Two Words:
Juris Doctor.
In my experience over the last 30 years, there have always been more graduates than jobs.
What has happened since the 60s, I graduated from college in 75, is the incredible fragmentation of fields. With so many different kinds of skills being looked for, the population in each field is far smaller and because simply of the size, there is more chance that there will be some fields that have shortages or gluts. So companies complain they can’t find enough computer science grads when they really can’t find network engineers with five years of Cisco experience. But when they talk to the reporters or congress, they can’t find enough STEM grads-perhaps because simply they think of their latest problem, not the big picture. And of course as was said upthread, they can get cheaper help by bringing in foreigners as well.
We have plenty of graduates. They don’t have the ability to gain and keep current all the skills companies are looking for. Easier to import the skills than to nurture it at home.
I’m not quite sure that’s true. The hypothesis is “the number of qualified jobs for people with English undergrad degrees is dwarfed by the number of people out there with English undergrad degrees looking for jobs. So they hire the best they can find, and pay them shit, because, well, there are 10 more people just like them who’ll be happy to have that job if they don’t want it.” I’m not sure how these numbers disprove this. In fact, the number of humanities and social sciences BS degrees have doubled numerically but the number of total graduates has also doubled. So if the job market for these skills is constant then you will have college graduates selling french fries. The hard sciences are different because they are a) a smaller percentage of the population of college graduates and b) technological advancement and profit depend on them to a greater extent. I think this actually supports the point.
In the 70s, there were other respectable avenues for work–trades, manufacturing, etc. Now those avenues are looked down upon–my daughter was told by her high school counselor that if you don’t go to college, you are a failure. WTF?! This does not seem to be an isolated incident. Nobody talks about college AND trade schools, or apprenticeships as the avenues for success, they only talk about college. So in the end you get a bunch of people who don’t want to go to college or aren’t prepared for it wasting time and money because that is the expectation. For some it works out–I wanted to be a machinist, wound up an engineer because my dad–a craftsman–told me I was going to college and I was paying for it–but for many it either doesn’t and they wind up dropping out, or the wind up with a degree that is useless.
turner writes:
> In fact, the number of humanities and social sciences BS degrees have doubled
> numerically but the number of total graduates has also doubled.
Not relative to the population they haven’t. Here are the population numbers for the U.S. for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries:
The top of that table of graduates (originally linked to in post #2) is for graduates in 1971, while the bottom is for 2012. So the top of the table is relative to a population of 207.66 million, while the bottom is for 313.91 million. The proportion of graduates in 1971 is 839,730 divided by 207,660,000, while the proportion of graduates in 2012 is 1,791,046 divided by 313,910,000. There are thus about 4.044 graduates in 1971 for each person in the U.S. that year, while there are about 5.706 graduates in 2012 for each person in the U.S. that year. So the number of graduates in 2012 is only about 41% more than in 1971 relative to the population of the U.S. in the respective years. I’ll let you do the same calculations for each field.
For STEM fields in grad school the vast majority of people are not born in the US.
No, not quite. 27% of STEM master’s degrees and 33% of STEM Ph.D.'s in the U.S. are granted to foreign students. This is typical of countries with large numbers of top graduate programs. More than 40% of all Ph.D. students in the U.K. and Switzerland are foreign students:
But jobs don’t necessarily grow with population. If a town doubles in size, it doesn’t mean you need double the journalists. There will be some growth true, but not as significant as with STEM jobs where the percentage of people is small and the need or desire to stay ahead of competitors is typically dependent on technology (new stuff, better, cheaper production, more efficient code, etc.)
So is it your contention that the number of jobs in the U.S. has not been growing in proportion to the population? Do you really think that the number of all jobs in the U.S. has remained the same from 1971 to 2012? If that were true, at least a third of all people in the U.S. would be unemployed. Or do you believe that some specific sorts of jobs haven’t increased in number, despite there being more than 50% more people in the U.S. in 2012 than in 1971? Which specific types of jobs? Show me some evidence that proves why those specific jobs don’t increase in number despite an increase in population even though other sorts of jobs do increase in number.
I never said that. The premise is that there are or may be a bunch of English majors without jobs. This I’m sure was meant to be extrapolated to humanities/liberal arts types of degrees. Of course the job market expanded with population, but you can’t deny the types of jobs have changed. For example, while the number of manufacturing jobs have actually gone up in the , they are typically the smaller, niche manufacturing positions or mom and pop manufacturing centers that pay less than, say, a UAW job. Similarly, as the market became more technology based, the job market shifts toward more technology based degrees. There are jobs that just want someone with a degree–a degree shows a certain level of fortitude and ability to accomplish tasks, but the market doesn’t just create jobs because mommies had babies 22 years before.
You said:
> But jobs don’t necessarily grow with population.
I said:
> So is it your contention that the number of jobs in the U.S. has not been growing
> in proportion to the population?
Then you said:
> I never said that.
Look, the unemployment rate in 2012 was about the same as the unemployment rate in 1971. So the number of jobs does grow at about the same rate as the population does. What jobs do you think grew slower than the population? What jobs grew faster than the population? (If some grew slower, then others must have grown faster to keep the unemployment rate the same.) Why did the ones that grew slower do so? Why did the ones that grew faster do so?
Yes and no.
Supposedly there’s a lot fewer stay-at-home wives than decades ago.
Number of jobs has increased faster than population.
What has changed too - there was a lot of extra cash floating around, companies were not so lean, there were a lot more middle management jobs and a better ability to tolerate dead-wood.
My experience with PCM is that they don’t necessarily prepare you for a real job (unlike say, Computer Science or Engineering) but they give you a solid grounding for technical science jobs such as lab work or actuarial science. So it’s debatable what “prepare for a real job” means, vs. setting the groundwork for real on-the-job training. Plus, the chemists where I used to work once, had a serious competition from community college lab technicians.
I also recall when I was in college in the 70’s, one of the jobs discussed for graduates was “insurance salesman”. (Seriously!) A few people with insider knowledge said what the companies liked to do was hire graduates - they did not care what your actual degree was in. (So it became a fallback job for the hard of hiring) They paid you a salary the first year and a small commission; the next year your salary was smaller and commission rate larger, and by the third year, you barely made any salary, it was all commission - at which point the non-sales types quit.
The cynics said it was simple - the beginner probably roped in all his extended family and freshly graduated friends (with real jobs) who probably had trouble saying no; once they had all your circle of friends committed to a policy, well, sink or swim getting real sales.