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Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by YankeeFan, May 18, 2011.

  1. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    That's something that has gotten a lot of coverage lately:
    Trades and services that cannot be outsourced.
     
  2. Rumpleforeskin

    Rumpleforeskin Active Member

    Does it help if you have an old college degree?
     
  3. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    Also, I'm recommending that this thread be retitled:

    Many College Degrees Find The Job Market Humbling With
     
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    That's been the rule, the question is will it continue to be the rule.

    It's also self selecting. Smarter people tend(ed) to go to college. If you're smart and hardworking, but don't have a degree, you can still do well.

    If you're an entrepreneur or learn a trade, a degree may not be necessary. You can have a four year hed start and be earning money instead of going into debt.

    If you know you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, chemist, then by all means go for it.

    But, I'm not sure the rule you point out applies right now. I deal with people every day who have college degrees and who are working in coffee shops and cafes

    I also deal with tradespeople on a regular basis. Most do not have degrees and are doing well.
     
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    This is why I've been hyping this for years.
     
  6. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    They aren't rules. They're statistical averages. They could change, but they've held true for a while.
    They are not true in every instance, with regard to averages though, I would expect them to hold true. Perhaps not the numbers but the overall trend, on average a person with postsecondary education will make more than a person without postsecondary education.
     
  7. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Well, they might hold true, if just because hedge fund managers, CEO's, doctors, lawyers, etc., have degrees.

    And obviously lots of low wage earners don't.

    So, the average person with a degree might make more money, but an average person might not be better off with a degree.
     
  8. leo1

    leo1 Active Member

    also in our post-apocalyptic societies that emerge after the end times, writers (and lawyers like me) will be useless compared with those who know how to work with their hands.
     
  9. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    Unless I had virtually no money at all, or unless I were going to something long-term like medical school, I would never take out a student loan, or let my college-age student get one.

    People saddled with student loans often don't get them paid off until their mid-30s or later, and, in the meantime, they are a significant drain.

    Even if my kid had to work part-time, or during summers, or I had to get another, part-time job to pay for my kid's college education, or even if it meant my kid took longer than four years to complete school, I would not be paying, or letting him or her pay, via student loans.

    I get amazed that so many people do take out student loans, and I don't really understand why. I grew up in a very average, suburban family. My dad, the loan bread-winner for most of that time, never made more than $50,000 a year in his life, my parents had six kids, and yet, I and two of my brothers went to college, each without ever getting a student loan, and without ever paying a single dime to anybody for college once we were out.

    My sister-in-law, by contrast, grew up in a family of four kids, with parents more well-off than mine, but she, for some reason, had to take out a student loan for college to become a teacher, and now, in her 40s, has only just recently gotten done paying it off.

    It's incredible, and I feel for anyone saddled with these things for years after completing their educations.
     
  10. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    So, the solution is . . . no college?
     
  11. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Maybe, maybe not.

    I think WriteThinking probably has it right. Work your way through college. Maybe go to community college before transferring to a four year college.

    But I think people need to be very careful about juts assuming college is the answer -- especially if they're going to accumulate a lot of debt.

    If you're working on a specific degree that will get you into a profession that is hiring/growing/expanding that's great.

    But lots of people are getting degrees and have no game plan.

    This is from an article (about "Trump University") that's on the Times site right now:

    I'm not anti-college. I'm just anti people spending a lot of money -- often money they don't have -- and not coming out any better off.

    Even working a year or two after high school can allow a student to mature and focus on what he/she wants to do.
     
  12. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    The statistics could be descriptive. They could be inferential. I don't know.
    I'm not saying that postsecondary education leads to a higher wage, because that's not what the statistics say.
    All the statistics say is that on average a person with postsecondary education will earn more than a person without postsecondary education.
    Anything else is speculation.
     
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