would know how to start their own business?

DARVO, Economics Edition

[sethstorm]

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.

Using sports terms doesnt help you.

[sethstorm]

Then make it a Royal PITA to not run a company there.

Except that it really is them & so much more.

[sethstorm]

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.

How about killing off the H1-b's first?

[sethstorm]

Before asking for a second tier semiskilled specialty, perhaps one might look at removing avenues to avoid hiring citizens.

Re:How about killing off the H1-b's first?

[WindBourne]

While I am a huge fan of killing off H1B, as well as L1B, what does that have to do with North American degrees or vocational school?

Dr. Trucker, I presume

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The obvious answer

[Hognoxious]

Of course you count, just like Italy counted in WW2.

serviscope_minor us up on blocks today

[Hognoxious]

One is one too many!

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[Opportunist]

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.

It's about time.

[Qbertino]

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.

Re:It's about time.

[david_thornley]

I can virtually guarantee that, since your education was on the street, you have missed out on subjects that are likely to be very useful sometime.

Up the ante, another round of certifications!

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Engineering FTW

[Opportunist]

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.

Why would such a person aim for an engineering degree anyway? They're obviously far better suited for management and the pay is even better there!

Re:There's a simpler problem here.

[TheRaven64]

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.

This is the second comment I've seen along this line in the thread. Isn't this the job of school careers advisors, before the child applies to universities?

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[jellomizer]

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.

Overqualified?

[AntronArgaiv]

I thought the reason we were forced to resort to H1B workers was because we didn't have enough qualified applicants.

Value goes up, not down.

[DirkDaring]

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.

Re:Value goes up, not down.

[frank_adrian314159]

It's not a win-win for the employer. Overqualified people tend to leave once they find a job they're actually qualified for. Along the way, they tend to complain about the "shit jobs" they're in. Hiring overqualified individuals doesn't usually work out very well.

Overqualified is code for...

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[Whatanut]

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.

tech & trade schools need to be unliked from d

[Joe_Dragon]

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

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Re:Type of degree important?

[pipingguy]

"Those are the fields you should shoot for."

"But math is hard."
-Barbie

Re:The obvious answer

[ILongForDarkness]

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.

Sweeping generalization

[RogueWarrior65]

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.

Re:Type of degree important?

[BarbaraHudson]

"Those are the fields you should shoot for."
"But math is hard."
-Barbie

Ouch! :-)

College used to be a place for the rich kids to go

[Joe_Dragon]

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)

Re:The obvious answer

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Cheap airfair is the good befit of working for the

[Joe_Dragon]

Cheap airfare is the good befit of working for the airline.

ibm's watson is going after some of the college jo

[Joe_Dragon]

ibm's watson is going after some of the college jobs as well.

hand them out for free today??? no we debt load pe

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Re:There's a simpler problem here.

[mrchaotica]

Having more kids going on to college looks better for the high school, so high-school guidance counselors might be motivated to recommend crap college degrees (instead of useful vocational training) to marginal students.

Any time you ask somebody for advice, you should first determine how and why they're getting paid. This applies to the retirement adviser at work (who is really a mutual fund -- or worse, annuity -- salesman), the real estate "buyer's agent" (who really just cares about getting the deal done, even at the expense of the buyer's best interests), the doctor (who prescribes the drugs whose manufacturers give him the best kickbacks), and everyone else, too.

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[fyngyrz]

Well said.

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[jellomizer]

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.
   

GED

[fyngyrz]

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.

Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[wardrich86]

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?

Re:Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[david_thornley]

For one thing, to make sure you learn it, rather than slack off. For another, to tell you what you need to learn. For a third, so that you have some people almost immediately available when you get stuck on something.

Re:Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[wardrich86]

I found in my course it was at least 5-10 years out of date. Maybe I've just got a poor scope on what postsecondary is all about because of this, but everything I learned I could have just gotten myself out of the books, and if I ever got stuck I could have just hopped on a forum and found an answer that way.

Re:Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[david_thornley]

What was at least 5-10 years out of date? Programming? Algorithmic analysis? Data structures? Functional programming? It matters.

My son took one semester where they were teaching him C++, and the book was about 20 years out of date in its approach. On the other hand, he's learned a whole lot of things he would not have learned elsewhere.

Re:Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[wardrich86]

Programming. 4 semesters of COBOL about 10 years ago. No talk of Ruby, JQuery, Python was briefly mentioned. It also had a lot of business management courses attached to it as well. I just wanted to be a code monkey. I don't care about business law, HR, or project management.

Re:Why do we even have a demand for diplomas?

[david_thornley]

You appear to have been in a Management Information Systems program not a Computer Science or Software Engineering one. They're different things where I went (actually Software Engineering is part of Computer Science), and MIS is part of the business school. I hope they at least taught you about CICS and the rest of the IBM acronyms.

I can believe it

[erp_consultant]

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.

Sports

[fluffernutter]

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.

Re:Change of Companies

[fluffernutter]

Some schools have co-operative work programs. I actually was lucky to get paid for mine. But only the top students were taken into the program, many got rejected. And really that was only a year of experience broken up into terms.

Re:Except that it really is them & so much mor

[Tony Isaac]

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.

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[david_thornley]

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.

Re:tech & trade schools need to be unliked fro

[david_thornley]

Did you learn to write from a technical or trade school?

Re:Does not mean they are as good as their qualifi

[jewens]

What you get out of a school is equlivlant to what you put into it.

So you are saying it is like a sewer.

Re: The obvious answer

[BarbaraHudson]

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?

Re:There's a simpler problem here.

[toddestan]

My high school advisers basically said something along the lines of "Don't worry if you don't know what you want to major in at college. Many people don't know either, and most of the ones who think they know will change their major anyway, so just take a bunch of generals and worry about later." Which may or may not actually be good advice, depending on what major you end up picking, as some majors have a large course-load that you require you start on it immediately for your freshman year (such as engineering) if you want to graduate in a reasonable time frame. But then again those aren't likely the kind of majors that will land you a job as a high school career adviser...

What was generally interesting was that the assumption that everyone was going to a four year university. If you didn't know what you wanted to do after you graduated, they would tell you to go to college and jump right to helping you pick out a university to attend. Very little was said about other options like vocational schools, community colleges, joining the military, entering the workforce, etc. Options that would have suited a lot of my classmates better than going to university for no other reason that everyone telling that that's what they should do.

Re:College used to be a place for the rich kids to

[teslabox]

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

Overqualified is code for "Excuse to import"

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Re:Type of degree important?

[BarbaraHudson]

I'm going to call bullshit. 40% of job postings are asking for a Business degree.

How many of those jobs are multiple postings from various recruiters all trying to get someone for the same employer? Job listings mean zilch.

And of course, [citation needed] wrt 40% of job postings are asking for a business degree. Maybe 40% on a specific site, but there's more than one site.

Overqualified says good...

[niftymitch]

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.