Add the Broadway lyrics: “What’s the matter with kids today?”
Of course the under-30 set will always be considered brats. It’s just that the under-30 set keeps growing up, just as the over-30 set is replenished…
While it may be misleading to suggest you’re guaranteed a job with a BA, you’d have to agree that you’d be worse served if they didn’t push college upon you at all since you say a BA is needed for even menial work. Those who completed their degrees and don’t have jobs are still, in many ways, ahead of the game over those who never went to college.
I agree with the thrust of your argument though in that we’re getting further and further from a situation where hard work is any assurance of even comfortable success. Likewise, it feels as though we’re getting further from the days where you could enter a company at age 16, work your way up through the positions to where you could raise a family at age 18-21 and retire at 60. My father is a big shot with a regional grocery company and started there in high school (and never got better than a HS diploma). I have my grandfather’s gold & ruby pin from the same company, awarded to him after 50 years of service. Now* employees are treated as disposable and even consideration for entry requires a key that, in the US anyway, starts at tens of thousands of dollars. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel burned after spending that sort of time and money and seeing that it’s accomplished very little.
I was mainly reacting to the first point and the twin implications that (A) “shame” at working manual labor is a good excuse not to do it and (B) manual labor seemingly begins and ends with fast food.
Well, yes, absolutely – but I’d argue that it’s still evidence of a systemic failure and incredible societal waste. Look at all the investment that’s gone into someone earning a degree. Perhaps 1-2 years of preschool or kindergarten, 12-14 years of primary and secondary education, then 3-5 years of a basic degree like a BA. All that for what will likely be an unskilled job; if a skilled job, more likely than not a job outside the field of one’s degree. Do we as a society gain from paying for all this crap? Is it fair that some poor bastard has to have passed high school algebra and organic chemistry, and gained a degree at considerable expense in international relations, say, for the privilege of reading off a script in a call centre? The overwhelming majority of “education” that people go through today is a colossal waste of time, much of it mandated by law, with probably the majority of students lacking interest and engagement in the subjects taught. All to keep youngsters off the job market for an extra decade to keep the unemployment figures down. (At least that’s what it feels like sometimes) With automation and cost-saving measures, there’s less and less need for any real skills in the workforce, but the demands/requirements from employers just keep increasing regardless.
This is heading into GD territory, but I suspect that’s the real reason why people are talking about the BRICs or other developing states taking over the future; less money wasted at totally unnecessary education. Here in Brazil it’s still possible to get a legal, “acceptable” job with just a high school education. Hell, the previous president didn’t even have that, IIRC. University degrees actually mean something and genuinely improve one’s prospects. Engineers need never go unemployed, for example.
As an aside, I’d also note that, of all the things I’ve studied and/or got qualifications in, the skills that give me the best “edge” these days on the job market is languages. 2 I learned at home. 1 I learned because I was bored. 3 I learned from moving around, mainly looking for work. I learned 3 at school – of which I have effectively never used 2. I have formal qualifications in exactly none of them, yet at my unpaid internship, more than half of my work consists of translation, central to government operation, among 7 languages. My employer is delighted, since they get all this and more for free, because they can; when I leave, they’ll simply do without, and dodge criticisms of the drop in services by pointing at budget cuts. At the subcontracting translation business I freelance at, I last had an offer of a paid assignment in… February, I think? For the hope of steadier paid translation work I would need a certification, which here requires a 6-month course and more money than I can afford – for each language.
That’s fair. I’m just concerned that this attitude might be constructed into a gigantic strawman in an attempt to derail or discredit valid criticisms of youths unable to find enough work to sustain themselves. That is, just because there might be some/many overentitled lazy brats among the unemployed doesn’t mean that there isn’t a chronic, systemic unemployment/underemployment problem for the younger generation.
I don’t think kids today are pampered. I think kids of m generation were pampered. When I was a senior in college I got a job offer without even looking very hard. When I got out of grad school I got several good job offers without looking very hard. I think it is perfectly reasonable to resent being told that not being grateful for a burger flipping job offer after four years of college makes you a lazy bum. it is more that our society screwed up by not being able to make best use of young and smart kids.
My kids are both nervous about getting jobs when they get out of grad school, even though they are both taking business, are both brilliant, and have the advantage of supportive parents. When I was in college the prospect of taking a crap job was not even on our horizon. And that isn’t because we were smarter - I see resumes from a lot of colleges, and these kids worked harder than I ever did.
This is just a case of those who blew up the economy now blaming the victims of their nefarious deeds.
Maybe you need to figure out how to do a better job interviewing. My new employee, and my intern this summer, have done a crapload of work impressing the hell out of everyone. If they spend time on Facebook I don’t care, since they more than accomplished my objectives for them.
If you can’t find good people in this market, you only have yourself to blame.
I think the major problem here is that not all degrees are created equal.
Few of the people I work with are working in a field outside their degree. Few of the people in my department at school had trouble getting jobs in our field. That’s because we got degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, fields in which there’s still plenty of demand for workers. The problem isn’t that no one ends up working in their field. The problem is that are a lot more International Relations degrees awarded now, and it turns out we didn’t actually need that many people studying International Relations.
I agree that there’s a problem with telling kids that you just need to go to college and get a degree, any degree. Some degrees are more valuable than others.
The amount of money someone can make on unemployment tends to be a lot more then what they can make at McDonald’s- meaning, they can actually afford to pay rent AND eat. While minimum wage may be going up, the amount that people are getting hired for is going down. For example, Home Depot (which I worked at for 2 years) used to be a jackpot for the college kid, making anywhere from 10-15 an hour with tons of full time potential. They started hiring only part timers, making 8 dollars an hour, giving them MAYBE 20 hours a week (if they like you) and then would fire you once your 90 day review came around so that they don’t have to provide you with any kind of insurance.
Its not about “lowering yourself” to take any job that comes along. “Kids” my age get called “losers” because they live at home. You try paying between $400- $900 a month rent, electric, water, gas, and if you’re lucky, cable, phone & internet on $8 an hour with unsteady hours. Dont forget, depending on where you live you will also need a car & gas to get to that job. Oh, and if you dont need a car, but your job is too far to walk/bike to, you will need bus money. And food.
With that said, Ive lived on my own on since 19. There was collectively a year or two that I lived with my mom again, but I still contributed to the household. Im now 25, unemployed and going back to school so I can get my BA and try to get a “real job”. (since trying to get one on just experience doesn’t really happen anymore) I was lucky enough to have a decent job before the job market turned to crap and to have a boyfriend that I split everything with now. But, if I had the chance to do it over, your damn straight I would still be living at home.
Maybe if they are sitting around not doing anything. But being the 901st person in line for a job you aren’t even well suited for doesn’t make sense. I’ve been hearing of people sending out more resumes in one day than I have my entire life and not getting anything.
We are hiring, and our new college grad pot is treated differently from our experienced pot. We are looking for potential, and we expect to train people. I don’t expect kids right out of college to play sophisticated job hunting games or to have built up networks. Let’s open the door for them, and not expect them to be experienced enough to be able to pick the lock.
Having never been on unemployment, I was under the impression that your weekly stipend was dependent upon your previous work/salary history. Is this incorrect? If it is correct, I wouldn’t assume that someone rolling out of college and into unemployment would be receiving much.
But the value of degrees change wildly with time. During the bubble everyone and his brother was getting a CS degree - those still in school when it burst were screwed, and the number of CS degrees awarded plummeted and is still relatively low. Now that we are having a nice recovery in Silicon Valley those who stuck with it are in good shape.
A few years ago everyone was talking about how the future is in globalization, so it is not surprising that there was a boom in studies to take advantage of it. With a four year delay in picking a degree and using it, is not surprising that there are swings. It is not a matter of the degree not being valuable, just that there are too many people with the degree.
I decided to major in CS long before it was popular, or clearly lucrative. My father told me I should take some business classes to have something to fall back on. Some of us are lucky, but we shouldn’t confuse luck with brains.
Yes, those kids who graduated college into an enormous recession/economic fallow period where hiring and who were often competing for entry-level with more experienced workers who’d lost their jobs earlier in the same economic crisis are a bunch of lazy, spoiled brats who aren’t trying hard enough. This is really separate from Occupy Wall Street because I think everybody knows the exact same complaints were being made about the exact same people before the Occupy demonstrations got started. By and larger it’s just “kids today.”
This is correct. Which is why I said the amount they can make. I personally make pretty close (before taxes) to what I was making before being laid off. Obviously this is different for everyone.
Who said this? The question was, is “society” to blame for making them unwilling to accept manual labor jobs in the meantime because they feel they’re too good for it? That’s what the linked column asserts.
Right, but the issue is deeper than that. Of course we don’t need as many IR specialists as we have IR graduates. But when the job opportunities on graduation are mainly, say, call centre attendant, retail assistant, secretary, QA tester, waiter/waitress, and security guard, and all of them require a BA, what should one study? If we incentivise young’uns to study computer science, engineering, and chemistry (for example), they’d likely graduate with a more “valuable” degree. But if most of them aren’t actually interested in or dedicated to the subjects, it would just water down those degrees further, and not necessarily solve the problem. An underemployed BA in a call centre job is just as much of a waste whether it’s in art history or chemical engineering.
Furthermore, your examples of computer science and electrical engineering are fields which generally require further specialisation anyway to get a “real” job, barring exceptional luck, AFAIK. I mean, a computer science degree in a vacuum isn’t going to land you a job – what you really need is further experience/training/qualifications in specific programming languages, databases, systems analysis or administration, or something along those lines. Electrical engineers need apprenticeships, don’t they? (None were available when I looked, back home) So these cases, IMO, are similar to other “specialised” educations like medicine or law, or like the trades like carpentry and plumbing, where a 3-year degree alone isn’t enough for a decent job in the field.
Or I could be wrong, YMMV depending on region/country and such.
This has been true of every 20-something employee I’ve worked with in both Fortune 500 companies and small mom & pop shops in the past 5 years. Fortunately (or unfortunately since I have to work with them), I haven’t been responsible for hiring these particular individuals.
That’s true too. My brother graduated with a CS degree just when the dot com bubble was at its peak, and immediately got a job in the field through friends. When the bubble burst, he was saved by his minor in business administration (and by his friends). Now he’s well-paid but overworked in a steady job, by having been able to stick in the field.
By contrast, I have degrees in history, politics, and a more regional course which mixed economics, politics, and history. (Yes, I know I would have been better off studying economics or business administration. I had no interest in those subjects at the time. I’m planning on taking extra courses in them soon.) I was studying as the EU was in the midst of its biggest expansion and everyone at “home” was getting rich and/or gainfully employed through international cooperation. I was hoping for a government, EU, or UN job, since it’s what I most want to do and what I’m (almost) best at, and it was all in rapid expansion while I was studying. Then on graduation, I found that my country’s foreign ministry had had its budget slashed – so they went from hiring hundreds a year to hiring two people the year I graduated. At the same time, the EU was specifically trying to cut down on the number of citizens from my country as they were trying to get citizens from the new member states – even though I spoke relevant languages. The UN was reeling from its further marginalisation from the Afghan and Iraq wars and practically wasn’t hiring anybody. The next big thing at the time, when I was looking for other options? Banking. How’s that working out these days?
I think this discussion has gotten off track. The point of the articcle’s comment about “manual labor” is not about taking a burger flipper job to make ends meet.
it’s about valuing the trades as a legitimate, lifetime career path. Boomers had an absolute horror of the trades, and they made sure that no child of theirs would be a mechanic, plumber, or anything dreadful like that. I mean, if your mom went to Smith and you became an electrician, that was considered an embarassment.
When in fact those are in-demand, stable careers that can never be offshored and offer excellent opportunities for business ownership.
What manual labor jobs? If I were hiring manual laborers, I sure as hell would stay away from college grads who would (naturally) quit as soon as the market improved. Anyhow, as has been mentioned, the unemployment rate is higher the less education you have, so if is all the fault of the job seeker the kid who didn’t go to college must be even lazier than the kid who did.
I fall into this agre group, so here’s my thoughts:
#5. Making You Ashamed to Take Manual Labor Jobs
I definitely have the sense that most people around my age feel that working manual labor means you failed at life. I had manual labor jobs through high school and undergrad, which includes during the dot com bubble burst, and I ran into tons of people who retired and lost money or were laid off and were doing those jobs and were fine with it.
And now with the economey where it is, I’ve known more than a few people who were unemployed for extended periods, even losing their benefits in a few cases, but refusing to get jobs that were “beneath” them. If you’ve been to college, “flipping burgers” is something you never have to do. Like going to college is some type of rite of passage and those jobs are reserved for the screw ups or people who just didn’t go to college. It’s certainly not everyone, probably not even most, but it’s definitely a stronger sentiment that I got from older generations.
#4. Implying That College Would Guarantee You a Good Job
This one is definitely true. All through high school, they pushed college prep REALLY hard and encouraged a number of people to go to college that really had no business going. Some of them shaped up and turned out well, but I also know plenty who didn’t really want to go but did it because their parents wanted them to go, and now in their late 20s, they’re either stuck doing a job that is “beneath” them and feeling like an utter failure or refusing to do anything until that job comes along, and feeling like a failure.
Either way, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that everyone would go to college or at least should. Nevermind the idea that someone has to do the manual labor, so some of those kids going to college weren’t going to be able to land those jobs.
#3. Adding Seven More Years to Being a Teenager
This one I’d fallen victim too. As long as I was going to school, I never really had any responsibilities and I feel like it did put me behind in my responsibilities as an adult because I wasn’t forced to pay bills or budget or any of that until I was out on my own years after I was no longer a teenager. There definitely seems to be an excuse that you’re not “really” an adult until sometime around 22 or 23, maybe even later.
#2. Creating the Idea that Entertainment Has No Monetary Value
This seems to be a symptom more of the way that technology has changed and how connected we are and interacting with the basic idea that one person won’t make a difference, but thousands or millions may. While this sort of thing has definitely happened, I can’t blame our generation or our parents for it because I believe if the technology and globalization had happened as quickly for a previous generation, it wouldn’t be perceptibly different.
The problem is, it was a sudden paradigm shift and it takes time for society, laws, and cultural to adjust to something that radical. They use tape trading and all that as a comparison, and it’s partially comparable as stealing, but there’s still a big difference in the cost of the tape and the time it takes to record it verses a one time rip and unlimited virtually free copies.
Unlike any other major technologies that might affect the behavior of a generation, we went from the internet being new and interesting and somewhat rare to being mainstream enough and fast enough to share anything and everything at will in only a few years. Imagine if cars, for instance, suddenly went from rare and expensive to the modern ubiquity in only a few years. We’ve had time for society to adjust, but surely that sudden change from most people not having them to everyone having them would have been lambasted as lazy or entitled and all kinds of negative things.
#1. Taking Away Every Reason To Go Outside
Meh… it’s just easier to be a bad parent these days. I spent tons of time outside when I was a kid, but I spent a lot of time playing videogames and watching TV too. In times past, kids still didn’t need to go out so much because they could read or play games or whatever. The problem here is similar to the one above where technology is advancing faster than society can adjust. We grow accustomed to getting dinner in 5 minutes from a microwave or the instant gratification of a videogame without any physical effort and that reflects in children and parents alike.
Part of the problem is that, even when I was a kid, if I wanted to interact with people, I had to actually go meet up with them, so playing with other kids still meant playing outside or going to someone’s house. Now, kids don’t even have to do that.
Still, I don’t know any kids that don’t enjoy spending time outside. They may like videogames and, left to their own devices, will play them all day, but they’ll still have a blast outside too.
So, I can get behind part of the list, but I feel like the last two are lamenting more on technological advancement rather than on what our parents have taught us.
Here are some statistics on the impact of the recession on the construction trades.
This BLS page shows a 12% unemployment rate for plumbers.
This BLS page says that 56% of plumbers are engaged in new construction or maintenance work. Given how much new construction dried up in the crash, recommending that people train for these jobs isn’t very helpful. BTW, this page gives a rosy forecast - but it was written in 2007 or 2008. Now, not so much.
I certainly don’t look down on the trades. My grandfather was a lumber and managed to support his family (not lavishly) during the depression. He worshiped FDR by the way.