1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed

[bringusingoodale]



Lesson: major in economics, finance, statistics, math, computer science, any type of engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, or accounting.

I dunno, if you really want to be vocational ed about it, I'd say scratch econ, statistics, math and physics...

So obviously we don't need universities anymore, just business schools and technical trade colleges.

 

[dfagdfsh]

or, major in you want, and:

1. get excellent grades.
2. get an internship.
3. establish connections.
4. hold a job while in college, even if it's a work study job or working for your university.

 

[Gibonius]



I mean, does he have a teaching degree? because simply having a PhD in chemistry doesn't mean you're licensed to teach..

Certainly true for people looking at high school. Not so much the case for people trying to teach at the college level, as my friends are. It's kind of funny, there are articles all over the place saying how much demand there is for college teachers, especially in the sciences, but then people still have significant trouble finding decent jobs. Standards aren't that high either, basically "full time work with access to health care." You wouldn't think that'd be too much to ask for a PhD with previous teaching experience, but apparently it is.

There's a reason I got back into research...well, a lot of reasons, but that was a big one.

I dunno, if you really want to be vocational ed about it, I'd say scratch econ, statistics, math and physics...
So obviously we don't need universities anymore, just business schools and technical trade colleges.

The sciences are fairly straight in line with the conventional "university" experience, it's not really a technical degree. That can be problematic if you're trying to get a job right out of undergrad, since you don't really know how to do anything yet.

 

[NameBack]

While there's certainly good advice for individuals in this thread, the problem remains that if enough people followed that advice, then we'd suddenly have a bunch of unemployed and underemployed science, health, and education grads. The bigger problem than a structural imbalance in skills/job availability is that there simply aren't enough jobs, period. When headline unemployment is still above 8%, new grads are going to be some of the worst off because they lack work experience, and are therefore almost universally going to be less desirable candidates than the swaths of unemployed and underemployed people who are older and have work experience in the field.

So, while you certainly can as an individual navigate this treacherous work environment, the problem won't be solved until we see significantly faster GDP growth. It's just the nature of the beast.

 

[Tck13]



Certainly true for people looking at high school. Not so much the case for people trying to teach at the college level, as my friends are. It's kind of funny, there are articles all over the place saying how much demand there is for college teachers, especially in the sciences, but then people still have significant trouble finding decent jobs. Standards aren't that high either, basically "full time work with access to health care." You wouldn't think that'd be too much to ask for a PhD with previous teaching experience, but apparently it is.
There's a reason I got back into research...well, a lot of reasons, but that was a big one.
The sciences are fairly straight in line with the conventional "university" experience, it's not really a technical degree. That can be problematic if you're trying to get a job right out of undergrad, since you don't really know how to do anything yet.

If you look at the BLS (which I did when I was thinking about going into teaching) it shows that teaching is one of the growing fields with a lot of employment opportunity. However, it's for PART time and NOT full time teachers.

 

[Gibonius]



If you look at the BLS (which I did when I was thinking about going into teaching) it shows that teaching is one of the growing fields with a lot of employment opportunity. However, it's for PART time and NOT full time teachers.

Yeah, I know that, but it doesn't really make sense. Schools have made this decision to hire lots of adjunct faculty and only give them a few classes. It makes sense for people with no experience, less risk of the school getting stuck with a ****** teacher doing a bunch of classes. What I don't understand is why they won't give experience people more sections instead of going out and hiring another couple adjuncts. It's the worst sort of false savings. The experienced people eventually filter their way into the few full-time jobs, many leave teaching entirely, and most of the classes get taught by relatively new people who haven't mastered their craft yet.

People aren't even asking for tenure these days, just full time work. It's pretty degrading to get paid $7k a semester to teach two classes when you have a PhD and you can't find anything better. I was lucky and got a full-time gig when I didn't have any experience, but there wasn't any growth potential (good luck getting a tenure position) and the pay/benefits were still pretty poor for a PhD position (~$45k, no health or retirement benefits). I get substantially more than that as a post-doc researcher, and would be looking at double or more in an entry level industry science position. I really would have a hard time advising anyone to go after a teaching job at the college level right now, unless they want to do it part time.

 

[Tck13]



Yeah, I know that, but it doesn't really make sense. Schools have made this decision to hire lots of adjunct faculty and only give them a few classes. It makes sense for people with no experience, less risk of the school getting stuck with a ****** teacher doing a bunch of classes. What I don't understand is why they won't give experience people more sections instead of going out and hiring another couple adjuncts. It's the worst sort of false savings. The experienced people eventually filter their way into the few full-time jobs, many leave teaching entirely, and most of the classes get taught by relatively new people who haven't mastered their craft yet.
People aren't even asking for tenure these days, just full time work. It's pretty degrading to get paid $7k a semester to teach two classes when you have a PhD and you can't find anything better. I was lucky and got a full-time gig when I didn't have any experience, but there wasn't any growth potential (good luck getting a tenure position) and the pay/benefits were still pretty poor for a PhD position (~$45k, no health or retirement benefits). I get substantially more than that as a post-doc researcher, and would be looking at double or more in an entry level industry science position. I really would have a hard time advising anyone to go after a teaching job at the college level right now, unless they want to do it part time.

Yeah, it sucks. This is exactly why I am choosing a different path. Teaching sounds like a great gig but the expense outweighs the benefits.

 

[why]



I've always said that. I think that the humanities job placement statistics are screwed because humanities encompasses so many majors, and a lot of people 'fall' into programs like psychology or anthropology because they can't make the GPA reqs in other departments. if you work hard and make connections then you can land a job with any major.

No, the humanities job statistics are skewed because most of the majors are useless (and easy, and pointless, and...). Look at yourself as an example: you have a job whereas others in your field don't. If you and those others you spoke of had graduated with a degree in computer science do you think any of you would be looking for a job, let alone working hard and 'networking' to land one of the few available jobs as an adjunct intern at an adjunct of academia? Your degree is simply not worth as much and it's no surprise why: it's useless (and easy, and pointless, and...).

 

[why]



While there's certainly good advice for individuals in this thread, the problem remains that if enough people followed that advice, then we'd suddenly have a bunch of unemployed and underemployed science, health, and education grads.

Yeah, because engineers for example are probably unable to do the basic office jobs that most humanities majors are likely to receive. In other words, there's a lot of crossover in some of these fields of study and some fields are completely subsumed by others. That's precisely the reason some are useless.

 

[Jr Mouse]



No, the humanities job statistics are skewed because most of the majors are useless (and easy, and pointless, and...). Look at yourself as an example: you have a job whereas others in your field don't. If you and those others you spoke of had graduated with a degree in computer science do you think any of you would be looking for a job, let alone working hard and 'networking' to land one of the few available jobs as an adjunct intern at an adjunct of academia? Your degree is simply not worth as much and it's no surprise why: it's useless (and easy, and pointless, and...).

You don't believe there are any out of work computer science majors, because of the economy?

 

[Nereis]



You don't believe there are any out of work computer science majors, because of the economy?

They aren't out of work, just working as systems administrators at ****** firms for 30K a year and no benefits.

 

[dfagdfsh]



No, the humanities job statistics are skewed because most of the majors are useless (and easy, and pointless, and...). Look at yourself as an example: you have a job whereas others in your field don't. If you and those others you spoke of had graduated with a degree in computer science do you think any of you would be looking for a job, let alone working hard and 'networking' to land one of the few available jobs as an adjunct intern at an adjunct of academia? Your degree is simply not worth as much and it's no surprise why: it's useless (and easy, and pointless, and...).

I don't think you read my post. Again, I think the statistics aree skewed because many of the people who are in Humanities programs couldn't get accepted to Computer Science, or Engineering, or Business programs. There's a big difference between graduating with a 4.0 and a 2.8, and I think a lot of the people quoted in these articles graduated with a 2.8.

 

[passingtime]



You don't believe there are any out of work computer science majors, because of the economy?

Raw CS grads tend not to have a specialty and just be cannon fodder (this is a broader problem with US undergrad degrees but that is a separate rant). If they want to avoid unemployment then, to Teger's point, they need to take a more active role in their education and pick an area that is likely to remain in demand and focus on that. This gives recruiters an incentive to hire them because they have some knowledge of the post they are trying to fill even if they have no commercial experience. There is hiring but it is for specific roles rather than the IT equivalent of assembly line workers.

Likewise I would suggest that a creative writer considers getting into technical writing. There is always a need for people to produce documentation and it is easy to get started, simply invest some time in doing tech writing for one of the large open source projects. That is easy (unpaid) work to get and it gets your name in front of a huge number of people.

 

[dfagdfsh]

I see probably 75 humanities students a semester one on one, and these are my personal impressions. there are a couple types of people:

1. there are people who are history majors because they love, LOVE, LOVE!! history and these people get great grades and work hard. because they have good grades and a strong work ethic, they will succeed.

2. there are people who are history majors because they have a specific plan to use the degree -- teaching MA, MLS, etc

3. there are people who are history majors because they couldn't get into the art program and they once had a history class in high school. this is like... 85%? of the people I see and I think they make up the majority of the unemployed. they would be equally rudderless and unmotivated in any major, they just happened to fall into humanities because it's a university catch all.

 

[why]



You don't believe there are any out of work computer science majors, because of the economy?

Yes, because clearly Teger's classmates are the only people in the world that exist.

Moreover, I think it's obvious that this should be read as hyperbole.