Maybe Sally Shouldn’t Have Gone to College
I’m just offering one possible response to this Washington Post article by Joann Weiner.
Why Sally can’t get a good job with her college degree
Poor Sally. She has spent tens of thousands of dollars and four long years to get her college degree and has $26,000 in student loans to pay off, yet she can’t find a job that puts her degree to good use. Sally and her parents may be asking whether college was “worth it.”
Sally epitomizes many of her fellow college graduates who wonder why college graduates can’t find good jobs.
The experts give all sorts of explanations for Sally’s plight.
One of the most perplexing and frustrating explanations is that Sally is over-educated.
Think of the psychology major who brewed your Starbucks coffee this morning, or the Uber driver with the degree in philosophy who took you home last night.
Almost half of all recent college graduates are working at jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
While it might have been rare to see college graduates in these low-quality jobs a few years ago, they’re increasingly the norm these days. That same New York Fed study found that more and more recent college graduates are taking low-wage jobs and working part-time while fewer and fewer of them are working full-time at high-quality jobs.
Wharton School professor Peter Capelli tried to figure out whether the problem in the labor market is because the jobs don’t require the skills that candidates are offering or because workers don’t have the proper skills that employers are seeking.
Here’s what he found. The main problem with the U.S. job market isn’t a gap in basic skills or a shortage of employees with particular skills, but a mismatch between the supply and the demand for certain skills. There’s a greater supply of college graduates than a demand for college graduates in the labor market.
This mismatch, according to Capelli, exists because most jobs in today’s economy don’t require a college degree.
Why Sally can’t get a good job with her college degree (The Washington Post)
Comments
This is not a new phenomenon; this has been going on since at least the 1960’s (when I got minted). All through my career we’ve had degreed individuals working in positions that did not require their degree, or any degree for that matter. We (I, anyway) always attributed it to the GI Bill, which drew a lot of people (me, too) into college, even though it wasn’t all that necessary for many of them. I had folks with advanced degrees working as drivers in the 1970s.
The phenomenon is not new; it is only the press notice of it that is new.
I agree that this has been happening since the ’60’s but I always attributed it to the draft and the Vietnam War. I turned 18 in 1968 and all my friends from blue collar families went to college to get the 2S deferment. If they did not enroll in college their future was uncertain and they could not plan on anything.
Also – many older folks aren’t leaving the market because they can’t afford to.
Also – today’s degrees, except in busines and the hard sciences, don’t mean a more EDUCATED person, as much as a more “politically active” person.