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Canadian Millennials Struggle As College Degrees Don't Guarantee Jobs (www.cbc.ca)
"CBC News is reporting on how millennials are finding that education only guarantees debt, not a stable job. Not even in STEM," writes Slashdot reader BarbaraHudson, adding "The irony -- one of the teachers touting the values of further education is herself part of the gig economy." An anonymous reader summarizes the article, which reports that 33% of the engineers in Ontario are now underemployed.
"I actually thought that coming out of school I would be a commodity and someone would want me," said one 21-year-old mechanical engineering graduate. "But instead, I got hit with a wall of being not wanted whatsoever in the industry." He's applied for 250 engineering jobs, resulting in four interviews, but no job offer, and he's since broadened his job search to the deli counter at the local grocery store, because "It's a job."
"More than 12% of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed," reports CBC News, "and more than a quarter are underemployed, meaning they have degrees but end up in jobs that don't require them. The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show that the unemployment rate for 15-to-24-year-olds is almost twice that of the general population... A 2014 Canadian Teachers' Federation report found nearly a quarter of Canada's youth are either unemployed, working less than they want or have given up looking for work entirely."
The article also points out that the number of students enrolled in Canadian universities has more than doubled since 1980, from 800,000 to over two million.
"More than 12% of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed," reports CBC News, "and more than a quarter are underemployed, meaning they have degrees but end up in jobs that don't require them. The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show that the unemployment rate for 15-to-24-year-olds is almost twice that of the general population... A 2014 Canadian Teachers' Federation report found nearly a quarter of Canada's youth are either unemployed, working less than they want or have given up looking for work entirely."
The article also points out that the number of students enrolled in Canadian universities has more than doubled since 1980, from 800,000 to over two million.
The boomers say: "Sorry, eh".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It may be what schools sell, even the public colleges, but a degree has never guaranteed a job. Surprise!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Sandro Perruzza, the chief executive officer at the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE), is familiar with graduates like McCrave.
"He could have applied for co-ops or apprenticeships while he was at school — even if it delayed his graduation," Perruzza said. "We strongly advocate co-ops. The fact is because of the sheer number of applicants these days, the ones who get the jobs have some kind of experience."
But what help can that be right now? That just smacks of arrogance on Mr. Perruzza's part.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This article seems to be specific to Canada, but I think the same is true everywhere, especially the U.S. Is there anywhere where it's different?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
IEEE The STEM Crisis is a myth http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo...
They have an entire issue devoted to the topic and a static discussion
http://spectrum.ieee.org/stati...
The only shortage of degreed professionals are MD's and Lawyers and that's because their numbers are controlled and kept artificially low.
Somebody at a school trying to sell you a degree, make sure they back it up with a job guarantee, or at least a track record that you can sue them over.
There was a recession when I hit the workforce after university. It was tough getting a job. REALLY tough. So I did manual labour for a few years before I finally got into my chosen career's industry. This happens. In retrospect, even fresh out of school I wasn't really ready. Too many expectations beyond what my worth as an employee could justify.
Now I'm seeing more or less the same situation with the current generation. The world doesn't owe you shit, life doesn't have to be fair, and no matter how recent your education, chances are there's a grumpy asshole who is of more practical use to an employer because they can handle social interactions in a workplace and understand the way work life works, with enough experience (in precisely what their employer requires!) to more than raise their net value above an inexperienced applicants'.
The problem isn't underemployment of the youth (suck it up, Buttercup, that's how almost everyone starts while they're learning all the things schools don't teach), the problem is the jobs where they can get their real world experience are drying up and it's only going to get worse.
However, as long as there are jobs to be done by humans and humans aren't immortal, eventually older people retire, lose it, or die off and have to be replaced. Hiring will happen. If kids aren't getting hired, it's because there are less jobs overall required to maintain our currently desired economic productivity.
That's a sociopolitical issue to be resolved not by minimum wage hikes or make-work programs, but by legislating shorter standard work weeks and nationalizing health benefits. Make it affordable for employers to hire more people to do the work, make it less life-affecting for people to work less.
My uncle started with a entry level job and he could grow while he worked. After a couple of years of proofing himself he got his engineering job he wanted. Today those entry level jobs are gone. They have become the low wage jobs that moved to low wage countries. The jobs that couldn't be moved are now filled in by cheap East Europeans. West European people with a degree who aren't even allowed to work for East European wages need to get that experience somewhere else. Because the 'somewhere else' companies have learned from their mistake (training young graduates for better paying competitors), they also outsource the entry level jobs to east Europeans to be able to compete with the 'smart' companies.
So now we have a situation where cheap labor can't grow into that engineering job that needs a good education, and the people who have that good education couldn't find a job and had to accept whatever job they could get their hands on. To solve that problem, companies now demand to import more foreigners with a higher education. Someone from a third world country who can work on third world wages are the preferred new workers. If this might cause unrest in the society and might help to the rise of extreme right doesn't matter. What matters are profits, profits and profits. Oh and bonuses of course.
...are death and taxes. Hell, as a Gen X-er even waaaaaay back in the early 80's, you were never guaranteed any kind of job whatsoever. You're best bet was to find summer work \ apprenticeships to at least have SOME real world experience after school. And if you did find something, it's going to be at the bottom. The only people who start higher up are the wealthy with their parents connections from Ivy league schools and what not.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Of course 15 - 24 years olds will be over represented in unemployment statistics.
The lower age range there are going to be 15, 16, 17 and 18 year olds who are not in school or training of some kind, and who will employ them?
I have checked and school is compulsory until 16 in Canada, so any 15 year old not in school probably has some other problems in their life, making employment even less likely.
So it's kind of obvious to the most casual observer that those degree fields are saturated.
I have a question:
What jobs are NOT filled up?
It's a serious query.
What degrees should students be pursuing?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Sandro Perruzza, the chief executive officer at the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE), is familiar with graduates like McCrave.
"He could have applied for co-ops or apprenticeships while he was at school — even if it delayed his graduation," Perruzza said. "We strongly advocate co-ops. The fact is because of the sheer number of applicants these days, the ones who get the jobs have some kind of experience."
But what help can that be right now? That just smacks of arrogance on Mr. Perruzza's part.
Its helpful to those still in school, a warning not to make the same mistake. You get out of school what you put into it. If you are there to get your "ticket punched' expect problems like this. If you are there to truly learn as much as you can then you will be doing something beyond merely attending classes. Some sort of side project (student entrepreneurial competitions, independent study/research, etc) or some sort of practical experience (internships, co-op ed, part-time job, etc).
Never Let Schooling Interfere With Your Education
I've also observed the demand for electrical and mechanical engineers falling in North America as production has shifted to Asia. In general those classes of engineers need to be close to the factories.
Just because some technology is old does not mean it is insufficient nor can be fundamentally replaced.
The plumbing technology in your house dates to the Roman empire. Materials have shifted, but the fundamental technology is the same.
It's not surprising, colleges have been weakening their standards for graduates for a generation. For example, you can get an English degree without ever reading Shakespeare. You can't even find a rhetoric class at many universities these days, and if you want public speaking experience you're better off at toastmasters (but that was once a common requirement). Foreign language and math requirements are dropping as well. In computer science, you can graduate with a degree without ever understanding how a computer works. In some cases, I've seen CS graduates who didn't feel comfortable programming. These are problems.
Then there is grade inflation. Which is fine if it corresponded to an increase in the skill level of graduates, but it doesn't. Because of the way student evaluations work, a professor who pushes students to work harder will end up with bad ratings. Too much homework? Bad rating. Hard tests? Bad rating. Whereas the clown teacher is entertaining, and gets a raise. Over time, there is evolutionary pressure downwards.
Then of course, students want to have fun in college. If I were designing a college, it would be like a monastery. Not many people would enjoy that, I admit. However, it encourages the universities to build new facilities, rock climbing gyms and saunas and such. Which aren't necessarily bad, but you can see these universities are not competing on the quality of their academics.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nowadays telling laid off people to get more education is clearly a gamble. The same time and money might be better off spent elsewhere, starting a business, or taking a completely unrelated job and avoiding more debt.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Huge college tuition were made possible by student debt, and student debt was made possible because graduate student could find a paying job to pay the debt.
Now if they get unemployed after college, the bubble will burst. And unlike subprime bubble burst, banks will not even have a house to seize to mitigate the loss.
Yeah, and look at how useful the 3.5mm audio jack is to this day.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There was a recession when I hit the workforce after university. It was tough getting a job. REALLY tough. So I did manual labour for a few years before I finally got into my chosen career's industry. This happens. In retrospect, even fresh out of school I wasn't really ready. Too many expectations beyond what my worth as an employee could justify.
You don't happen to mention what your degree was in. Was it in a Liberal Art's degree, or something in STEM? The problem is, the education industry has sold people a line of shit. People have the perception that any degree should earn them 6 figures. There are only so many Mythology, Gender Studies, etc.. degrees which are useful to society. Journalism, Video editing, and blogging are a flooded market, PoliSci won't get you far unless you continue to Law School, and the majority don't. People don't, or can't, do the STEM degrees which would land them a better entry level job.
Now I'm seeing more or less the same situation with the current generation. The world doesn't owe you shit, life doesn't have to be fair, and no matter how recent your education, chances are there's a grumpy asshole who is of more practical use to an employer because they can handle social interactions in a workplace and understand the way work life works, with enough experience (in precisely what their employer requires!) to more than raise their net value above an inexperienced applicants'.
The problem isn't underemployment of the youth (suck it up, Buttercup, that's how almost everyone starts while they're learning all the things schools don't teach), the problem is the jobs where they can get their real world experience are drying up and it's only going to get worse.
However, as long as there are jobs to be done by humans and humans aren't immortal, eventually older people retire, lose it, or die off and have to be replaced. Hiring will happen. If kids aren't getting hired, it's because there are less jobs overall required to maintain our currently desired economic productivity.
That's a sociopolitical issue to be resolved not by minimum wage hikes or make-work programs, but by legislating shorter standard work weeks and nationalizing health benefits. Make it affordable for employers to hire more people to do the work, make it less life-affecting for people to work less.
While I agree that society does not owe people anything, I disagree with some of your other points. For example, it's an oxymoron to claim we should not increase minimum wage but claim we should reduce working hours. Without the disclaimer that wages drop, the insinuation is less work for more money so _WORSE_ than minimum wage.
Yeah, education is great if you want to do (and can do) the hard work for a STEM degree. If not, you should really weigh your options and consider trade school instead of college. The money required is much less, and job prospects are much better.
I realize I'm old and went to school long ago, but when I was going the first question I asked is "what degrees are needed most?". This question seems to elude many people today. I received my first degree in Math and my second was Philosophy. I enjoyed the latter but needed the former to start my career.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Engineering faculty here. Midwestern US, so maybe things aren't quite the same in Canada... nah I bet that they are pretty much the same. First thing, I agree with all the comments about a degree not equaling a guaranteed job. Even in engineering.
While most of our graduates do find decent starting technical jobs within a reasonable amount of time, some don't. Regarding the grads who have trouble finding a job, their issue are almost always as follows:
a. They are only looking in a limited geographic area. When a recent grad struggles to get a job the first thing I ask is "how wide a net are you casting". Often they are only looking within 25 miles of their current apartment. I then point out that the world is actually a fairly large place, people move all the time, and there are jobs to be had elsewhere. Or....
b. They have a really, really low GPA. Despite what some people say about academic performance, GPA can matter for a fresh grad. A lot. It really can. For a fresh grad with no co-op experience or industry connections, it matters a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot. For a person like that, it's the only numerical measure of quality a potential employer can see. Yes, I know that 5 years into a career the GPA matters nil. But at the starting position it's a different story. The harsh truth is that an engineering grad with no co-op, no connections and a 2.3 GPA is going to struggle to establish an engineering career. Most employers will just trash-bin the resume. There's a good chance they will wind up doing something other than engineering.
My uncle started with a entry level job and he could grow while he worked.
Wow, that's amazing - how tall is he now?
#DeleteChrome
The US makes about 70,000 more STEM graduates every year than STEM jobs are created every year. After you account for retirement of older workers.
(Obviously Canada won't be identical, but the countries are usually similar)
So how exactly are they supposed to find a STEM job when we get about 70,000 further in the hole every year?
That's a sociopolitical issue to be resolved not by minimum wage hikes or make-work programs, but by legislating shorter standard work weeks and nationalizing health benefits
A shorter standard work week is a make-work program.
Nationalizing health benefits would result in large job losses, as health insurance companies would disappear.
(and just to be complete, make-work programs and a higher minimum wage produce economic growth through increasing the velocity of money. The people receiving the benefits spend the money. Whether or not that leads to inflation depends on the capacity of people from whom they are buying.)
Go to a good private school that educates all its students to a good standard. Your parents been able to pay reduces the amount of people able to get the same standard of quality education. Learn how to study and get ready for university.
Go to university based on merit given your quality of education. Make friends who will be in the same profession.
That further reduces the amount of completion per generation over later decades.
Ensure no other nation can send experts to Canada without passing the very same Canadian exams. All the Canadian exams that apply to your profession.
You don't have a "job", your a professional in Canada, an expert with standards and a duty of care. Your signature as an expert is worth a lot.
Don't give that unique ability away to people who are not Canadian.
As a professional you will face few other Canadians who could access quality education needed to pass the same exams or any experts from other nations.
Stop any equivalency for people outside Canada. Make them all sit Canadian exams if they want a profession in Canada.
Got given Canadian citizenship and want to keep your other nations education? Canadian exam time.
Such measures will quickly block all unexpected competition from people outside Canada or random people new to Canada.
The final step is to prevent limited jobs been given to more people per year in Canada.
Make your Canadian exams really hard. Too hard for people without years of study skills and a nice environment to study in to have any hope of passing.
A university will then only be able to pass the best of the best and no influx of low quality graduates a decade later will cause wages to drop.
Protect your profession with professional standards and exams. Learn for other nations and how they protect their medial experts, pilots, lawyers, plumbers, electricians. They have standards, exams, tests and certificates for most "jobs". Years of needed study and training ensure few can get the same "job".
No work unless you have done a few years of university or expensive technical education in Canada and passed to Canadian standards. Add some French language tests too.
No workers from other nations to replace local experts or people who have passed their tests and have a trade in Canada.
Weed out any workers who snuck in and tried to hide with fake credentials.
The work force will correct itself and wages will reflect the expert skills you have that other people in Canada need.
If you want a profession, you have to lobby every year to keep others from flooding your profession offering low wages.
Hard exams, language skills (French and English as used in Canada), the cost of education can exclude vast numbers competing workers. Add in insurance, bond and license that need a real background in Canada. If that fails, national security and criminal background investigations. Ensure that no person outside or new to Canada can pass the national security and criminal background investigation due to their nation not having the/any correct paperwork.
The final issue is ever more Canadian graduates passing university as tests are made more easy. Make schooling more hard so they never get to university or will not pass if they get into university.
With competition removed for decades your professional wage will improve.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'd say this has very little to do with bubble talk or jobs not existing and everything to do with the following things:
* Where you decided to go to school in relation to the 'quality' of the program
* The quality of the faculty, staff, program and curriculum in terms of a mixture of academic and real world exposure
* If you, in terms of skills and potential, are even worth a damn to any future employer
I see and hear this shit all. the. time. in the computer science, information systems (which I reside in) and engineering realm and guess what? Not everyone who does, goes through or completes anything isn't good at it or even cut out for it long-term. STEM, EE and Info-sec are hot so people just jump on the degree bandwagon thinking they are going to land these amazing jobs when at most either their curriculum fails them (e.g. shitty professors and lackluster, poor ass program), lack of motivation on your part in being more than a hyper just-out-of-school know-it-all, and flat out thinking you're going to ever land a 6-figure 'side hustle'.
I think we hear a lot of this because college graduates expectations are sincerely and truthfully out of whack. Yeah, a lot of university's boast this unbelievable 99%+ straight-off-the-stage hire percentage, but that's mostly marketing bullshit to get, you, the student, enrolled. Just because you 'got a degree', doesn't make you hireable or even desirable to be hired. I hate to say it, but there needs to be more ownership and onus on the student-to-be-employee than it does always pointing the figure back at the university for not making them 'employable'.
I have a mix of friends I went to college with that don't even do or have anything to do with computer science or engineering, but have a BS/MS and don't do shit with it. I also have friends who are some really excellent IT professionals or software engineers that don't even have a true computer science BS (one of them has a degree in music education!).
The US makes about 70,000 more STEM graduates every year
Can we all stop with this STEM bullshit acronym? STEM bundles together actuaries, nuclear physicists, elevator technicians and old farts who maintain legacy RPG code. It's about as accurate as an astrological sign.
lucm, indeed.
like I said, government money and interest manipulation creates artificial demand for so called 'education', in reality no amount of government subsidised education will help in this highly inflationary environment. The only thing to do is to realise that the problem is government oppression, income taxes, business regulations, market, money, interest rate manipulation. You want jobs? Good luck with that with all this government.
You can't handle the truth.
The only way to offer some confidence to students is simply the enforcement of practice at companies or startups incubation, guided by the educational institution. Government and companies should develop a program where everybody wins.
Just wrong. Saying the world doesn't owe you shit is something the haves say to assuage their conscience.
Old people aren't retiring. They can't. They were sold a bill of goods in the form of 401k/IRA/whatever your local flavor is and they can't afford it. That's because a) those programs were designed by the wealthy and don't work for middle class and b) everytime the economy crashes (every 10 years like clockwork after we repeal the regulations that were passed the last time it tanked) all your savings get wiped out.
I'll take most of your last two (shorter hours & nationalized benefits) but minimum wage is a necessity. It's _never_ affordable to hire employees if you ask employers. If you let them they'll make us all slaves and use the same rationalizations you did at the start of your rant to excuse it (suck it up, buttercup).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Nowadays, to win, you have to cheat. Look at Trump and his "Fake Amepika Great Again." Fish rot from the head down. So do countries. The average person is usually better, more moral, than the people in charge, who have to satisfy their owners.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
is a bad idea. You're dealing with young people with all the wants and needs of an adult but none of the earning potential. People forget that for thousands of years you were pretty much living your adult life by 16-18. Your asking those folks to put everything on hold for another 4 years with the promise of someday making a good living (and not a very firm promise, I might add). That's too much, and you're being unreasonable and flippant by asking for it.
We should support kids in college with a decent lifestyle. We should do this because, well, we're going to be depending on them when we're old; save for a few very wealthy people and a few folks with amazing genetics; If you're counting on that just keep buying lottery tickets. I'm sure it'll turn out fine...
Oh, and regarding grade inflation and college getting easier: As a parent of a kid in college who sees her work load and how tough it is: Fuck off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If we don't need more engineers then it must be that most of our engineering problems have been solved, right? There must be no big problems left in the world that require engineers.
The Romans had the 3.5mm audio jack?!?
I'm surprised that this issue isn't limited to the US. Canada's pretty much my #1 relocation destination if I had to pick another country -- hopefully they're not going fully down the "USA Lite" road the way the UK seems to be. The people are friendly and the climate is only going to get better as the temps start getting uncomfortably high further south.
Lots of people love to share anecdotal evidence of "lazy Millenials" studying Underwater Gender Studies and generally being unemployable. Having graduated eons ago in 1997, I can say it's legitimately different now than it was. Back then, even the Comparative Literature and Classics people were at least getting interviews. It was still the case that graduating with a bachelors' degree in anything was the entry ticket to any sort of corporate job. Employers knew they were getting raw material and trained them. Roll things back another 20 years and employers were training people straight out of high school. My wife works for a company that did this and just got taken over by MBAs -- there are a ton of people who only have a high school degree with 25+ years experience in senior positions, who are getting kicked out now, having never known another employer. Today, it seems the only employers who train people directly out of school are the management consulting firms, and that's basically because they don't want anyone who's learned habits anywhere else. The only ticket in is a high enough GPA in anything from an Ivy League school...everything else is taught.
I think the only thing that can fix this is a "detente" on both sides, borrowing a Cold War term. Employers need to accept that they're not getting a drop-in replacement for someone who leaves, no matter what the Indian consulting firm tells them. Employers need to understand that they need to develop employees if they don't want a bunch of mercenaries working for them. On the other side, employees need to stop job-hopping every 6 months and actually spend time to learn the business they work for. I'm one of those strange people who like working for the same company for long periods. As long as you don't let yourself stagnate it's a really positive thing in my opinion. I've been careful to move around and take work assignments that keep my skills fresh, but I've also built up a ton of industry knowledge that really helps me do my systems engineer/architect job better.
Good thing my products are software and hardware then, ha? The kind that I can keep developing pretty much anywhere where I find it most comfortable to develop, selling as internationally as I can. Should things go south in a bad way in the Ukraine there is still Belarussia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania, Poland and more, so thank you for the concern, I will manage. Cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
It doesn't guarantee a job, and it doesn't guarantee debt either. The summary says "education only guarantees debt, not a stable job." That's compete bullocks. Debt is 100% optional. Common, but entirely optional. I'll graduate with more money in the bank than when I started school.
I chose a state school in Texas. Actually it's state school in many states - Western Governor's University was started by 19 state governors. I originally chose WGU because a) I could do the work on my own schedule - there are no scheduled class times and b) it's cheap, $6000 / year, minus $1500 tax credit = $4500 / year. After I started I found out that it's even better than that. For many courses, the final exam is an industry certification such as Cisco CCNA. Two years into school, my certifications led to a job making almost twice as much as I was making when I started school.
My employer reimbursed $1500 / year of tuition, so after the tax credit my out-of-pocket cost for school is $1,500 / year meanwhile my income has already increased by $50,000 / year, so the day I graduate I'll have a lot more money than I did the day I started school.
I could have actually gotten the first year or so free, or for about $500. What you can do is study the material, such as CCNA material, before enrolling. You can watch YouTube courses, get books from eBay, etc. Then enroll after you've studied and get a year of credits in your first few weeks by taking the exams. In fact, for industry exams like CCNA you can take the exams before enrolling and WGU will give you credit for the course - you've already passed the final exam.
The other good surprise with WGU is that I can do most of my school work 10 minutes at a time, when I have nothing better to do for a few minutes. I study while I'm on the toilet or whatever. 10 minutes per day, three times a day, seven days per week will cover a good portion of the material. In other words - I get my degree by spending half as much time on Slashdot as I used to. :)
I may get my masters degree from Harvard Extension. That would cost me $20K, but I'd end up with a Harvard Master's degree. A master's from Harvard may increase my income by $10K-$20K per year, meaning it would pay for itself in just 1-2 years.
https://www.extension.harvard....
It's basic economics. They created a whole system to limit the supply and drive up the cost of maple syrup. What happens when the price of maple syrup goes up? The price of rum has to go up as well. Of course when the price of rum goes up your neighbourhood drunk can't afford it any more, so he switches to beer. That drives up the price of beer so the college student's can't afford it any more. So what happens when the dorm isn't properly lubricated? Sober college students study, get to bed, wake up in the morning and make to their exams on time, without a decent hangover. Now you've got all those young people passing their courses and graduating from University. How do we remedy this? You could break up the maple monopoly but there's a quicker and simpler solution. Hand out free beer.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
>If he was really into engineering, he'd be in clubs, he'd have projects outside of the class to point to.
Oh, I see, good idea, if we move these goalposts far enough we'll circle the earth and loop back around to supporting a family on a high school diploma.
The goal posts have not been moved. They have always been so. People who put more into their education than merely showing up for the required classes have always had an advantage.
Regarding supporting a family on a high school diploma, that will require a change in consumer behavior not corporate hiring behavior. Looking at where things are made and showing some consideration to more local products and services. If consumes only base purchases on price then expect the white collar jobs to follow the blue collar jobs overseas.
[Oops, didn't mean to post AC ...]
The white collar jobs follow the blue collar jobs. In theory mechanical engineering can be performed anywhere but the truth is that it is more convenient to have it "near" the manufacturing. And when buyers only care about the lowest price and not where something is made you might as well outsource the design (engineering) as well as the manufacturing.
So if you are not paying attention to where things are made when you are shopping and just look for the best prices at Walmart or Amazon, this is the natural result.
coding (already greatly off-shored)
Lots of corporate IT stuff is, yes. But someone who knows what they are doing has to manage and integrate that code. Or in a lot of cases someone has to come in and make something that works... coding will be one of the last jobs to go because it is so varied and the need is only growing across all industries.
In fact if you were really smart, just forget corporate IT and figure out how to use coding to help any other industry - as they automate just who do you think it going to be writing the code that manages all the automation - the robots? I don't think so.
There are still a lot of trades highly resistant to automation. Plumbing? Electrician? Heating/Cooling tech? Landscaper? All of those jobs are super safe from automation for a good long time to come. Basically, jobs that require real physical effort are generally pretty stable and if you are at all smart you will be heads and shoulders above the others in those fields.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not only is this not a surprise, it's not news. It has been this way for a very long time. Generation X'ers were bemoaning how the boomers had it so easy. Millennials bemoan how we had it so easy. It's easy to look at a 40-something year old who is now stably employed, has acquired a car, equity on a home, and then ignore the struggle it was to get here. A university degree is only an advantage when it can distinguish you from the crowd. It is, and has been, the de facto baseline since before I got out of high school. If you want to distinguish yourself, you have to establish yourself above the baseline. Postgraduate education is today what an undergrad was 50 years ago. Volunteer work, starting your own open source project or contributing to one, some time in the military - these are all ways to give yourself both real and paper "experience". If you have your sights set on a particular place to work, target that place with your efforts. Find out what charities they support and volunteer at those places. You have to take the long approach. And you have to have confidence enough in your own abilities to believe you will get to your employment goal if you put in those efforts. That is the only thing that will get you through the uncertainty.
Do these things and you will rise above the crowd quickly. Try and take shortcuts, and you will look like just one more millennial with a degree and no attention span.
And above all, stop complaining that it's tough. The path of least resistance rarely takes you where you want to be, and it never, ever goes up hill.
the defunding of state schools has lead to the costing going up and with the loans that you can't get rid of in Bankruptcy makes it so that the schools and banks have no skin in the game.
It's actually worse since the youngest you will have a degree in Canada is 21 years old so only the final three years of the range will contain any graduates.
Make the student loans dischargeable and not government guaranteed and none of the useless degree people will be able to get loans. Which would be a very good thing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is employers figuring that everyone should be either fully trained, or extremely cheap/free. That's why they want to demand internships and other such shit. They want someone to come in to an "entry level position" completely trained up and ready to go. That is, of course, not what university is for. It is for getting the general knowledge and theoretical training you need to do well in a field, not for specific practical training. That is supposed to be what you get in your entry level job.
Well they'd much rather that you get that either somewhere else, or as an unpaid intern that they can abuse. Then once you are trained up and have a couple years experience they'll give you a job. Of course it is still "entry level" with pay to match.
However there's more than a few greedy/grouchy people who've convinced themselves that is how it should work. Young people should just be willing to do whatever it takes for no money (or really negative money given that university costs money to attend) and work hard for long hours to "prove" themselves worthy of a low end position. You can see it in this thread where someone is suggesting that colleges should be "like monasteries" because he thinks young adults shouldn't have any fun and just spend all their time working hard.
Is anything mechanical actually made in the US anymore? I'd guess that 99% of engineering in the west just means software now. I'm sure if he had a CS degree he wouldn't have had any problem.
They don't think. They have apps that do thinking for them.
if everyone applying has good degrees with good greats,
Then it goes to interning.
If everyone interned then it goes to some other relevant expertise (so tune your resume to the job you are applying to).
If everyone interned and has relevant experience then either
a) It goes to the "most diverse candidate" in the u.s.
a.1) No clue if it's like that in canada.
b) The business sends it to a senior manager who finds a reason to reject everyone and then hire the candidate proposed by the offshore consulting firm. (you can google a secretly filmed seminar from 2007 of a company teaching corporations exactly how to manage the process from advertising in small markets near the target market to get as few candidates as possible, to how to tune the specific requirements for the job, to finally how to boot it upstairs to a senior who can figure out how to safely reject the candidate.
---
But.. say there was no h1b. Fundamentally, if this year's demand is for 1734 people with that degree and 5,270 graduate on top of the 27,000 already in the field (of whom 270 are looking for work actively) then about 3,300 of those college graduates are not going to find work in their field (and if it's bad enough- not in any field).
And part of the problem is that tuition is much higher than it was for my generation. It cost me 60 hours minimum wage to pay for an entire semester of classes and books. And since it was so inexpensive, my company reimbursed me without even questioning what I was taking as long as I had good grades and said it applied to my job.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You need actual funding to design hardware.
There are plenty of companies working on next generation memory devices already.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hear this year after year about how college grads have a hard time finding jobs. When I got out of college, I was already well into my second decade of coding experience, and nobody wanted to hire me because nobody wants to hire a n00b with no professional experience. But I stuck to it and I took a few lousy jobs to build up my resume and get some experience. Years later, I make good money now as a dev, and I have no shortage of job offers. I feel like each generation goes through this, was there ever a group of kids that got instantly hired up fresh out of college without any effort?
There should be a final class that is mandatory before you graduate were they tell people that life isn't going to be handed to you on a silver platter, and that some degree of struggle is par for the course.
That being said, the next decade or so should really open things up in the job market as all the baby boomers really start dying in droves.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It's not, but we get the extra bite in Canada because the TFW program(think H1B) can replace any job if the company can figure out a way.
Om, nomnomnom...
Classic pitfall, since this thinking promotes a pork cycle. If you give any answer, students will flock to these degrees and find out that once they finish their degrees, there will be a whole bunch of people with exactly the same degree competing for exactly the same jobs.
I'm sorry, please state ANYTHING that guarantees a job?
I can't think of a single thing, even self-employment or starting your own company.
Any "educated" person who thinks they are entitled to a job just because they get a degree, or any qualification whatsoever, is really in need of thinking about the situation for two minutes.
If it was true, everyone would go for a degree, which would guarantee them all jobs, which would mean that you'd run out of jobs available for the next people to do that.
There isn't a qualification in the world that guarantees you a job, and if that's why you went for the qualification, you're an idiot.
You study something because you're interested in it.
You get a job doing something because you're interested in it and/or you need the money.
The and/or bit there is what tells you that life interferes sometimes.
Out of all the people I know, the ones who are least employed, or employed in fields furthest from their course of study, are a qualified barrister (currently working in a library), a guy with about 6 doctorates (currently writing children's books) and an astrophysicist (currently teaching maths in senior school).
It's always been hard to get a job if you didn't know how.
:
.COM boom introduced a weird "don't worry, you can study anything and you can make your own job and get rich" idea. This is nonsense and was as stupid as the .COM boom.
College degrees were never and never will be a guarantee of a career. Let's look at a few
1) Law
There are simply more lawyers than jobs for lawyers. Law might be the worst degree you can go for today since it is one of the fastest careers being automated. Graduate students hoped to get positions as junior lawyers which effectively are people paid to do the shit work for senior lawyers. A senior lawyer used to need 3-10 junior lawyers to do his shit work and then needed a bunch of legal researchers and paralegals etc... now, a senior lawyer needs maybe one or two juniors who are proficient with an iPad and Lexus Nexus.
2) Teachers
This has always been a safe career but over the years it has taken a beating. Secondary schools used to employ a great deal more teachers per student than they do now. Of course this leads to classes that are overfull, but it also has to do with hiring someone to be both a gym teacher and math teach (terrible combination) and maybe even the music teacher as well. New pedagogical methods are often researched and experimented with to provide "a better educational experience with less resources".
You know what... screw it, I can explain field by field for ages, but the truth is, there are far deeper reasons for the problem than what can be covered like that.
College graduates today simply do it wrong.
Let's talk about the choice of degree.
1) High school students entering college study what they want to study, not what there is or will be a market for. The
2) Guidance counselors at high schools are absolute idiots in general. I've spoken with a few of them and they honestly haven't the slightest idea what the difference between a marine biologist and a nuclear physicist is. They offer career and educational advice to kids who will ruin their entire lives based on their ideas.
3) Just because there's a LOT of hot jobs in it today doesn't mean there will be in 5-6 years when you graduate. Corporate pedagogy was super-hot in 1998 and when the students graduated, there wasn't a single job to be found in it anywhere. Team building is another dumb one. HR as a college degree is toilet paper. While pedagogy has undeniable value, it doesn't necessarily translate as it's almost always a liability job for companies. There is absolutely no possible way a "pedagogy officer" in a company can be spun on the balance sheets to look like it's not in the same class as corporate massage therapist.
Let's talk about job hunting
1) What have you done?
I mean really, what have you done while you were in college. You had 6 years (no 2 and 4 years doesn't count, that's just extended high school) to do something. What did you do that has any value to anyone? Writing a paper doesn't mean anything anymore. A thesis is nifty, but unless you are planning on living as a theoretical scientist or graduate professor, you better have actually done something which can be applied
2) What's on your GitHub?
This is of course for people who actually make things. Where's your designs? Where are your programs? Show me something you built while you were in school. I want to be able to browse through 3 years of your code and actually see whether you improve or if you're the same schlump that you were when you started. I honestly don't give a shit whether you can memorize Donald Knuth's books. I wouldn't hire anyone who hasn't anyway. But I want to see what you have actually done. Show me a project that makes you look interesting.
3) What about your internships?
Paid internship? You managed that and in the end, you ended up without a job? Why didn't th
There's a ton of old technology that needs reinventing.
Why?
What about replacing the current model of RAM/CPU/Disk/Network with something new?
What's wrong with "the current model of RAM/CPU/Disk/Network?" More importantly, what does Disk/Network have to do with RAM/CPU?
How about reinventing RAM? It's ancient.
Why? What's wrong with RAM?
Networking? Time for an overhaul.
WHY?
TCP/IP is like 50 years old.
So what?
You, Sir, are a special sort of retarded. And probably the kind of people that brought us systemd.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I understand you don't want to continue in Physics, but you might want to try to get a foot in the door around here first. We happen to have a very young university, that's always hiring. Profiles like yours sound like something they might want to hire. Look here.
Good luck.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
All my friends (about 5) who got an arts degree never even to this day worked in their "profession".
No, they probably got jobs in areas such as law or finance and earned a lot more money than most engineers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
III.V actually
rewriting history since 2109
Roman noodles are still really popular.
rewriting history since 2109
... there are more jobs available for working in a grocery store, but not for people with a university degree.
It's the future right there, no need to get a higher education anymore because there is no demand for it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
well to be fair it was the III.Vmm audio jack in those days...
... you know, that crazy super-rich silicon valley guy that made obscene amounts of money by investing in Facebook and such things.
He is quoted saying about the first internet bubble burst back in 2001 that the money that was lost didn't go away but moved into real estate. The bubble that burst there in 2008 proved his observation right. Since then he's been saying that the excess money that was in housing didn't go away but now moved into higher education an that we are now in a serious higher education bubble(!!). He does such things as rewarding students to quit university and get into startups ASAP and is pretty outspoken about asking people to stay away from college these days - at least in the US.
I don't know about you folks, but IMHO this Peter Thiel nutbag generally seems to be pretty spot on with his predictions - his bazillions of dollars seems to prove that aswell. I for my part basically second what he says am very careful about betting any sort of career on higher education and will only move into college on the side here in Germany because I want to learn the tough parts of CS and can do it for free. Or actually less money, counting the benefits I get as an enrolled student in Germany.
There is no effing way that I would go to college in the US these days - not if I can only move out with 30 000$+ in debt.
My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How about Ramen noodles?
We talk a lot about patterns of employment, but when will we face up to the fact that Canadian millennials are paid in dollars that are only worth 74% of the dollars that US millennials are paid in?
Yup, your premise will remain true until these millennials reach critical mass and run everything. Then we're all doomed.
Since the 4-year degree is the new GED, how about some millennials go into a trade (e.g. machining, HVAC, electrician, etc.) as they are in short supply and high demand, especially with manufacturing (hopefully) returning to America.
Ramen is the english translation of the Japanese word for Roman.
rewriting history since 2109
All those co-ops and apprenticeships require connections.
Not true, at least in Canada. I did a co-op Engineering program and our university had a dedicated co-op department whose sole task was to line up work for students. It was very successful; pretty much everyone was employed during every co-op term in my class. And these were real, paying jobs, not unpaid internships.
Doing co-op meant my program took 5 years instead of 4, but it was well worth it. I graduated with 24 months' of actual work experience and no debt. Granted, this was quite a while ago when employment conditions were better, but even now co-op students do relatively well.
I still haven't really heard a valid reason that everyone should go to college. When we graduate high school, we're supposed to be filled with tons of information in different areas of study, having done arithmetic, read Shakespeare, learned countries and history, etc. If everyone's supposed to go to college, then why do we have to get in debt to do it? And why does the Federal gov't. need to make money in the process? Not to mention the obvious motivations for privately owned institutions.
People out of college would be most likely to spend money and stimulate the economy. Why put the heavy debt burden on them? If we distributed it, it would make a lot more sense. I'm just saying, the only two logical paths seem to be, not everyone needs "College" (see: trade school), or everyone does so run it at a state level with some private options.
disclaimer: I am not a communist.
Ramen is the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese word that means "pulled noodles".
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
They create jobs, right?
When I got out of college with an IT degree in '89...
1st job: Low paying job setting up a network, scored the job purely because an old boss worked there and knew I was back in town
2nd job: Medium/Low paying job driving around the state, working 80 hour weeks installing computers for a power company.
3rd job: Medium paying job at a software company where I joined in Tech Support to get a job in my chosen field.
4th job: 2 years later at the software company I was running the development side of the business.
Having a degree does not entitle you to get a job doing what you want to do. It gives you improved odds to get the opportunity to work your ass off to learn the real world and get your foot in the door and prove yourself.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Thanks for that link. I wasn't not too concerned about the wording on degree because when I talk to people I can choose how to phrase it, mentioning "Harvard" and "Information Security" before stating the exact title of the degree, but automated filters are something to be aware of.
The comments in that link mentioned Johns Hopkins has a similar program, without the unclear wording of the degree itself.
Investigating Johns Hopkins led me to this article:
https://www.usnews.com/educati...
I see that Sam Houston State University offers *exactly* the degree I want, at a cost of $10K (about $3,300/year). The Sam Houston brand isn't nearly as strong as Harvard or Johns Hopkins, but it's something to consider.
Actually I'm betting you're a real ass-hole. You make assumptions to fit your preconceived notions. Nicely done moron.
Most liberal arts degrees, other than some sort of engineering/science degree are useless. Yes, you CAN get a degree in art, teaching, lost roman languages etc, but, finding a GOOD paying job in those fields is very hard to do. On the other hand, a 2 year technical college, teaching you a TRADE will benefit you more in the long run, and, you won't be saddled with 20,30,40 thousand dollars or more in debt!
Haha what a joke. Just what the world needs, another half assed text editor or a library that needs a dozen other obscure libraries to build.
It doesn't matter if the project is used or useful. What matters is that a person had an idea and finished their little project. Demonstrating some interest or curiosity about their chosen field and the ability to complete what they start are important consideration, not necessarily what the project does.
Sorry, that's a load. Employers are not interested in your side projects.
Mine were. And as someone doing the hiring I was interested.
In fact they are fearful of them because it means you're smarter or may have other priorities. God forbid you do anything with the 8 hours you don't spend working or sleeping other than staring at a wall.
Side projects don't have to be some long term ongoing effort, and they don't have to continue once hired. That said, a coworker had such an ongoing project. The company provided him with a waiver to the normal employment agreement allowing him to support the project at a bug fix level but not at a add major new functionality level.
The whole github thing is a meme. What they want is free code out there for H1Bs to steal and pass off as their own. Yes, I've seen that lots of times. I won't participate in that farce. You want to see a side project, I'll bring an executable on a CD-R.
If you are suggesting leaving the CD-R I wouldn't even go that far, nor require that. I'd sit down for an hour or two and go through the source code with reviewer/applicant side-by-side, reviewing and discussing it. The source code leaves with the applicant.
Seriously, pickup bash/python/C/C++ and get into Linux/shell. The demand is huge and isn't going anywhere. In case you haven't realised it, we're basically in a global recession. Most western economies are being propped up by unsustainable housing bubbles with a lot of money coming in from Chinese investors trying to land bank outside of China. Companies are not getting the investment they need and are looking to cut costs. Linux costs nothing to buy, and good engineers slash the cost of deployment. Companies are looking to automate processes and Linux is how many of them are doing it. I'm working in a team using Linux to automate migration from Cisco Call Manager Express to Cisco Unified Call Manager (centralising VoIP from routers to a core server) the entire project is being done with Linux and the pay is great. There's plenty of Linux work out there if you have the skills. Most businesses don't know howto implement Linux projects well so there's always work.
You're thinking of Dolly Parton.
rewriting history since 2109
Japan. Japan is awesome in every way you can think of and more besides. Or so AmiMoJo says.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You didn't bother to read my post before replying to it, and claiming that it's wrong, did you. Here's the attention deficit disorder version for you:
Tuition: $4500 / year after tax
Starting salary of a CNNA + MCSA etc (achieved within 2 years of starting school): $50,000 - $60,000
So at the end of four years of school, you've spent $18K and earned at least $100K. Explain to me how you are forced to have debt when you make more than you spend?
A person can CHOOSE a university that costs a lot, and choose not to work, and they will have chosen to have debt. Or they can choose a course of study that two years in, increases their income far beyond what they are spending for school. Sometimes, people choose stupid because they first chose not to know any better - they chose to not research their options. That sucks.
So when everyone is zigging, zag. Now that everyone is on to the trick of putting $5k less, put $20k more (gotta account for inflation). It will get their attention. Maybe get you a second look. It might work, and if it doesn't you didn't lose anything anyway.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Thanks for the reference, I hadn't encountered Giedion previously. Another visionary of his generation was Marshall McLuhan (The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man [1951]). Along with Buckminster Fuller and freeman Dyson (and others of course), they anticipated a lot.
For a light, visual read, I recommend Matthew Frederick:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...
Good perspectives (pun intended) applicable to Ux and information flow.
Dialectician. Archology.
They had running water, flush toilets (the story about Thomas Crapper inventing the flush toilet was an April Fools column in Scientific American that got out of hand), and central heating.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This.
I argue that a 'liberal education' is the only *academic* tertiary path and a very worthwhile one at that. Everything else, especially much of STEM (particularly the E) and Medicine, Law etc is a trade training and qualification for guild membership.. Maybe Science is okay, no guild but at least a culture of review.
The question must be asked about the purpose of Universities, not only in terms of teaching/research balance, but also in terms of vocation/thinking balance.
If you think focusing narrowly on your field such as compsci MechEng etc is the way to go, history will show that you are wrong and you will be impoverished. Just as one builds solutions differently in OO Vs Proc, one expresses literature differently in German than in Hindi. If you cannot see the overlap between Requirements Management and sociology fieldwork then you are neither a professional nor a master craftsperson. You are a skilled labourer at best.
Dialectician. Archology.
Go drink vodka
Too many people are going to college. Mean time mechanics, plumbers, even house framers are tough to come by and make big bucks. When I went to college I grabbed a job forecast book in the library. Library, you know, that place that has books, Yea, I know I'm old. Anyhow, you can look up what you want to be and see if there is even a demand for it. I found out there was no demand for what I wanted to go into, nor for the next 20 years. We have married men with 30+ years of experience out of work, so I switched.
Thing is so many kids are so stupid today. They don't even look, don't care, they just feel as if someone else will take care of them. Don't worry about that big old debt... Yet some of these same people will research endlessly for their next car or computer. They need to take charge of their lives. Stop being a snowflake.
"A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.[1] It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors.[2] When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more responsibility for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting the ego from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem.[3] For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions is exhibiting the self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace,[4] interpersonal relationships,[5] sports,[6] and consumer decisions.[7]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Engineering has always been inherently unstable. It's project based work where manpower requirements fluctuate.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Since when did getting a degree ever guarantee a job? Who makes up these fairy tales?
Look, maybe someone forgot to tell you, but you have to get experience. In the field you want to work in.
That's why you work summers in the industry you're trying to get hired in. At least it was during the 80s when engineering and business and computing students would work summers to pay for school.
That experience is what gets you hired.
Oh, and get over yourself. If your parents or relatives say they have a job lead, take it. That's how you get hired.
And you may have to move. So if Alberta isn't hiring petroleum engineers, take a one year job in the States.
Dumas.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think you may be into something. "There are no jobs" because millennials are too entitled and precious snow flakes to get lousy jobs like you to gain experience.
Donno how to tell you this, but in some fields those lousy jobs to gain experience require you have experience. As far as I can tell, they're either trying to get immigrants whose visas will depend on them, or figure that they won't possibly be the ones to benefit from giving you a chance to get that experience because as soon as you've enough to get a job elsewhere...you will leave.
In the latter case, the employer ought to be giving serious thought--especially in fields where they get their pick of employees--as to why HR doesn't think anybody they might find will stick around once they've lasted that long? That anybody they hire will be motivated to leave for elsewhere?
I'm worried I'll be stuck in stinky Toronto forever if I want to keep working and making decent money. (It's fun, but I want to move somewhere smaller for my health.) But I don't know if the wage I'd make in a smaller city would be the same if I change jobs.
I'm supporting both myself and my partner on about 95k right now doing web dev work. To find that wage I had to do remote work for a company in the US. That said, since I'm a sole-proprietor I've gotten used to saving 50% of my wages, 26% of which will go into taxes minus deductions. So I could probably live on less. But then how will I retire? I'm screaming toward forty. I need to make the most of the next ~25 years.
I see on Glassdoor that the average wages for front-end developers are a bit lower in Canada. Whenever I leave a job I have companies lining up to interview me but I suspect that's because the hiring industry is so inflated right now. It could be because I'm a developer with a long history on Linked-in but I always have that twinge of impostor syndrome.
When I was in university my friend and I did freelance work for local businesses, so by the time I was in my final year I already had a bit of a career going. Before university I was reading the RFCs for Internet protocols, reading hacker docs and the jargon files. I really WANTED to be in programming. Long story short, I haven't even finished university. I hate how maths are presented and I could never finish the courses. So I took a gig at a marketing company and I've been doing full-stack or front end web development ever since.
All of that said, my university career was in the early 2000s. The Internet was HYOOOOOOJ. There was far more unchecked excitement in general and among investors. My career was all but guaranteed. I was born at the right time. I think we are starting to see the plateau of computer careers. There will be spikes just like any industry but I think the demand will be a lot more stable but possibly less from now on.
The outsourcing issue certainly is one. Half of my co-workers are from around the world. The reason is that the wage is cheaper than it is in the US. I don't know what to say there. The USD is stronger than ours and they can buy more work from us for each dollar. There are a lot of strange things going on in the economy and for the social welfare of Americans that goes far beyond the scope of this post. My sincere hope is that the US decides to care for its own and invest in its future by nurturing its relationships with foreign countries. This current trajectory probably will end in disaster for a lot of people, and probably not the cronies of the people making it happen.
(Sorry this reads like an anonymous CV but I think the context matters.)
If I'm right, and I have no indication one way or another, this is the canary of the dreaded student loan collapse
You're right. I didn't notice the funky numbers. This study, and the example they use is total BS, or at least not well done.
I was about to post about how I got into my field, and how it was not easy, and that many look at short term gains over long term advantage, but it is all moot really.
First of all you are right in a big chunk of the stats they use are utterly irrelevant to the workforce numbers in relation to college degrees. Anyway as you say between the ages of 15-18 won't have one. Even at 20-21 is questionable. I was 18 when I went to school, did a 4 year degree at university and a 1 year certification at college, meaning I hit the workforce May 1 after just turning 23 years old two months earlier.
The example used was a 21 year old with an engineering degree? So he took at best a 3 year degree (and I know of no engineering degrees that are 3 years, and I looked into engineering at Waterloo once upon a time) and is unhappy with prospects?
Your new grads that are not coming out of some community college program are going to be 22-24 years old depending on degree. Also there are a number of degrees that are pretty much useless unless you also got your Masters or Phd (you know who you are). So if you went to school and got a History or political science degree, well good for you, but I know of no one that does that now. Same for economics, though I know a couple who went on to get their CA, but you have to go and *do* that. Even high science, the problem is demand, in that there are only so many placements for someone that has a degree in high particle physics or whatever... Again many use their BA to go onto Law, or their BSc to go onto to Med, but again being disappointed with your useless degree not giving you a job in your "field" is a bit silly. Heck I know fellow grads that have since gone back and gotten teaching degrees or whatever as either their primary degree wasn't working out for them job wise or they simply didn't enjoy it and wanted to do something else. The teacher example is now a Vice Principle and is doing a heck of a lot better than me probably!
Also when I went into school for my Computer Science degree it was at the height of what we now know as the Dot Com Bubble, and when I graduated it was just *after* that bubble burst... So you can imagine how my prospects changed in a very short period of time, so current grads can suck it.
Take a job, any job in your field and get some experience. Use that to get something slightly better, repeat over several years. Eventually you will be in a better position literally and figuratively. I started at minimum wage, and did contracts for years, even some freelance consulting. A degree doesn't get you a job, it qualifies you an interview maybe for a chance of gaining some experience. Having more experience and knowledge gets you the "job".
Got news for you - your toilet still uses gravity to flush. Same as in roman times.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
He was preparing for his new career - it wasn't how tall he grew, it was what he was growing. Hint - it grows like weeds.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.