OT: "half of college grads are working jobs that don't use their degrees"

[retired711]

So reports the Wall Street Journal today. Because the item is behind a paywall, let me summarize it:

* This isn't just a problem for new graduates; 45% of those ten years after college are still underemployed.

*Most of the grads who don't find work using their degree are in jobs that require a high school education or less.

* Not surprisingly, the grad's college major matters: the best majors are health sciences, engineering, business (but only if math-intensive, such as accounting), architecture and education. But even for these, approximately a quarter to a third of grads are underemployed. The worst ones are public safety, recreation/wellness, business (marketing, HR, management), humanities/cultural studies, and visual arts. For these, 54% or more are underemployed.

* A choice of early jobs is very important. It is easy to get pigeonholed by today's algorithms, e.g, if a grad takes jobs in the food-service industry, he is likely to be considered only for other jobs in that field.

* It is *very* helpful to have had some kind of internship during college.

* If a grad does get a job that uses his degree, he is going to do fine. He will make 90% more in his twenties than people with only a high school diploma The problem that that many grads don't get jobs that use their degrees.

 

[retired711]

So reports the Wall Street Journal today. Because the item is behind a paywall, let me summarize it:

* This isn't just a problem for new graduates; 45% of those ten years after college are still underemployed.

*Most of the grads who don't find work using their degree are in jobs that require a high school education or less.

* Not surprisingly, the grad's college major matters: the best majors are health sciences, engineering, business (but only if math-intensive, such as accounting), architecture and education. But even for these, approximately a quarter to a third of grads are underemployed. The worst ones are public safety, recreation/wellness, business (marketing, HR, management), humanities/cultural studies, and visual arts. For these, 54% or more are underemployed.

* A choice of early jobs is very important. It is easy to get pigeonholed by today's algorithms, e.g, if a grad takes jobs in the food-service industry, he is likely to be considered only for other jobs in that field.

* It is *very* helpful to have had some kind of internship during college.

* If a grad does get a job that uses his degree, he is going to do fine. He will make 90% more in his twenties than people with only a high school diploma The problem that that many grads don't get jobs that use their degrees.

Here's the link for those who can get through the paywall:

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/caree...nused-440b2abd?mod=djemCapitalJournalDaybreak

 

[Rutgers NJ]

Very sad to read. This is why it's so important to major in fields you love and know there's job growth and availability.

 

[bigmatt718]

Economics is another major that I'd consider useless unless you double major in something like accounting or finance. I majored in Econ and now work in international logistics. I wish I majored in Supply Chain Management at RBS instead.

 

[jtung230]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/19/job-posts-for-workers-without-degrees-are-booming-but-not-the-hiring.html

 

[jtung230]

I majored in statistics and work in finance. Is that not using my degree?

 

[bigmatt718]

I majored in statistics and work in finance. Is that not using my degree?

Are you a Financial Analyst? Then yes, I'd say so.

 

[rutgersdave]

Are there too many college graduates? Students that are just average or below are working in jobs not requiring a college degree. Should there be better communication and allocation of students to majors to the jobs availability?

 

[Scarlet4ever]

This is something I’ve felt for a long time. Years ago when a college degree differentiated you from a good portion of the population, any degree could be useful to get a decent job even outside of their field.

Now that a much bigger percentage of the population goes to college and with the cost now being much steeper, I always advise kids to figure out what they want to do then do the training for that field rather than the reverse. A lot of kids go to college without having any idea what they want to do. I did that myself and ended up having to go back once I figured out what I wanted to do professionally.

 

[tom1944]

I seem to recall that accounting may be impacted by AI

 

[mdk01]

Are there too many college graduates? Students that are just average or below are working in jobs not requiring a college degree. Should there be better communication and allocation of students to majors to the jobs availability?

IMHO not too many graduates, but the portion getting JUCO degrees could be a higher. There are things that provides that would make people more employable. For kids who went to crap high schools it's a chance to catch up.[/QUOTE]

 

[newell138]

This is something I’ve felt for a long time. Years ago when a college degree differentiated you from a good portion of the population, any degree could be useful to get a decent job even outside of their field.

Now that a much bigger percentage of the population goes to college and with the cost now being much steeper, I always advise kids to figure out what they want to do then do the training for that field rather than the reverse. A lot of kids go to college without having any idea what they want to do. I did that myself and ended up having to go back once I figured out what I wanted to do professionally.

I’m case in point with that. Useless degree but was able to get a job because I had a degree and worked my into various roles and promotions within my company as I gained knowledge. Today my degree wouldn’t even get me an interview because the HR software would reject my resume because it was lacking a specific type of degree listed.

 

[ruinac]

Here’s the report. I hate when online articles don’t provide readers with the links to the actual research reports. Unsurprisingly, graduates of for-profit schools fare the worst while graduates of selective colleges do best.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6197797102be715f55c0e0a1/t/65d7705653660e652db98306/1708617815952/Talent+Disrupted+02222024.pdf

 

[bigmatt718]

Here’s the report. I hate when online articles don’t provide readers with the links to the actual research reports. Unsurprisingly, graduates of for-profit schools fare the worst while graduates of selective colleges do best.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6197797102be715f55c0e0a1/t/65d7705653660e652db98306/1708617815952/Talent+Disrupted+02222024.pdf

Lol imagine being duped into going into a for-profit college. Those poor bastards.

 

[retired711]

This is something I’ve felt for a long time. Years ago when a college degree differentiated you from a good portion of the population, any degree could be useful to get a decent job even outside of their field.

Now that a much bigger percentage of the population goes to college and with the cost now being much steeper, I always advise kids to figure out what they want to do then do the training for that field rather than the reverse. A lot of kids go to college without having any idea what they want to do. I did that myself and ended up having to go back once I figured out what I wanted to do professionally.

The problem is that it's hard to know at age 17 or 18 what one wants to do at graduation. I know that what I ended up doing is not what I planned when I graduated high school, and I don't think I'm exceptional.

 

[RUskoolie]

As a small business owner, I do not require a college degree for my full time employees. Sadly I come across a lot of Rutgers students who have no business in college.

 

[jtung230]

As a small business owner, I do not require a college degree for my full time employees. Sadly I come across a lot of Rutgers students who have no business in college.

Don’t take this the wrong way. But maybe it’s the job that’s attracting a certain type of students. Full disclosure, I was one of those students.

 

[e5fdny]

The problem is that it's hard to know at age 17 or 18 what one wants to do at graduation. I know that what I ended up doing is not what I planned when I graduated high school, and I don't think I'm exceptional.

I find you very exceptional. 🙂

 

[yesrutgers01]

Using ten years or less is what makes it interesting. I would think- 2 years or 5 years make more sense. By the time you are past 5 years, other candidates with more experience and success have caught you.

 

[RUTGERS95]

Are there too many college graduates? Students that are just average or below are working in jobs not requiring a college degree. Should there be better communication and allocation of students to majors to the jobs availability?

right here

 

[RU Cheese]

I majored in statistics and work in finance. Is that not using my degree?

Depends if p < 0.05

 

[rurichdog]

Economics is another major that I'd consider useless unless you double major in something like accounting or finance. I majored in Econ and now work in international logistics. I wish I majored in Supply Chain Management at RBS instead.

I majored in Meteorology. If I knew I was going to career in IT I would have majored in Comp Sci or Business.

 

[Scarlet4ever]

The problem is that it's hard to know at age 17 or 18 what one wants to do at graduation. I know that what I ended up doing is not what I planned when I graduated high school, and I don't think I'm exceptional.

Agree. I cringe when kids toss 100-200k at a major they’re not interested in or a major that can’t reliably place a student in a position to start a good career. I would advise taking a year off or using community college as a cheaper alternative to find a course in life rather than go into significant debt in hopes of figuring it out.

 

[jtung230]

Agree. I cringe when kids toss 100-200k at a major they’re not interested in or a major that can’t reliably place a student in a position to start a good career. I would advise taking a year off or using community college as a cheaper alternative to find a course in life rather than go into significant debt in hopes of figuring it out.

Part of going to college is to find yourself. Not sure a year off or CC will help. 1st is all your prerequisite classes

 

[RUskoolie]

Don’t take this the wrong way. But maybe it’s the job that’s attracting a certain type of students. Full disclosure, I was one of those students.

I'm just talking about the intellect of students in general. Our real estate company manages about 500 of them in off campus housing and good Lord at some of the stupid things we see/hear.

 

[retired711]

Agree. I cringe when kids toss 100-200k at a major they’re not interested in or a major that can’t reliably place a student in a position to start a good career. I would advise taking a year off or using community college as a cheaper alternative to find a course in life rather than go into significant debt in hopes of figuring it out.

Taking some time off might be a good idea. I could *always* tell the difference between a law student who was right out of college and one who had been in the world for a while, even a short time.

 

[jtung230]

I'm just talking about the intellect of students in general. Our real estate company manages about 500 of them in off campus housing and good Lord at some of the stupid things we see/hear.

Again, guilty

 

[ashokan]

Colleges have beached themselves on the shores of unsanity and dysfunction.
Penn St prof caught get freaky with his dog (and that was just the start).
Princeton prof urging a "rethink on bestiality."
Men on women's sport teams and menstruation products in men's room and not women's
Diversity is the highest goal but if you dont march to the hive drums you get drummed-out.
Anything considered white is "traumatic."
Over-recruiting students who become DMV style faculty with dumb ideas and anti-social agendas.
Kids better have some skills and a trade to go along with their studies

Kuntsler nailed this all in 2019.

"It has been an amazement to behold the appalling, hypocritical suppression of the first amendment on campuses across the nation, with their ignoble speech codes, asinine safe spaces, sinister kangaroo courts, and racist anti-whiteness crusades.

Most wondrous of all has been the failure of college presidents, deans, trustees, and faculty chairs to assert their authority and do the right thing — namely, take a stand against the arrant muzzling of free expression by campus Stalinists. Their craven passivity is a symptom of what future historians will identify as the epic institutional collapse of higher education, which first made itself into an industry like any other moneygrubbing business, and then became a titanic racketeering operation. And now it is all coming to grief.

In the years ahead, you will see colleges go out of business at a shocking rate and the contagion will spread to the giant state systems around the country..it’s not hard to see how this fiasco developed and blossomed. In the 1960s, when I was in college, Marxism offered a neat, pre-engineered template for opposing the odious Establishment that blundered into the Vietnam War...

The delusion that everybody must have a college education finally turned Higher Ed into a racket, when the federal government decided to guarantee college loans — which only prompted colleges to ramp up tuitions way beyond the official inflation rate and undertake massive expansion programs in the competition for the expanding base of student customer-borrowers. Almost all colleges acted as facilitators to this loan racket, though with federal guarantees they had no skin in that game. Now, outstanding student loan debt is $1.5 trillion, and about 40 percent of it is nonperforming, in euphemistic banker jargon. The student borrowers have been fleeced, many of them financially destroyed for life, and they have only begun to express themselves politically."

https://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/coercion-meets-its-match/

 

[Knight Shift]

As a small business owner, I do not require a college degree for my full time employees. Sadly I come across a lot of Rutgers students who have no business in college.

I tend to think small business owners were born with the mindset to become small business owners, or it was learned through the family or working as young person for a small business.
A friend of my brother has two brothers- one who did not go to college, but started with one automobile air conditioning shop in south Florida many years ago. He eventually developed it into a fairly large group of shops, sold it off in his 40s and retired.

The other brother went to law school, and he became a partner in some large firm. He's doing well, but not nearly as well as the brother who went into the automobile AC business.

Being in law, there are many more attorneys who take the "safer" route of working for someone else at a larger firm because it is perceived as more prestigious and as an opportunity to make big bucks. At most firms the deck is stacked against the majority of people making big bucks at the top partner level. The real opportunities for happiness and doing well is to start your own firm with a group of attorneys and operate as a small-medium sized firm. But this route is perceived as risky and less prestigious.

But it's not very different than the brother who opened the automobile AC business. You have to have the entrepreneurial instinct, drive and the willingness to take some lumps, get beat down and get back up and keep going. Persistence more often than not pays off. But you don't need a college degree to learn how to do this.

 

[daveo13]

I think some HS kids should think about going into trade schools instead of 4 year colleges. The amount of money that is being made in blue color work is ridiculous. I’m talking in commercial work, residential is properly a good living but it can be up and down. A lot of the good contractors are getting up there in age and looking for people, if you are young and have a good work ethic you can do very well in a construction trade.

 

[RUskoolie]

I tend to think small business owners were born with the mindset to become small business owners, or it was learned through the family or working as young person for a small business.
A friend of my brother has two brothers- one who did not go to college, but started with one automobile air conditioning shop in south Florida many years ago. He eventually developed it into a fairly large group of shops, sold it off in his 40s and retired.

The other brother went to law school, and he became a partner in some large firm. He's doing well, but not nearly as well as the brother who went into the automobile AC business.

Being in law, there are many more attorneys who take the "safer" route of working for someone else at a larger firm because it is perceived as more prestigious and as an opportunity to make big bucks. At most firms the deck is stacked against the majority of people making big bucks at the top partner level. The real opportunities for happiness and doing well is to start your own firm with a group of attorneys and operate as a small-medium sized firm. But this route is perceived as risky and less prestigious.

But it's not very different than the brother who opened the automobile AC business. You have to have the entrepreneurial instinct, drive and the willingness to take some lumps, get beat down and get back up and keep going. Persistence more often than not pays off. But you don't need a college degree to learn how to do this.

It's funny because I always get asked to speak at the Rutgers real estate club and have done it 3 times in 5 years (most recently last month). I never have any slides to present, not corporate in the way I talk or dress there, just basically wing it and gush about a topic for an hour while doing Q&A. Every single time I get handfuls of students coming up to me afterwards or emailing me telling me how awesome my talk was and how different it was.

I think college teaches a lot of people to be good corporate puppets but somewhere along the way they forgot to teach them how to just think, take risks, explore much different topics etc. They teach very narrow topics geared at students being placed at a high paying corporate job,.

 

[Scarlet1984]

Colleges have beached themselves on the shores of unsanity and dysfunction.
Penn St prof caught get freaky with his dog (and that was just the start).
Princeton prof urging a "rethink on bestiality."
Men on women's sport teams and menstruation products in men's room and not women's
Diversity is the highest goal but if you dont march to the hive drums you get drummed-out.
Anything considered white is "traumatic."
Over-recruiting students who become DMV style faculty with dumb ideas and anarchic, anti-social agendas.
Kids better have some skills and a trade to go along with their studies

Kuntsler nailed this all in 2019.

"It has been an amazement to behold the appalling, hypocritical suppression of the first amendment on campuses across the nation, with their ignoble speech codes, asinine safe spaces, sinister kangaroo courts, and racist anti-whiteness crusades.

Most wondrous of all has been the failure of college presidents, deans, trustees, and faculty chairs to assert their authority and do the right thing — namely, take a stand against the arrant muzzling of free expression by campus Stalinists. Their craven passivity is a symptom of what future historians will identify as the epic institutional collapse of higher education, which first made itself into an industry like any other moneygrubbing business, and then became a titanic racketeering operation. And now it is all coming to grief.

In the years ahead, you will see colleges go out of business at a shocking rate and the contagion will spread to the giant state systems around the country..it’s not hard to see how this fiasco developed and blossomed. In the 1960s, when I was in college, Marxism offered a neat, pre-engineered template for opposing the odious Establishment that blundered into the Vietnam War...

The delusion that everybody must have a college education finally turned Higher Ed into a racket, when the federal government decided to guarantee college loans — which only prompted colleges to ramp up tuitions way beyond the official inflation rate and undertake massive expansion programs in the competition for the expanding base of student customer-borrowers. Almost all colleges acted as facilitators to this loan racket, though with federal guarantees they had no skin in that game. Now, outstanding student loan debt is $1.5 trillion, and about 40 percent of it is nonperforming, in euphemistic banker jargon. The student borrowers have been fleeced, many of them financially destroyed for life, and they have only begun to express themselves politically."

https://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/coercion-meets-its-match/

Please limit posts to 500 words or less.

 

[Knight Shift]

It's funny because I always get asked to speak at the Rutgers real estate club and have done it 3 times in 5 years (most recently last month). I never have any slides to present, not corporate in the way I talk or dress there, just basically wing it and gush about a topic for an hour while doing Q&A. Every single time I get handfuls of students coming up to me afterwards or emailing me telling me how awesome my talk was and how different it was.

I think college teaches a lot of people to be good corporate puppets but somewhere along the way they forgot to teach them how to just think, take risks, explore much different topics etc. They teach very narrow topics geared at students being placed at a high paying corporate job,.

My college experience was a bit different. When I majored in Ceramic Engineering, the department was a small family, and we had a lot of excellent opportunities to do research work on really cool technology with professors. There were also a couple of really great professors with some swagger, and they definitely impacted me.

It's nice you are giving back by talking to students. We are involved with an intern program, and I speak each year to a senior seminar class on career opportunities in patent law. My talk is much the same way-winging it off the cuff, and I make it as interactive as possible, asking a lot of questions of the group to see what they want to do after college. Some of them really respond, and fortunately, I've never put anybody to sleep.

 

[bigmatt718]

Part of going to college is to find yourself. Not sure a year off or CC will help. 1st is all your prerequisite classes

Yeah. Freshman year is more or less 13th grade, only with the caveat of paying for it.

 

[rutgersal]

Economics is another major that I'd consider useless unless you double major in something like accounting or finance. I majored in Econ and now work in international logistics. I wish I majored in Supply Chain Management at RBS instead.

Lots of scope for economics grads, who have the skillsets to work for big NYC banks, which is what I would recommend. Bank rotation programs provide outstanding training, if you can get in one.

As far as accounting, All you need is a concentration in Accounting, which is Accounting I, Accounting II, and Cost Accounting. This is assuming you don’t want to be an Accountant, but want a strong foundation in the basics.

But for yourself, I would recommend getting an MBA, with a Concentration in Supply Chain Management, if that is where your interests lie. You’ll find the material more meaningful now that you have real world experience.

 

[bigmatt718]

Part of going to college is to find yourself. Not sure a year off or CC will help. 1st is all your prerequisite classes

Yep. Freshman year academically speaking is just 13th Grade with your pre-reqs with the added caveat of paying for them.

 

[Plum Street]

I'm just talking about the intellect of students in general. Our real estate company manages about 500 of them in off campus housing and good Lord at some of the stupid things we see/hear.

Any good stories ??

 

[jtung230]

It's funny because I always get asked to speak at the Rutgers real estate club and have done it 3 times in 5 years (most recently last month). I never have any slides to present, not corporate in the way I talk or dress there, just basically wing it and gush about a topic for an hour while doing Q&A. Every single time I get handfuls of students coming up to me afterwards or emailing me telling me how awesome my talk was and how different it was.

I think college teaches a lot of people to be good corporate puppets but somewhere along the way they forgot to teach them how to just think, take risks, explore much different topics etc. They teach very narrow topics geared at students being placed at a high paying corporate job,.

My former neighbor was a founding member. I knew the last former outreach person. It’s a great idea and hope they can make it as full accredited concentration for the business school. I did hire someone from the program but it didn’t work out.

ETA some of our former football players work in CRE now.

 

[Unionst]

It's funny because I always get asked to speak at the Rutgers real estate club and have done it 3 times in 5 years (most recently last month). I never have any slides to present, not corporate in the way I talk or dress there, just basically wing it and gush about a topic for an hour while doing Q&A. Every single time I get handfuls of students coming up to me afterwards or emailing me telling me how awesome my talk was and how different it was.

I think college teaches a lot of people to be good corporate puppets but somewhere along the way they forgot to teach them how to just think, take risks, explore much different topics etc. They teach very narrow topics geared at students being placed at a high paying corporate job,.

It sounds like you’re calling for more liberal arts students. A narrow, job focused education is necessarily narrow. A broader education prepares the student better for a changing world.

 

[ru109]

So reports the Wall Street Journal today. Because the item is behind a paywall, let me summarize it:

* This isn't just a problem for new graduates; 45% of those ten years after college are still underemployed.

*Most of the grads who don't find work using their degree are in jobs that require a high school education or less.

* Not surprisingly, the grad's college major matters: the best majors are health sciences, engineering, business (but only if math-intensive, such as accounting), architecture and education. But even for these, approximately a quarter to a third of grads are underemployed. The worst ones are public safety, recreation/wellness, business (marketing, HR, management), humanities/cultural studies, and visual arts. For these, 54% or more are underemployed.

* A choice of early jobs is very important. It is easy to get pigeonholed by today's algorithms, e.g, if a grad takes jobs in the food-service industry, he is likely to be considered only for other jobs in that field.

* It is *very* helpful to have had some kind of internship during college.

* If a grad does get a job that uses his degree, he is going to do fine. He will make 90% more in his twenties than people with only a high school diploma The problem that that many grads don't get jobs that use their degrees.

I know plenty of people who are doing fine that are in different fields than what they majored in college. I'd bet about 1/3 of my companies executive committee members didn't major in business yet they help run one of the 7 largest banks in the US.