Not letting college wreck life

[pendell]

So I recently encountered this photo (http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsvbfeXIcS1r25y9yo1_500.jpg) by a person who is quite upset with the way things have turned out. She seems to have got a graduate degree in classical studies and is now pondering a career in the fast food service industry.

Not exactly a happy ending to several years of work is it? Given the expected income level, her grandchildren *just might* be able to pay off her student loans. :smallannoyed:

Things seem to have changed a lot. When I was growing up, it was made plain to me by my parents that I would go to college, and whatever major I took would be a ticket to employment of some kind. University was a must-have, and if I didn't have it I wouldn't be employed.

It ... doesn't seem to work that way any more.

My degree was in computer science. It took me about 8 months to land a computer job of any kind, and another two years before it really paid off.

So I guess my question is two fold:

1) What should we be doing in college to avoid getting wrecked like that? Any particular majors to choose? Any to avoid?

2) How do you make a major like classical studies pay? I personally am passionate about history. But I thought it unlikely I would be able to do so, so I went for computers instead.

Is it possible to buck the trend? To pursue the degree of your choice AND escape from Walmart and McD's? If so, how?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mutant Sheep]

My thoughts-"hope you don't get out of college during an economic slump". Liberal Arts degree does seem to be the most useless though.

[tensai_oni]

whatever major I took would be a ticket to employment of some kind. University was a must-have, and if I didn't have it I wouldn't be employed.

It ... doesn't seem to work that way any more.


It never really worked that way. In fact, for most people it's better to start working immediately after high school than to go to university or college to study something that you like, but offers little actual job opportunities.

It is very harsh. Life is harsh.

Which majors to take to avoid this? Anything related to engineering, computers or medicine. You mentioned it took you 8 months to find a job once you finished your studies. This is not the usual for computer science majors. They are often lucky enough to find job opportunities straight once their studies are done.

[Haruki-kun]

I suppose, you'd have to pick a major that either a) Opens the way to a lot of different jobs you could apply for, if you don't know what you want to work in, or b) lets you work in EXACTLY the job you want to work at. Picking a specific major means you've decided to go down a specific path.

Then there's some majors that make people be either unemployed or insanely successful. For example, you can major in Acting and get nowhere, or you can major in Acting and end up in the covers of magazines. You never know.

Not that I'm speaking from experience, my prospects are not very good.

[Sipex]

Computer Science here as well, took me 8 months to find my first job in my field.

The best route you can take in this scenario is to research the job market right before college, see what's hiring. Chances are in 4-6 years the trend will be pretty similar so you can probably bank on that.

If...say...you really want to major in something like Classical Studies maybe research what jobs you can get in that field first. Sometimes a major like Classical Studies can't get you much on it's own but when paired with another degree it gives you an ace in the hole.

[Reverent-One]

She took a degree in a self-described useless field with low job options, why is she complaining over something that's her own fault and calling it the "american nightmare"? Unless she was lied to about the job opportunites available with that major, she made that choice herself.

[Tyndmyr]

2) How do you make a major like classical studies pay? I personally am passionate about history. But I thought it unlikely I would be able to do so, so I went for computers instead.

Is it possible to buck the trend? To pursue the degree of your choice AND escape from Walmart and McD's? If so, how?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

You pretty much don't, unless you're the absolute top of the field. And, tbh, as someone who screwed around in CS and didn't put a lot of effort into being the absolute best, I'm probably crushing the top people in history as it is. While in my 20s. I have not had a great deal of difficulty finding CS jobs, and could switch in a heartbeat if I were so inclined.

Basically, I opted for a job in a solid industry, and was willing to move and put some effort into pursuing it. That was it. College DID have tough bits, as I worked throughout at low paying jobs, but eh, it kept the loans down.

Some fields are just not that profitable. You should probably take a look at things BEFORE investing years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing them. Nobody owes you a job because you picked up an easy degree that you happened to like.

Also, college is a long term investment. You're not going to be ahead of the guy who just worked when you first get out...it's going to take years to pay off. That's just to be expected.

[CoffeeIncluded]

I lucked out, as did my two best friends--we're going to some of the best colleges in the country (two ivy leagues and MIT), I intend to be a veterinarian, and one of my best friends is majoring in computer science and engineering. Even if we weren't intending to be a veterinarian (me) or a computer scientist/engineer (Mr. MIT), the name brand alone of where my two best friends and I are going is enough to give us very good job prospects.

Most people don't have the opportunities we have. All three of us are incredibly lucky, especially my two friends. I'm scared for the state of our country. I'm scared for my brother, who may not even be able to get into college with the grades he's getting.

If you go to college, and you study and work hard and do well, you should be able to get a decent job. If you're not suited for college, then you should be able to go to a vocational school and be able to live within your means!

That's gone. The base of our economy is just plain gone. There are barely any vocational jobs left, most colleges just plain aren't worth the money, and for-profit schools prey on the unsuspecting and desperate.

Reverent-one, we need people with humanities degrees in this country. We need teachers, people who know history, who can read and analyze and think critically. You can't have an economy completely reliant on just one thing.

[Iruka]

It doesn't really surprise me that someone has problems getting a job with a degree in classical studies. That's exactly the reason why I study engeneering/chemistry.

I know a guy who loves China. He studied economy, worked for a few years and now started his Master in use-oriented chinese studies. His chances to find a well paid job where he can work in/with the country he spends every holiday in? Not bad.
But when we had a information day at school and asked for the job prospects with a degree in Sinology, we got "Um ... taxi driver?" (From someone who actually studied Sinology.)
So it really depends on how you manage to combine the interesting with the profitable stuff.

[Brother Oni]

I echo several people's sentiments here.

If you want to have a job, major or study in something that is most likely to give you a job.

Classical studies doesn't seem like the sort of major that offers many opportunities outside of academia.

Not trying to be overly harsh, but part of being an adult is making choices and living with the consequences. Going to college and choosing what to study there, is one of the first choices you have to make as an adult which has a major effect on the rest of your life.



Reverent-one, we need people with humanities degrees in this country. We need teachers, people who know history, who can read and analyze and think critically. You can't have an economy completely reliant on just one thing.

Well there's a possible career choice for the person that pendell linked to then. I'm not sure how the American system does it, but teachers over here have to pursue a separate teaching qualification (PGCE) after they've completed their degree.

[Kneenibble]

A B.A. is the new high school diploma. Grad studies or gtfo. She should have no problems getting at least partial funding for an M.A. with such grades and experience, and at that point she can teach crappy first year classes to fund her Ph.D. What could she be, about 21? Almost nobody has their career on track at that point, fresh out of college.

I do hate the term "useless" degree though. - or the question, what are you going to "do" with your degree? That's not the point of the arts and never has been.

[Gorgondantess]

My degree was in computer science. It took me about 8 months to land a computer job of any kind, and another two years before it really paid off.

So? That's pretty much just par for the course. My dad graduated from an exclusive aerodynamics course at WU that only took about 5% of applicants from those who were already enrolled in the school. Not many of them passed. It took him months for him to wrangle up the connections in order to get his job at Boeing. Maybe this isn't the usual, but hey, if nobody is hiring, then nobody is hiring. When he finally did, he was pretty much an office aid for the first year or so, primarily doing things your average teenager could accomplish just as easily.

Basically, just because you have a college degree, don't expect to get a nice, intelligent job and be doing important things right off the bat. It just doesn't happen. I don't see why this person is complaining- she doesn't even have her degree yet!:smallconfused:

[Reverent-One]

I do hate the term "useless" degree though. - or the question, what are you going to "do" with your degree? That's not the point of the arts and never has been.

Sure, it's not the point of the arts, but nowadays, it is the point of a degree.

[colonelslime]

The real problem is that our whole economic system is based on the odd assumption that we operate a in a "knowledge" economy. With the death of long-term steady employment in manufacturing in the developed world, the idea has been sold that we can all switch to jobs requiring a high degree of formal training to secure a good career. This is compounded by a culture that makes it seem as if business and technology are the limitless fields of potential growth, and not tied at all to the size of the overall production base. Problem is, not of that is really true. This is of course a major simplification, but the financial and R&D industries are tied in very real ways to the actual productive output of the population, which provides the actual resources and consumption that produces the capital necessary for all the stuff higher up.

I'll also mention that for the longest part of the institutions history (first university is, I think, around 1100 CE), it was never meant as a job training ground at all. It was meant as a place of learning and thought, particularly, in the early days, concerned with rediscovery of all the old Latin/Greek texts that had been forgotten during the dark ages (which is actually where the degree classical studies originates, bit of an anachronism now when you think about it). It was not something you got in debt to go to, but something the nobles and the rich did to expand their horizons. Even in the first half this century most people weren't expected to go to college, instead moving directly into the working world. That we expect people to take on now mountains of debt to secure a good job is insane, and really weird when you think about the economic implications of the future consumer/tax base starting of cripplingly in debt and jobless.

Even degrees is CompSci or Business aren't a guarantee of a job, and the prospects for the latter will only get worse now that the financial industry is in shambles. I think my friend had the best idea when he went to trade-school. He's got a job already, and he's making a better wage than I could ever hope to get, once I finish my degree (in Public Affairs). His training also cost less, and was shorter. There's also a big body of evidence that suggests that undergraduate education has fallen in worth in the eyes of employers, both because it is now more common, and hence less useful as a way of picking candidates, and also because it's general quality has fallen as colleges moved to a more for profit mind-set. People leaving university right now are less able to think critically than most would expect, and I can say that, anecdotally, I can see why profs/employers say this. Many of my peers surprise me by their lack of future-planning and understanding. Many just seem to believe that college is a 4 year reprieve from real life, where you get to drink and party.

I find it weird that people would even expect a degree in classical studies to give a job. The best you could probably do is argue it shows your general intellectual competence, but that would be a long shot. Even for my degree, which has arguably more applicability, I'm still starting now to send out resumes to see if I can secure some part-time, entry level position. Some people who finish my degree get to the end and have no idea what they're doi ng.

[colonelslime]

Also @ Kneenibble: That an MA should be required for a job of any level higher than the service industry is pretty weird concept, and also tends not to bear out in reality. There's a lot of different studies out there that show that MA's don't earn significantly more than BA's do, though of course this varies by profession. It can sometimes make getting a job easier, but there are places which consider having an MA to mean over-qualification (even more common for Ph.D.s).

It used to be more common to go get a BA, work for a few years, then return to get a master's as additional credentials to get promotions. Now, since many MA lack actual business-world training, and since there are course only MAs that take out some of the more self-driven aspects, even their worth has fallen. And it again doesn't change the fact that majoring in Greek and Latin pretty much requires you to work in Academia. Where was she expecting to get a job with a BA in the academic world?

[Kneenibble]

Also @ Kneenibble: That an MA should be required for a job of any level higher than the service industry is pretty weird concept, and also tends not to bear out in reality. There's a lot of different studies out there that show that MA's don't earn significantly more than BA's do, though of course this varies by profession. It can sometimes make getting a job easier, but there are places which consider having an MA to mean over-qualification (even more common for Ph.D.s).

It used to be more common to go get a BA, work for a few years, then return to get a master's as additional credentials to get promotions. Now, since many MA lack actual business-world training, and since there are course only MAs that take out some of the more self-driven aspects, even their worth has fallen.
Fair enough: let me express myself more clearly. If you take a B.A. in something like Classical Studies, your best bet is to go the whole way and be a career academic (as you say, what else did she expect to do with it?). That, or take a graduate program which is directed practically into a profession, and which requires a so-called "useless" B.A., such as an M.L.I.S.

I did not mean to say broadly that an M.A. is the key to gainful employment.

[colonelslime]

Fair enough: let me express myself more clearly. If you take a B.A. in something like Classical Studies, your best bet is to go the whole way and be a career academic (as you say, what else did she expect to do with it?). That, or take a graduate program which is directed practically into a profession, and which requires a so-called "useless" B.A., such as an M.L.I.S.

I did not mean to say broadly that an M.A. is the key to gainful employment.

Sorry, after rereading your post above I get the sense this is what you meant. I've just seen a lot of people who went on to get an MA in political science with the idea that that would be their ticket in, only for the government (given their field) to tell them a MA in PoliSci isn't needed to to file forms, and that they would probably be too qualified for the work (this actually happens).

[THAC0]

Theoretically, things like liberal arts or classical studies ought to give one the thinking skills to excel in many career fields.

Realistically, though, the level of college instruction has plummeted and we are now graduating liberal arts majors who cannot write a ten-page paper.

Bottom line: be proactive. Either major in something concrete or, if you don't major in something concrete, have a plan to sell yourself. Recognize that jobs aren't going to fall into your lap.

Even better, make sure you graduate with as little debt as possible, whether that means going to a community college for the first two years or taking a break to work or what.

[pendell]

There's a lot of different studies out there that show that MA's don't earn significantly more than BA's do, though of course this varies by profession.


In the world of government contracting, it is absolutely true. This is because the contracts mandate that certain jobs have certain degrees. So, for example, if you want to be a technical lead, you'll need a Master's regardless of your actual skill, simply because it's a box that needs to be checked in order to award the contract in the first place.

Someone mentioned that 8 months seemed a long time -- well, apart from the fact that I had to learn some people skills in a mighty big hurry the other problem I had was that I was graduating with a CS degree in the Bay Area. There are around 12 universities, some of them world-class -- Stanford, Berkeley, UC Davis, Chico, CSU SF, University of the Pacific -- all dumping masses of entry-level graduates onto the job market every year.

I eventually got around this by taking jobs for tiny computer employers that paid $1000 a month but at least gave real experience that I could put on my resume. That enabled me to land a "real" job at CACI.



Reverent-one, we need people with humanities degrees in this country. We need teachers, people who know history, who can read and analyze and think critically. You can't have an economy completely reliant on just one thing.


My understanding is that becoming a teacher is not very easy. In addition to credentialing requirement over and above the BA/BS, you also have to get hired. Given that many teachers have something like tenure and turnover is not high, it means there are a lot more applicants than openings, there and elsewhere.

Also, the dummies guide (http://www.amazon.com/Rookie-Teaching-Dummies-Michael-Kelley/dp/0764524798) notes that first-year teachers, as everywhere, get the worst classes and toughest assignments that the more experienced teachers can avoid. That's true in any industry, though, I suppose :).


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Winter_Wolf]

I am of the generation told by my parents, "you need a r-year college degree to get a good job" and I believe that while the intention was good and held true for their generation, is completely false from my generation onward.

And realistically, if I had listened to my instinct and gotten an associates degree in graphic design per my original intention, I would have a job in that field. Maybe Almost certainly not a high paying one, but I'd be doing something that I am A: good at; and B: really can do every day and still love what I do.

As to what I've seen as "usless degrees", a business degree is really NOT going to set you apart from anyone these days. You really need to have killer ability with at least one specialized aspect that's in demand or coming into demand to have a fair shot at competing.

All that aside, the richest, most financially successful people I know personally never finished college, and in most cases never even started. They are all entrepreneurs and highly motivated. In many ways, I think that the only reason that they are as successful as they are is because they didn't learn "the right way" or the "best way" to get where they got.

It took me a LONG time to really begin to understand the way their minds work, and I'm being diligent about training myself to be more like that.

TL;DR version: College doesn't wreck life, but it's not the meal ticket most people mistake it for!

[Douglas]

My degree was in computer science. It took me about 8 months to land a computer job of any kind, and another two years before it really paid off.

So I guess my question is two fold:

1) What should we be doing in college to avoid getting wrecked like that? Any particular majors to choose? Any to avoid?

2) How do you make a major like classical studies pay? I personally am passionate about history. But I thought it unlikely I would be able to do so, so I went for computers instead.

Is it possible to buck the trend? To pursue the degree of your choice AND escape from Walmart and McD's? If so, how?

Respectfully,

Brian P.
As I understand it:
1) Research job prospects in addition to your personal preferences before choosing your major.

1a) Almost any kind of engineering or any branch of computer science will, if you're good, put you clearly in one of the more employable parts of the labor pool. Computer game development is a partial exception because it's so popular that the employee market is glutted. If engineering or computers is where your interest lies, then you're pretty much covered. Start thinking about details in your last year or two of college, but it's almost certain that something will work out for you. Science is a bit more iffy, I don't think there are as many research jobs as engineering and being a really good scientist has a higher intelligence/skill requirement, but it's still a reasonably safe bet. Legal and medicine are pretty reliable ways to get high-paying jobs but require more schooling (and student loans) to get there. Math is sort of a bizarre you-went-TOO-far area; it can be useful and you can get a job with it, but all the big money is in applying math for practical purposes which is generally covered by some variety of engineering.

1b) Any kind of artistic, language, history, or literature major (or in general anything "culture" related) is a major risk. Classical Studies certainly falls into this category. If you want to get one of these majors, make sure you have a clear plan for how to turn it into a job before you even start - and make sure your plan does not require you to be near the top of your field.

2) Your best bet is probably some kind of teaching job, or for performance art joining a major band/orchestra/choir/whatever. Any plan that depends on income from publishing something is an extremely long shot, and that's the only major alternative I can think of. I'm sure there are other ways to make money with these majors, but the fact that I can't think of them means they're probably uncommon enough that your chances are pretty bad.

Personally, I majored in Computer Science because I found it interesting (and also knew it had good job prospects) and got a job 3 weeks after graduating. They decided I wasn't a good fit and laid me off about 6 weeks later, at which point the recession was in full swing and it took 4 months for me to get another job, but I've been happily employed with a quite respectable paycheck for the almost 3 years since then.

[Mono Vertigo]

I'm a bit in the same situation right now. With the added bonus nobody I know - and still want to have anything to do with - know much about getting or keeping a job today.
I... try not to think too much about it. I'll be happy if I can find something, anything. I hear so many horror stories nowadays I'm not expecting much more than the lowest of the low.

Not trying to be overly harsh, but part of being an adult is making choices and living with the consequences. Going to college and choosing what to study there, is one of the first choices you have to make as an adult which has a major effect on the rest of your life.
Yeah.
When I had to make a choice, my father had just died, my mother and me had depression, we couldn't really think about the future anymore, our family only got involved for inheritance matters, and I received well-meaning but misguided advises and didn't get to study what I really like nor something very useful.
Yeah, I wish I could really have made the choice myself, with all my mental capacity.

[pendell]

What is your major , Musashi?

Hmmm ... another job that's pretty much always open is sales. Of course, you've got to be really good at it. I can't honestly say I have the aptitude for it. I prefer computers.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Reverent-One]

Reverent-one, we need people with humanities degrees in this country. We need teachers, people who know history, who can read and analyze and think critically. You can't have an economy completely reliant on just one thing.

I never said we didn't, but unless the person in the picture in the OP was lied to, they knew what they were getting into when they choose that field. On top of that, the fact that job opportunies are listed as zero means that even teaching is apprarently not on the table for her.

[Mono Vertigo]

Information and communication. I... honestly don't know for sure what I'm supposed to be able to do with that. Journalism, sure, media, maybe, marketing, perhaps, and possibly anything that involves me talking to people in general.
Yeah, I wasn't well informed and didn't have much success every time I tried to know for sure. My mother would have wanted me to study two more years and get a master, but honestly, with our lack of income, I'd rather be paid to work than the other way through.

[pendell]

Information and communication. I... honestly don't know for sure what I'm supposed to be able to do with that. Journalism, sure, media, maybe, marketing, perhaps, and possibly anything that involves me talking to people in general.


Suggestions from the gallery? In addition to those you've already mentioned, there's advertising, Public relations jobs. Political campaigns are always looking for more effective ways to get their message across, as is any number of causes. Those last may not be able to pay much, but at least it's experience to put on a resume.



My mother would have wanted me to study two more years and get a master, but honestly, with our lack of income, I'd rather be paid to work than the other way through.

I agree with that attitude. That's why I went to work with my bachelor's instead of going on to graduate work -- that had to wait a few years until my company would pay for it.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Gaelbert]

What struck me most about that picture is that even with everything she described, her "American Nightmare" is better than 90% of the rest of the world's population. Maybe even 99%.
For a job in Classical Studies or something of that nature, the only place I can think of is in education. And that's a pretty slim chance as it is. There are way more PhD students and such than can ever be employed in institutions of higher education, even in the best of economies.

[Syka]

Ypursuing them. Nobody owes you a job because you picked up an easy degree that you happened to like.


As someone with a Classical Studies B.A., it is NOT an easy degree. Far from it. Translating hundreds of lines of text a night...I still have trauma related to Plato's Apology.

But it definitely has not been as useless as I thought. I went back to get my MBA and fell in love with Marketing/PR and all my professors said that my unusual background would be beneficial. It's opened up lots of conversations with professionals I've met.

I graduated in May and, while I still don't have a "career", I'm consulting for a local company (who will let me use them as a reference), I'm working on an academic paper about advertising with a professor, and I have an interview (albeit, for an assistant manager position in retail...but management experience, nonetheless).

My "useless" Classics degree has come in pretty handy. Plus, I'd planned to go through PhD and get into academia, but figured out it wasn't for me. No regrets here, though. You just have to figure out how to make it work.

Alea iacta est and all that.

[Joran]

As I understand it:
Legal and medicine are pretty reliable ways to get high-paying jobs but require more schooling (and student loans) to get there. Math is sort of a bizarre you-went-TOO-far area; it can be useful and you can get a job with it, but all the big money is in applying math for practical purposes which is generally covered by some variety of engineering.


Actually, there's a humongous glut of people with law degrees. Job prospects are not very good for people with law degrees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?_r=1

There is always a demand for doctors and nurses.

My father has a Ph.D in statistics. He specialized in biostatistics and has to fight off biotech companies with a stick.

I'm like a lot of people who grabbed the Computer Science degree. It came pretty easy to me, I enjoy solving problems, and it's highly marketable. It's not my passion though; I don't code in my spare time. The practical side of me knows that if something is truly my passion, I can find time in my spare time to do it. At the moment, nothing does that, so I continue to work and see what catches my eye. Maybe I'll never find my passion or my purpose, but I'm pretty content at the moment.

[Mono Vertigo]

Oh, yeah, those ones, forgot to write that down on my short list.
Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include. Of course, I'm pretty sure my diploma can offer me a lot more than a "career" at McDonald's, but until I find the right opportunity, fast food and such may be my only option. Hopefully, that kind of experience won't scare employers away. :smallfrown:

[Erloas]

I am of the generation told by my parents, "you need a r-year college degree to get a good job" and I believe that while the intention was good and held true for their generation, is completely false from my generation onward.
I would assume that I'm about the same age as you, maybe a bit older, and I would disagree quite a bit.

Of course it depends on what you want to do as a job. There are still a lot of well paying jobs around, in the right parts of the country at least, that don't require much more then being able to cleanly pee in a cup, but for the most part they are not pleasant jobs. They are in very poor weather and generally a lot of manual labor. Also a lot of shift work. The majority around here is either mining or the energy industry but there are also a lot of support industries around for them. And even where I work even though you don't need a degree they still mostly hire people with them because they can.

Of course many of these same jobs, if they were in a big city with a lot of people, wouldn't pay anything close to what they pay here.

And of all the people I know, all of the ones with good jobs (which is a lot more then just pay) went to college or at very least trade schools. Traditional college isn't the right way for everyone, but some sort of post high school training and education is still really important.

[Syka]

Oh, yeah, those ones, forgot to write that down on my short list.
Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include. Of course, I'm pretty sure my diploma can offer me a lot more than a "career" at McDonald's, but until I find the right opportunity, fast food and such may be my only option. Hopefully, that kind of experience won't scare employers away. :smallfrown:

I've been working in retail in an entry level position for nearly 3 years now and as far as I can tell it hasn't hurt me. Make sure in the meantime you are working on how to improve your skills for the job you want. I worked while I went back to school, picked up some "real world" experience through work with professors, and have continued to find "volunteer" opportunities that utilize the skills I want to get hired for.

That's how ya do it. Get something useful to employers on your resume while you keep bills paid. They won't fault you for not starving while you look for a career in your field.

[Joran]

Oh, yeah, those ones, forgot to write that down on my short list.
Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include. Of course, I'm pretty sure my diploma can offer me a lot more than a "career" at McDonald's, but until I find the right opportunity, fast food and such may be my only option. Hopefully, that kind of experience won't scare employers away. :smallfrown:

If you can afford it, you can intern to build references and connections. If you're in the U.S., the political season is about to swing into gear; you may be able to work in a campaign and meet people.

Job placement firm is another option. You can temp at a company and build your resume that way.

[Reverent-One]

Oh, yeah, those ones, forgot to write that down on my short list.
Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include. Of course, I'm pretty sure my diploma can offer me a lot more than a "career" at McDonald's, but until I find the right opportunity, fast food and such may be my only option. Hopefully, that kind of experience won't scare employers away. :smallfrown:

Am I correct in assuming that you're still in college or some similar form of education? If so, does your college have any reasources to help students in that regard? I know mine had a "Career Center" which gave advice on resume writing, helped find jobs in the area, ect. Even if it doesn't, whatever professors or teachers in those classes could very well at least have places for you to start looking, if not some useful connections.

[THAC0]

Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include.

This is where the stuff you do outside of college will have a big impact.

My degree was in Music Education. During school I volunteered for extra teaching programs that didn't count towards my degree at all. At the end of each school year I would race home to spend the last month of the public school year substitute teaching. Summer is a great time to get work experience, even if you don't do an "internship" per say. With your degree, you should be able to find some summer occupation that is relevant and can add to your resume.

[Mono Vertigo]

Am I correct in assuming that you're still in college or some similar form of education? If so, does your college have any reasources to help students in that regard? I know mine had a "Career Center" which gave advice on resume writing, helped find jobs in the area, ect. Even if it doesn't, whatever professors or teachers in those classes could very well at least have places for you to start looking, if not some useful connections.
Actually, I was done with college last year (wasted spent a sabbatical year of sorts because of my mother again for personal reasons). We didn't have much in the way of resources anyway.
Oh, and for the record, I'm not in America, but in France; coincidentally, the political season is also imminent, so thank you for reminding me that all the same. :smallsmile:
Man, I'm hijacking the thread. D: I'll stop talking about my personal case.

[Ursus the Grim]

This is pretty much the basis for most of the kids out at Wall Street now, but I suppose that's not the focus of this thread. Instead, I'll wax up your tiny violins for you while I explain the similar situation I find myself in.

I'm an Environmental Science major. I went to community college for my first two years, then transferred to a Public Uni in Virginia to make an LDR an actual relationship. My annual starting cost of attendance was 24000. That was three years ago. Now my cost of attendance is up to 30000 because the state of Virginia thinks its a clever idea to cut education funding, and the patrons of this fine university think its better to spend 16000 dollars on half-assed road paint than to donate to regular operations and costs..

My worthless ex-stepmother and mother of my two half-brothers has an office drone job, married an unemployed, mentally ill man, and had a child she couldn't care for. My father, who is president of a labor union local and still makes less than 50k, busts his ass to pay child support to make sure the half-brothers have a decent life. Meanwhile the couple does nothing to support themselves. Because my father makes more than 40k, FAFSA decided I get nothing. Because I was not a racial, ethnic, gender, or religious minority in high school, I was denied scholarships that other people were granted solely on the basis of their superficial quantities. My father attempted to sell his house to help with my student costs, but the housing market is ****, and he'd lose money on it. Because of this, I have sucked it up and taken out some very unfortunate student loans. I am already $80,000 in debt. Wells Fargo implied to me that my loans with them would be included in the Federal Student Loan Forgiveness program, and that, as I was planning on working for the government in an Environmental enforcement capacity, there would be a cap on my payments and forgiveness after a certain amount of time. Only recently have they kindly informed me that I get no such participation because its a private loan. I'll most likely go bankrupt and never work for the government or be able to afford any of the essentials that were promised to me. That I can live with. But its unforgivable that I can't give my wife a good life or raise our child in a house of plenty because I was deceived.

My fiancee is a Biology major with a minor in Computer Science. She owes considerably less, being a VA resident. She is also the smartest damn woman I've ever met. She's a hard worker (works 40+ hours a week plus full-time student) and tends to consider things carefully before submitting. She's currently doing research in an attempt to improve a laboratory exercise that the entire Biology department uses at our school. She has no employment offers yet. She was forced to find an expensive apartment off-campus because her financial aid was cut for being a fifth-year student (transferred) and because she made a bit of petty cash over our winter break.

All my life, it was expected of me, that I would go to college. It was just something I was always told was the "smart" decision. You go to college, get a degree, and make enough money afterwards to pay off the cost. But the college isn't a free pass anymore. As has been said, a B.A. or B.S. is the new high-school diploma. The biggest problem is that the previous generations can't seem to understand this. My estranged grandfather is an engineer, got a bachelor's degree and proceeded to make a great deal of money because he had an edge over all the competition. He doesn't understand the problem I'm facing now, as I look at the ugly barren land that is my future. He fails to understand as well, that we aren't competing against others in our state, in our country. Its a globalized world, and if there's someone smarter or more attractive in China you can bet your ass that they'll find a way to outsource it. Very few jobs are save against the numbers of new challengers.

[pendell]

E-sci = Education Science?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Ursus the Grim]

E-sci = Education Science?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Sorry. Environmental Science.

[WalkingTarget]

Information and communication. I... honestly don't know for sure what I'm supposed to be able to do with that.


Suggestions from the gallery? In addition to those you've already mentioned, there's advertising,

Go into Library and Information Science? Dealing with information systems and how to get that information to the people who need it is a good-sized chunk of what it's about. I guess I don't know a lot about "Information and communication" as a discipline, so I may be reading that as something that it's not. It's not all dealing with formal libraries, lots of private-sector enterprises need information professionals.


I'm like a lot of people who grabbed the Computer Science degree. It came pretty easy to me, I enjoy solving problems, and it's highly marketable. It's not my passion though; I don't code in my spare time. The practical side of me knows that if something is truly my passion, I can find time in my spare time to do it. At the moment, nothing does that, so I continue to work and see what catches my eye. Maybe I'll never find my passion or my purpose, but I'm pretty content at the moment.

This was me in undergrad. I wound up taking a simple technical support job after graduating (which didn't actually require the degree) because I realized that day-in-day-out coding wasn't for me. I'm now in the middle of my MLIS degree program and am liking it a lot more - reference services hit that same problem-solving trigger for me and I'm glad I came here.

[Erloas]

I'll most likely go bankrupt and never work for the government or be able to afford any of the essentials that were promised to me.
Seeing as how you haven't graduated yet, how exactly did you come to this conclusion? Given $80k is a lot, and the more practical thing to do would be move and work for a year or two until you get in-state tuition and then go back, but its not going to keep you from getting a job and can be paid off.

Right now there are a couple companies in my area looking for environmental engineers. The one we hired a year or two ago was a chemist turned process engineer (by job, not education) that they are having do environmental work. Because we had a really hard time finding anyone. The only interview we had prior to that took an offer some place else. Any of the energy states I'm sure are in fairly big demand for environmental techs and engineers and scientists.

[Tyndmyr]

What struck me most about that picture is that even with everything she described, her "American Nightmare" is better than 90% of the rest of the world's population. Maybe even 99%.
For a job in Classical Studies or something of that nature, the only place I can think of is in education. And that's a pretty slim chance as it is. There are way more PhD students and such than can ever be employed in institutions of higher education, even in the best of economies.

This is also true. So she decided to pursue an unpopular degree. Meh. It's an unfortunate decision, but it's not as if she's doomed. Calling it a nightmare seems a little melodramatic. If you realize you're pursuing a doomed field, swap your major to something else...or go dual major. Then, you WILL have good job prospects eventually, even if the student loan bill ends up bigger.

It's not like she's going to starve on the streets or something. Sadly.


As someone with a Classical Studies B.A., it is NOT an easy degree. Far from it. Translating hundreds of lines of text a night...I still have trauma related to Plato's Apology.

Strictly speaking, no college degree is really easy...all take a notable about of time and effort. That said, you could certainly make the case that some are easier than others. I'd argue that the easier degrees tend to correlate with lower paying job opportunities, though there are a few notable exceptions. Straight up business degrees tend to have a rather unusual effort/reward ratio, IMO.


Also, no, starting out working at McDonalds or whatever isn't a big deal. My first job was at Kmart as a cashier. It doesn't even go on the resume anymore, because it's unimportant now...once you've made it far enough up the food chain to have better recent experience, it fades from importance.

It's only a real problem if you start spending a huge portion of your life there. If ten years later, you're still in your fast food job and haven't taken your career anywhere, it's reasonable to expect an employer to wonder why that's the case.

[ninja_penguin]

My understanding is that becoming a teacher is not very easy. In addition to credentialing requirement over and above the BA/BS, you also have to get hired. Given that many teachers have something like tenure and turnover is not high, it means there are a lot more applicants than openings, there and elsewhere.

This is sadly true. There are a lot of hoops and double standards you have to deal with as a teacher candidate. I graduated just in time for the economy to crash around here, with a degree in teaching (biology), and my prospects were pretty poor the first year and have gone downhill every year to the point that I'm just trying to find a job in general (I graduated with a biology major, mercifully). It's incredibly stupid with the attitude that some district have. For example, I taught summer school one year at my hometown district, and they gave me no curriculum, no class list until day 1, a non-lab room to start with, and the computer and TV were broken in the class. So how on earth am I supposed to make a remedial class if they won't tell me what the kids actually covered during the year?

There's also a very negative attitude toward education; in every non-teaching job I've interviewed for, I've had to explain away the fact that I wanted to be a teacher initially, like going for teaching means I don't know how to do anything else.

[pffh]

My "useless" Classics degree has come in pretty handy. Plus, I'd planned to go through PhD and get into academia, but figured out it wasn't for me. No regrets here, though. You just have to figure out how to make it work.


And that's the problem right there. Most students expect to get a job in their field as soon as they graduate which is unrealistic for most degrees. Now there are some degrees that will give you a job right away (and sometimes a high paying one at that) but those are almost always doing hard science, are related to medicine in some way or business (not so sure about that last one now) and not one of the arts.

This is all coming from someone that pays little over 500$ per year for university (yay Europe) and is studying something that will guarantee him a safe, interesting and well paid career for the rest of my life.

[Dr.Epic]

You can also try to make as many connections as possible and get in good with professors and internship advisers. Never know when you need to call in a favor looking for a job.

[Winter_Wolf]

I would assume that I'm about the same age as you, maybe a bit older, and I would disagree quite a bit.

Of course it depends on what you want to do as a job. There are still a lot of well paying jobs around, in the right parts of the country at least, that don't require much more then being able to cleanly pee in a cup, but for the most part they are not pleasant jobs. They are in very poor weather and generally a lot of manual labor. Also a lot of shift work. The majority around here is either mining or the energy industry but there are also a lot of support industries around for them. And even where I work even though you don't need a degree they still mostly hire people with them because they can.

Of course many of these same jobs, if they were in a big city with a lot of people, wouldn't pay anything close to what they pay here.

And of all the people I know, all of the ones with good jobs (which is a lot more then just pay) went to college or at very least trade schools. Traditional college isn't the right way for everyone, but some sort of post high school training and education is still really important.

Yeah, my bad. I completely meant something other than I wrote! What I wanted (and miserably failed to say) was, my parents and people their age repeatedly said to us that "a 4 year college degree WILL land you a good job."

So, quite different from my intention was my statement! Or something like that. Basically I still hold a lot of resentment for going with the flow when I was given the whole, "if you don't go to (a traditional 4 year) college, you'll ruin your life!" thing that my family dropped on me. :smallannoyed: Shoulda, woulda, coulda, I know. I'm trying to make things right with myself daily. Getting there, slowly.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I'm a history and anthropology student- both fields that won't exactly make me completely employable.

Thankfully, I have other skills...in my country, I am legally allowed to serve alcohol in the hospitality industry, and fully intend to get a job as a bartender.

As for the whole "ruined life" thing...this is economics. You have booms, you have busts. We just happen to be in one of the busts. We'll survive.

Also, it's worth noting that I live in a country where only 30% of people get a university degree, as compared to the 70% in America. Most folks here in Australia make a very good living in the trades as plumbers, electricians, and the like. Here, a uni degree has NEVER been necessary to live, and is more or less just something optional.

[Dacia Brabant]

The market for Latin and Greek translation specialists is small, but the market for generating content is large and growing. Presumably someone with a Classics degree should be a competent writer/researcher/analyst--doubly so if they translated someone like Thucydides or Tacitus and learned the value of "economy of words."

Then it's a matter of learning the vocabulary that your employer/contractor uses, and the best way to do that is to read about a lot of different things and write about each one. It's not the most lucrative path, but it is putting to use the skills you learned for your degree if that's what's important to you.

At least this is the logic I use when I inevitably get asked "why are you working as a reporter at a little paper in BFMT when you have two masterses?" I'll never be a professor, but I can still be thought-provoking as a journalist, especially at the local level. That and it's a nice area.

But my main piece of advice, such as it is, is be willing to go where the labor market is thinnest and/or where the highest demand is for what you can provide. For instance the Dakotas are begging for people to move there and fill the glut of jobs that need to be done now that they're sitting on a coal and oil boom.

[Moff Chumley]

Starting Music Recording Technology, next year. I'm fully prepared to live in a box for most of my adult life. :smalltongue:

Seriously though, are there any associates or other certificates that have relatively good prospects as "day jobs"? Something to do for a few years to pay of loans? Truck driving, bartending, pharmacy... so on and so forth.

[Ursus the Grim]

Seeing as how you haven't graduated yet, how exactly did you come to this conclusion? Given $80k is a lot, and the more practical thing to do would be move and work for a year or two until you get in-state tuition and then go back, but its not going to keep you from getting a job and can be paid off.

Right now there are a couple companies in my area looking for environmental engineers. The one we hired a year or two ago was a chemist turned process engineer (by job, not education) that they are having do environmental work. Because we had a really hard time finding anyone. The only interview we had prior to that took an offer some place else. Any of the energy states I'm sure are in fairly big demand for environmental techs and engineers and scientists.

You don't have to have graduated to look for a job and see what's listed, who's hiring. Most of the jobs around here are for more highly-specialized individuals, those with work experience in the field.

The weird thing is? I can't even land a part-time, unskilled job. I've applied at grocery stores, game shops, tea shops, pretty much every place around. I have no source of income. I have no way to "live" in state, and if I stop going to college for six months, those student loans start coming back, and I don't believe I can pause them again if I go back to school.

I am in no way qualified to be an engineer. I haven't even taken Uni physics. My best options pay in the range of 25 to 35k if I'm lucky, which isn't terrible considering E-sci is often a low-paying field. Nice to be a park maintenance worker (read: Janitor) with my degree. The job needs to be done by someone, but its probably not going to be enough when I graduate and say hello to the loans. I appreciate the encouragement though.

[Erloas]

You don't have to have graduated to look for a job and see what's listed, who's hiring. Most of the jobs around here are for more highly-specialized individuals, those with work experience in the field.
Well a big part of that is going to be location specific. My degree, when I was living in Phoenix, was netting me plenty of $15/hr jobs, but when I moved back home, to Wyoming, that same degree landed me a $30/hr job.
Even Walmart around here pays $12 an hour because its not that easy to find people.
And North Dakota is even more. Even right now they can't find people to work in the oil fields, despite that they pay rather insane amounts, its just that the work sucks and any smart person finds something else to do.

Of course still being in college is an odd situation because most places don't want to hire for any real position if the person is obviously going to be living in a fairly short period of time. And if there are a lot of people looking for work there is no need hire someone that needs an odd schedule.

My cousin graduated about the same time as me, which was about 6 years ago (though I got this job 3-4 years ago) and is still working at a grocery store, with a degree in biological engineering (or something like that)... and really its all come down to her not having confidence in herself, not aggressively looking for work, and not being willing to move. The not being willing to move is the biggest one I think because she is in California and wants to stay there, but so does everyone else and where there is people jobs never pay as well.


Seriously though, are there any associates or other certificates that have relatively good prospects as "day jobs"? Something to do for a few years to pay of loans? Truck driving, bartending, pharmacy... so on and so forth.
truck driving pays good, at least the long haul stuff, but its surprisingly expensive to take the classes to get a commercial drivers license for them.

And really, most "skilled labor" jobs are still good, they are just often overlooked. Most require a fair amount of study, though not in a classroom environment. I know where I work they always look for electricians, instrumentation, mechanics, welders, etc. first and foremost, even knowing that they probably won't start off in those positions but will end up in them later. I actually interviews for an instrumentation position and was hired for it, but they later moved me into the environmental department instead, though still servicing instruments.

[colonelslime]

In the world of government contracting, it is absolutely true. This is because the contracts mandate that certain jobs have certain degrees. So, for example, if you want to be a technical lead, you'll need a Master's regardless of your actual skill, simply because it's a box that needs to be checked in order to award the contract in the first place.

Someone mentioned that 8 months seemed a long time -- well, apart from the fact that I had to learn some people skills in a mighty big hurry the other problem I had was that I was graduating with a CS degree in the Bay Area. There are around 12 universities, some of them world-class -- Stanford, Berkeley, UC Davis, Chico, CSU SF, University of the Pacific -- all dumping masses of entry-level graduates onto the job market every year.

I eventually got around this by taking jobs for tiny computer employers that paid $1000 a month but at least gave real experience that I could put on my resume. That enabled me to land a "real" job at CACI.


This is true, especially if you work at a government research institute. But, statistically, MAs don't earn that much more, specifically because the number of positions requiring an MA (like in government contracts) is limited. So yeah, if you want to become an astrophysicist at NASA, don't stop a high-school. But people shouldn't be surprised that not all college degrees produce good jobs, since for most degrees the actual careers in question are by nature limited in numbers.

Its not the college/uni degrees are useless, it's that we can't all be programmers/lawyers/researchers. At some point, there must be an actual production of goods and services, and these are specifically the jobs in decline in North America. Not to simplify it down too much, but the US national debt and current accounts deficit is case-in-point. To consume, you must produce an equal or greater amount, and as a whole, the US isn't. At least I'm in Canada, where the resource sector keeps us buoyant (though the part I'm in is screwed)



And that's the problem right there. Most students expect to get a job in their field as soon as they graduate which is unrealistic for most degrees. Now there are some degrees that will give you a job right away (and sometimes a high paying one at that) but those are almost always doing hard science, are related to medicine in some way or business (not so sure about that last one now) and not one of the arts.

This is all coming from someone that pays little over 500$ per year for university (yay Europe) and is studying something that will guarantee him a safe, interesting and well paid career for the rest of my life.

The problem is that the American\Canadian experience used to be school->move out->maybe college->job->marriage->career->death. Now its ->school->university (required) and 60,000$ debt-> move back in (if you ever left)-> service industry job->maybe good job/career->marriage->death. Not saying this is what happens to everybody, but its close to typical. The problem with degrees is not that they're useless, but that the job market is saturated with them. If you know how to set yourself apart, no big deal, but that still leaves the average jobless and searching, the exact opposite of what used to be the case when manufacturing was the base of the economy. Doesn't really help anyone here find a job, but it is interesting from a social dynamics sort-of perspective, when you think that the average middle-class worker, who make up a good deal of the consumer base and tax base, are faced with getting cripplingly in debt to get the jobs that are supposed to provide the backbone of the economy.

[THAC0]

Being willing to relocate for a job is HUGE, in my experience. I know a lot of people in my field complaining that they cannot get jobs, but they're only willing to apply within a 60-mile radius of their current place.

Of course, that doesn't apply DURING college, but it definitely applies afterwards.

[Eakin]

Well, this thread makes me feel better in that at least I'm not the ONLY person here who's three years out of school, with little to no idea of what they're doing and ruing the (BA in Political Science) degree I chose/stumbled into.

Even after you're out of school, your education isn't over. I just took the CISSP certification exam and I'm teaching myself all those CS skills I wish I'd picked up in college. You just have to be driven enough to work at it in your free time

[Anarion]

Before I expound any philosophy or theory, just a quick comment at Ursus the Grim. Go talk, in person, with the financial services department of your college. If they're not helpful, I would actually recommend that you consult with a bankruptcy lawyer. What you describe is a terrible situation and, in my (completely non-expert) opinion, there may be more options than you're aware of currently.

_________________________________________________
On the main topic, I think that every college major has career potential. Sure computer science is more obvious, but the life of an average computer programmer is extremely busy and if you don't like that kind of work, I imagine it would be hellish.

I think people make two mistakes. 1) they don't ask for help or advice from the right sources and 2) they don't have something they're truly passionate about. Regarding 1) every college in the nation has a career services program. There are job fairs held across the country and there are non-profits, government jobs, and small private firms looking for workers who can speak and write competently, often without regard to the subject.
As for 2) passion is just something to direct you. It's no surprise that if you study something that you don't really care about and put nothing but the minimum work required into it, you receive the minimum back in return. Whereas, when you really care about something you become progressively more involved, get to know people and make connections, and can often turn that into a job prospect.

I hope the above doesn't sound too preachy. I mean, it's kinda preachy by intent, but it's just the way I think about motivation and ambition.

[neoseph7]

If you're in the US, the military has a number of officer programs that require you only have a degree, although some programs will require specific classes and/or GPAs. Not that the military isn't also affected by the economic slump. As enlistment holds its standards with that of high school graduates, many college graduates will find their standardized tests easy and be sought after to fill billets for the more technically challenging jobs that are in high demand. Ideal? Probably not. But it's employment that beats the heck out of fast food, and most of us nerds benefit from the mandatory exercise.

As for while you're in school, I can tell you from experience that it's better to focus. If you can afford to dabble with a class here and there to enrich your academic experience, by all means enjoy. Keep in mind that you are competing with not only your classmates, but with students from colleges around the nation and the country for a position in a dwindling job market. So a high gpa is only the start. You especially want experience with (a) your trade or focus outside of the academic environment and (b) leadership. Internships, research positions, work-study programs, etc. Keep your nose to the grind. You also want to start looking for employers long before your senior year. The hope is to get an internship, at the latest, by the summer preceeding your 3rd year. Finally, friends are a good thing. Be as social as possible with the right crowds. Seek out the instructors that actually went out and worked in the real world for their advice for what jobs to go looking for. Not to discredit the instructor who has been studying all their life at their own field of study, if you don't want to teach, they're view of the real world might not be all too useful. Ivory towers and all that.

Take your time. I know that seems counter intuitive, but if a company losses an openeing that you could have filled from one year to the next, they were probably going to downsize you first anyway. Make sure your college experience nets you all the things you want, which is more than a sheet of paper. Connections, interships, research positions, all that. If you need to stretch out your last 2 years of focus over three, the world as you know it wont crumble, and it'll probably pay off later.

On the subject of majors. Again looking at the US, a certain political power has made it likely that demand for medical staff will increase over the years to come. If that political power gets to enjoy another 4 years, the demand for nurses, physicians, doctors, etc. on the part of the hospital is only going to increase. Chemists and biologists, along with their engineering counterparts as well. In general, if you have 3 years before graduation and need to pick a focus, take a look at the political climate to see what will and wont benefit. I was not a poli-sci major, so I can;t really give much advice beyond the obvious.
Fossil fuels are going to be a lucriditive buisness for the years to come, and they are always looking to hire chemical engineers from what I've heard.

I was a physics/nuclear engineering major in college. I graduated in DEC 2008, just after the bubble collapse. I joined the military in 2009 and started active duty in 2010 (if you want to take that route, be aware: wait list).
I say this because I have no idea were those who got the more liberal arts type degrees go to work. With the excpetion of law. My gf was English/Japanese in undergrad and is about to complete her Law degree, with work as a govt employee doing legal research. My good friend with a degree in economics went the Law route. And then joined the marines to be something not a jag ::eyeroll::. My best friend with a math degree started his second year of law school this year. I'm apperently the only one who didn't catch the bug.

[Savannah]

I wanna know what she was doing with all those "many" volunteer hours she had :smallconfused: I'm going into a rather unusual field but I'm honestly not too worried about getting a job, as I now know, through my volunteer work, many people who will hire me/help me get hired until I can get enough clients to be self employed. Volunteer hours aren't just for fun, they're for networking and meeting people in your field!

[Grim Reader]

There are a lot of factors that should be considered when chosing your degree. How much you enjoy the subject. Financial prospects. Employment prospects. Status. Chosing your degree based on just one of those facors is bound to end in grief. The oppointe of the OP picture is the person who chose their major based only on financial calculations and ended up in a job they hate.


Actually, there's a humongous glut of people with law degrees. Job prospects are not very good for people with law degrees. Law degrees also suffer because it is a one-country degree. Stuff like computers, engineering, english, medicine...you can use in any country. Much more ability to flex.


Oh, yeah, those ones, forgot to write that down on my short list.
Now, the other problem is getting that first job when you have no experience whatsoever. I mean, despite having followed lessons on the subject, I don't even know what my resume should include. Of course, I'm pretty sure my diploma can offer me a lot more than a "career" at McDonald's, but until I find the right opportunity, fast food and such may be my only option. Hopefully, that kind of experience won't scare employers away. :smallfrown:

Yeah...everone has been there, I think. In my country it is common to get your first job in a remote location that do not get a lot of candidates for jobs. Of course, our legal system makes references more important.

I think my best advice to you is, don't be afraid to use your contacts. The best people to talk to are those in HR, or who have been involved in the hiring process for professionals.

Do you have any friends who are employed? Do they know someone like that? Does your friends siblings? Their parents? Get someone who knows a little about stuff like that to sit down and buy them a couple of beers. Go through your CV and application forms. Bring a couple of examples of your applications and get some constructive critizism.

[dehro]

meh.. whatever field of education one choses, there's one thing s/he should never forget, and that the job market is just that..a market.
If you don't know how to sell your skills and knowledge, having the fanciest degree is worth little more than nothing.

I dropped out of uni chasing a few job opportunities that were handed to me in a luckier time of my life..I do rue the decision, because later I found myself out of a job (the company I was working for chose to pursue other markets than the one I was selling on, so I was forced to take a step back and pursue other options)... and not having a degree did count for something, in the various interviews I had. then again, I've been working for the last 12 years, so I am now at the stage where a degree on my CV would only be a bonus, but not the primary requirement.

I have a friend who graduated in computer engineering, in the US, and spent a month on holiday before starting to look for employement, back in Italy. Within weeks he had 3 interviews, one in France, one in Germany and one in Italy. He took the german job and has moved there last week, because it pays more and offers better career prospects. Being flexible and ready to uproot his entire life is what landed him the better paying job. had he stayed in Italy, and had they confirmed him in the italian position, he'd be making about half the money, with little or no assurances of an actual career path.

I know a painter who now lives in the States and has found himself a patron of sorts and makes a decent living, but who made ends meet by teaching aerobics in a gym, and used his graphic and manual skills to work as a designer in the nursery products industry, designing a high-chair... something that flew in the face of his "artistic" work, but where he could use his skills and make money with them, as he waited for his artistic career to take off.

Another one of my friends has a degree (and I think a phd) in one of the human sciences, one that has to do with restoration of works of arts, if I'm not mistaken. when she got out of uni, the best she could hope for was to find a job as a teacher, a tour guide, librarian, or..had she been exceedingly good and willing to work hard to get there, one day, she might have been given the chance to do some actual restoration on one of the many historical monuments we have in the country.
She chose a different path and now runs a company that organizes events, dinner parties, presentations and such, for companies..specializing in holding said events in historically and artistically significant locations such as churches, museums and such.. adding a cultural patina and some contents to an otherwise mundane/business gathering.

I don't know of anybody else doing something quite like it... and it just goes to show that any kind of degree can bring you to gainful employment, provided you're willing to think in many different directions and open to putting your expectations upside down and find something, anything, where you can use what you have learned..be it directly specific to what you know, or only tangentially touching on it..but still giving you an edge.

[Tyndmyr]

Its not the college/uni degrees are useless, it's that we can't all be programmers/lawyers/researchers.

Not entirely all of us, no...but why can't a great many of us do this?


At some point, there must be an actual production of goods and services, and these are specifically the jobs in decline in North America. Not to simplify it down too much, but the US national debt and current accounts deficit is case-in-point. To consume, you must produce an equal or greater amount, and as a whole, the US isn't. At least I'm in Canada, where the resource sector keeps us buoyant (though the part I'm in is screwed)

That's industrial age logic, not information age. The US crushes it in the food production sector, and only a tiny and shrinking amount of people are employed in it. See, per person production has historically increased dramatically, because of investments in research and technology.

You really, really need increased efficiency if you want culture to advance, but doing so WILL kill jobs, which need to move into another sector.


The problem with degrees is not that they're useless, but that the job market is saturated with them. If you know how to set yourself apart, no big deal, but that still leaves the average jobless and searching, the exact opposite of what used to be the case when manufacturing was the base of the economy. Doesn't really help anyone here find a job, but it is interesting from a social dynamics sort-of perspective, when you think that the average middle-class worker, who make up a good deal of the consumer base and tax base, are faced with getting cripplingly in debt to get the jobs that are supposed to provide the backbone of the economy.

*shrug* I had 6k in loans after college, and got jack all for financial help from parents. Not even rent and things, let alone tuition. Admittedly, I took a non-optimal path through college, due to terrible advice and such, but still, I ended up with a degree and a job, so it wasn't all bad.

Yes, getting through college without spending a lot can be a good bit of work, but it's possible. And depending on what degree you pick, it may not be saturated at all. Med degree? Likely expensive, but almost certainly worthwhile. Cultural Studies degree? Probably not worth the time and effort.

Edit: I agree being willing to relocate is huge. If you're in detroit, and demanding a job both there AND in a sector that's oversold there...tough luck. You better be willing to compromise on one or both of those.

[cucchulainnn]

truck driving pays good, at least the long haul stuff, but its surprisingly expensive to take the classes to get a commercial drivers license for them.


hi

as a commercial driver no they do not pay well. they are rolling sweat shops. driving locally will get you around ten bucks an hour and over the road you are a sub contractor which means you have rent or own a cab. those cabs go for several hundred thousand dollars. you get paid a commission based on how heavy and how much space the item takes up and how many miles you will be carrying it. now subtract expenses like fuel, tires, insurance, road permits (ever see the stickers on the door of trucks, those are the states the truck has paid to have permission to be in).

the fuel tank is around 100 gallons. at about $4 per gallon that is $400 each fill up. the tires are between $500 and $1,000 each, 18 of them. lets not even talk about general maintenance like oil changes, and break jobs. and of course there is either the rent or paying the note for the truck it self.

to make money you have to drive cover between 4,000 and 5,000 miles per week. legally we are only allowed to drive for ten hours then we have to take an eight hour break. lets assume that you are allowed to drive at 65mph even thoe most places it is 55. so that is 650 miles per shift with out traffic. at 65hpm you are talking about 6-7 shifts at 55 your are talking about 7-10 shifts per week to make your 4,000-5,000 miles per week. the reality is we frequently get stuck in traffic when every near cities. so we have to make up the lost distance. we speed, drive more hours then allowed and do drugs to stay awake (some illegal and some over the counter. all types of speed). why do you think they sell "no doze" in truck stops. commercial drivers end up driving 15-18 per day, seven days a week. for barely above minimum wage. unless you are extremely lucky and work as an employee for some one like fed ex, but they are moving over to subcontracting that work out.

sure the gross looks good on paper but the net is really really low.

[pendell]

Cultural Studies degree? Probably not worth the time and effort.


Perhaps a better solution would be to pursue something which you can use to pay the bills (CS degree, or trade school such as auto repair or truck driving), then go back to school and learn it in your spare time for personal enrichment. I'm getting ready to take a course in ancient Greek history (http://academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history). It'll never pay financially, but since I already work as a software engineer I don't need it to. History is my avocation. I've never been able to turn it into paying work.

Of course, someone like Rich Burlew can take his hobby -- games -- and make a living from doing what he loves. I am struck by both admiration and envy.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Erloas]

as a commercial driver no they do not pay well. they are rolling sweat shops. driving locally will get you around ten bucks an hour and over the road you are a sub contractor which means you have rent or own a cab.
Well I suppose it might depend on where you are at. A few years ago there were ads constantly for companies looking for drivers with commercial licenses. And while I haven't noticed them lately, I also haven't been listening for them. If I'm remembering correctly I think most were paying in the $18-25/hr range for local and mid-distance drivers.
And at least around here the interstates are all 75, with a very few places with 65mph truck speed limits and there is virtually no traffic at all. I've only known 2 people that actually drive though, one is a cousin (not actually cousin directly, but something like that, that I have only meet a few times) and he seemed to be doing pretty well though I couldn't say exactly, and the other was only doing local runs and was doing pretty well until his company relocated and he left. I thought most of them made somewhere in the 40-60k range a year. I could ask my brother if he knows better, because he delivers parts for trucks.
I wouldn't at all disagree that they are crappy jobs and long hours away, but I've never heard them complain that they aren't making money at it. And the short version is if they were only making $10/hr no one around here would do it because you can make a lot more then that driving for Pizza Hut, and most places, Walmart included, pay at least $10/hr.

[cucchulainnn]

you are right a few years ago it was a good deal. but not any more, every one and their mother are getting CDLs. and when you are talking 40-60k is that the gross or net, are your two friends employees or owner operators? there is a reason most over the road drivers live deep in the sticks. it is the only place they can afford to do so. by the way i prefer rural living to urban. most of the time at least.

i take it from your lack of traffic you don't really deal with metropolitan areas often. that is not a slight but an observation. we all have different experiences based on our background. any one who have ever been on I95 can tell you what i mean. when ever you come with in 50 miles of a major city traffic grinds to a snails pace. regardless of what part of the country you are in. although i am more experienced with the east coast of the US.

i got my CDL in 1986 after high school, and i'm the youngest of 5 sons and two sisters. all of my brothers are union carpenters or electricians. one sister is a public school teacher here in new york the other works with the department of well fare (i'm not sure of the correct agencies name).

my first real job after high school was with the teamsters local 814, (man i made a lot of money at that time and squandered most of it) around 1996 i went to college at first for engineering then changing over to computer science BA. unfortunately i graduated in new york city in june of 2001. that was an unemployment odyssey.

after that i ended up in a publishing company, first in the mail room then worked my way up to office manager/facilities manger. they went out of business a few years ago. unfortunately i own my house. and can't afford to sell it at a loss.

i've held onto my CDL because most of my life when out of work find a driving job to hold me over was easy. this time around there are so many drivers looking with so few jobs that companies can treat you like slaves, what are you gonna do quit, yea, ha ha, go ahead. there are ten thousand others that want your position. in the last three years, i've driven over the road with (i probably shouldn't name the companies), done local deliveries, a bus for access a ride and currently drive a taxi cab wile going to school during my off hours to become a paramedic. all minimum wage and one after an other went out of business with in a few months of getting there. all except the over the road company, wile there i was renting a cab. yea the gross pay looked good but once you subtracted all the expenses and got to your net it worked out to about $7 per hour.

my niece was a over the road driver for fed ex getting about $25 per hour but they just fired several thousand drivers and replaced them with subcontractors. they told her if she gets a cab they would take her back but after going over the math her take home pay would be about $8-10 per hour.

my current long term plan is to become a paramedic and then eventually become a civilian employ of either NYPD or NYFD as one. there is no age requirement and i am young enough to able to do my twenty years and retire. that and i'm lucky enough in that i have always been extremely strong and can easily carry people. both the NYPD and NYFD have always had a hard time recruiting for those positions because they tend to be messy and most people can't handle it.

now a days it is a catch 22, not only do you need to be really really good at what you do but you need the paper work to say you do and you need to have been paid by some one to have done it or you wont even be considered for the job.

we are living in a buyer's market. employers can be as picky as they want for arbitrary reason when they have 20,000 people applying for 2 potions. you would be surprise the reasons your resume gets weeded out.

[Kneenibble]

What have I learned from reading this thread so far: living in the USA sucks right now. In spite of colonelslime's account I don't know anybody in my area with trouble getting half-decent work once they have finished a degree.

My cousin -- to parry cucchulainnn's examples -- who dropped out of University, was struggling until he took a long-haul truck drivers' certificate (not sure what it's called): then he made great money. He had to quit due to a heart condition, but that is hardly the economy's fault.

[cucchulainnn]

My cousin -- to parry cucchulainnn's examples -- who dropped out of University, was struggling until he took a long-haul truck drivers' certificate (not sure what it's called): then he made great money. He had to quit due to a heart condition, but that is hardly the economy's fault.

a previous president deregulated trucking in the US and since then it went down hill. not the one most people would expect and we can't talk about the details. :(

i am not that far from canada and have often though about crossing the boarder.

[thorgrim29]

What have I learned from reading this thread so far: living in the USA sucks right now.

Yeah, me too. A lot of my buddies have a great job right now, and we finished our bachelor's in late august. I'm currently doing an MBA but I don't anticipate much difficulty getting a job in a year. There are more jobs then applicants in accounting over here, and the same is true of most areas, from doctor to plumber, pretty much every area is going to have labour shortages in the next few years. I think part of the problem in the US is that a lot of people didn't retire in the last years when they had planned to, while here we mostly don't have that problem. Of course our housing market and our banking system survived 2008, so that's a major factor too.

[Tyndmyr]

What have I learned from reading this thread so far: living in the USA sucks right now. In spite of colonelslime's account I don't know anybody in my area with trouble getting half-decent work once they have finished a degree.

My cousin -- to parry cucchulainnn's examples -- who dropped out of University, was struggling until he took a long-haul truck drivers' certificate (not sure what it's called): then he made great money. He had to quit due to a heart condition, but that is hardly the economy's fault.

It depends on your group. I've had my job for years, and it's fantastic. I'm compensated very well, and receive excellent benefits, bonuses, etc. The people I hang out with...the military guys are most definitely the lowest paid of the lot, and they get by. When people become unemployed, it's a temporary thing. Only one person in my rather large social circle is unemployed, and that's entirely because she's really, really dumb, and frankly is more the sort to depend on someone to support her anyhow.

The USA is a huge place. Some areas in it are really terrible for jobs. Some are not. East coast, there's hiring signs up everywhere. If you're willing to move and flexible about the job, employment is not a problem.

[KenderWizard]

We have many of the same problems (high unemployment, job market saturation, most people getting degrees pushing more people into Master's and PhD programs, a focus on a "knowledge economy" with an education system that can't cope) with one massive difference: almost no one goes into serious debt for their undergraduate degree. We have "free fees" which is a bit of a lie, since we pay a couple of thousand a year, in contrast to somewhere like France, which has "fees" but they only pay a couple of hundred. This has inflated wildly in the last few years. In my first year I paid 900 euro, this year it was 2000. They're talking about bringing fees back, I'm not sure even by my little brother's time if it'll be the same, but right now, mostly, parents still support you until you graduate from college. Obviously some can't do that 100%, a lot of people would get part time jobs in college to meet their living expenses, but generally, you either get a grant, or your parents pay your "free" fees. My grandparents supported my mother through college, so she supports me through college, and I'll support my kids through college.

As for job prospects, I want to be an academic, and I'm well on track for it, but clearly that's not for everyone. I'm in geology, where there is still decent funding for research, because if all else fails, the oil and mining industries push us along, as do governments. I have no desire to go into the oil industry, because, well, they can be a bit evil and also someday we'll run out of oil and the whole industry will stop abruptly. Maybe I'll have retired by then, or maybe I'll have a mortage, three kids and elderly parents to look after, who knows?

I've always been on track for academia. I didn't even realise for ages that not everyone went to college. My mother had always taught me that the postgraduate work was the optional part, not undergraduate. I've basically known since before I started primary school that I'd go to school, then "big school", then do science in college, then do extra college to be a "Professor" (I liked the word professor better than the word doctor). I even decided on physics, and, sure enough, I'm almost certainly going to do my postgrad in geophysics.

My brother will be the one with trouble, since he doesn't want to go into academia particularly, and wants to do arts stuff, like English or Law. But he's a couple of years away from college still, so who knows what it'll be like by then.

[thorgrim29]

How is Law art stuff?

[Syka]

I hear everyone say relocate, but it isn't always that easy. A lot of folks have to worry about family considerations. Personally, I'm restricted to NYC and LA for relocation due to what my boyfriend* wants to pursue.

Frankly...I'm willing to take something outside of my field to do that, though. Ideal? No. But I would rather be happy with my boyfriend in a job I like but don't love, instead of in a job I (may) love and without him.

As it is, my interview went well today and I'm hoping it will open up opportunities to transfer to the aforementioned areas I want/need to relocate. After speaking with friends who have worked for the company, I think it would work out.



*Anyone who reads RWA will understand it's more than just dating, and while plenty of people in general say "Dump someone, you're just dating"....it's not an option here.

[Tyndmyr]

I hear everyone say relocate, but it isn't always that easy. A lot of folks have to worry about family considerations. Personally, I'm restricted to NYC and LA for relocation due to what my boyfriend* wants to pursue.

That's a reasonable consideration, but it's something rather different from the "zero prospects" described in the OP, which seems to be terribly negative.

The rougher the economy, the more flexible you have to be to find prospects...but to say that there are none indicates either some fairly serious mistakes(say, a history of violent crime will trash your prospects) and/or a really negative attitude.

[Erloas]

i take it from your lack of traffic you don't really deal with metropolitan areas often. that is not a slight but an observation. we all have different experiences based on our background. any one who have ever been on I95 can tell you what i mean. when ever you come with in 50 miles of a major city traffic grinds to a snails pace. regardless of what part of the country you are in. although i am more experienced with the east coast of the US.
Well I spent 8 years in Phoenix, and I at least moderately regularly go through Salt Lake City and much less frequently Las Vegas. None of them would be that bad to drive through on long haul, though obviously if you're trying to do a mileage based job in any big city its not going to go that well. But yeah, for the most part you can drive 900 miles in this area and only drop below 65 for a small bit of it, mostly just depending what time of day you get to certain cities.

As for the pay, I'm not really sure how they were paid. And of course how far money goes depends a lot on where you live. Rural here is *not* anything like rural on the east coast. Even cities here aren't really anything like cities there either, at least from what I've seen. The cost of living, even in larger cities and smaller towns, is a lot lower then the east or west coast.




As for relocating. It is a lot of work and its not really an easy thing to do, but its possible and a lot of people do do it. The main point though was that a lot of people that complain about being unemployed or underemployed never even look at the option. And at least before the recession in Phoenix I knew a number of people that wouldn't take jobs because they were too far away in the same metro area and they didn't want to leave whatever suburb they happened to be in. I would imagine its changed some now but my guess is not really all that much, but I couldn't say much because I left before that happened. I would also be willing to bet that many of the protesters around the country have spent more effort in the last few weeks protesting then they did in the last year trying to find a job (and the interviews I've seen with people on the streets support that). Most people don't seem to be willing to accept taking a job that its exactly what they want to do.
And about a month ago one of my friends from Phoenix was laid off at his job, and thats one of the worst markets around and he managed to find a job within a few weeks but he was also really going after it.

[THAC0]

I hear everyone say relocate, but it isn't always that easy. A lot of folks have to worry about family considerations. Personally, I'm restricted to NYC and LA for relocation due to what my boyfriend* wants to pursue.

Frankly...I'm willing to take something outside of my field to do that, though. Ideal? No. But I would rather be happy with my boyfriend in a job I like but don't love, instead of in a job I (may) love and without him.

As it is, my interview went well today and I'm hoping it will open up opportunities to transfer to the aforementioned areas I want/need to relocate. After speaking with friends who have worked for the company, I think it would work out.



*Anyone who reads RWA will understand it's more than just dating, and while plenty of people in general say "Dump someone, you're just dating"....it's not an option here.

There are always choices and sacrifices to be made, and I don't say that snarkily, as someone whose pretty much given up a career at this point for my husband's job. And you've stated it fine: you'll take a job outside your field to stay there, which is great.

The problem is with people who won't make that sacrifice and then complain about not being able to get a job. Things like that, you know? Or people who don't have that tie to an area, but still won't move.

[Phaedra]

There are always choices and sacrifices to be made, and I don't say that snarkily, as someone whose pretty much given up a career at this point for my husband's job. And you've stated it fine: you'll take a job outside your field to stay there, which is great.

The problem is with people who won't make that sacrifice and then complain about not being able to get a job. Things like that, you know? Or people who don't have that tie to an area, but still won't move.

This is still too simplistic a view though. For many people it is not an issue of being unwilling to make the sacrifice, but that they are unable. Moving home costs a lot of money, even if you are simply renting rather than buying. Someone who has been out of work for a long time may not have the savings necessary to be able to do so unless they are lucky enough to get a job with a company willing to pay moving expenses.

This also assumes that someone who has been out of work for a while and/or has no spare cash can even successfully complete the application process for a job far away from their area. Better hope the company provides interview expenses! And even if they do, better hope they pay them back fast, or you might not make your rent or utilities for the month if you've had to buy a train/plane ticket to an interview.

Best hope that job's secure too. Don't want to move all the way across the country for a new job only to be laid off again in a few months. Then you're unemployed and in an area where you know no one and have no support. Sucks to be you, I guess.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that a certain amount of flexibility is needed. I recently moved for a job myself. I left my partner behind, dealing with a long-distance relationship again so we could both have work because money was tight and we could not continue with only one person working. But it is very easy to say people should move, but much harder to do in practice. I think many people underestimate precisely how hard it is to both find a job in an area you don't know and then to successfully move and set up a life elsewhere. The process was one I don't want to repeat and I certainly don't blame anyone who would rather keep searching close to home, even if the chances of a job are slim.

[THAC0]

This is still too simplistic a view though. For many people it is not an issue of being unwilling to make the sacrifice, but that they are unable. Moving home costs a lot of money, even if you are simply renting rather than buying. Someone who has been out of work for a long time may not have the savings necessary to be able to do so unless they are lucky enough to get a job with a company willing to pay moving expenses.

This also assumes that someone who has been out of work for a while and/or has no spare cash can even successfully complete the application process for a job far away from their area. Better hope the company provides interview expenses! And even if they do, better hope they pay them back fast, or you might not make your rent or utilities for the month if you've had to buy a train/plane ticket to an interview.

Best hope that job's secure too. Don't want to move all the way across the country for a new job only to be laid off again in a few months. Then you're unemployed and in an area where you know no one and have no support. Sucks to be you, I guess.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that a certain amount of flexibility is needed. I recently moved for a job myself. I left my partner behind, dealing with a long-distance relationship again so we could both have work because money was tight and we could not continue with only one person working. But it is very easy to say people should move, but much harder to do in practice. I think many people underestimate precisely how hard it is to both find a job in an area you don't know and then to successfully move and set up a life elsewhere. The process was one I don't want to repeat and I certainly don't blame anyone who would rather keep searching close to home, even if the chances of a job are slim.

I'm already moving twice this year, so I really do understand how much of a pain it is. And it's one thing to look at the options, run the numbers, and decide that you're better off staying where you are and hoping, but it's quite another thing to never even look outside of a 30-minute drive from your current place.

[Keld Denar]

Relevent Avenue Q song is relevent. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK6ksA0QyE4)

I have a BS in Mech Engineering, and I was lucky enough to find a job right out of school. It paid decent, but wasn't quite what I wanted. So I moved jobs, got laid off, and did 6 months on unemployment. Now I've been hired by another company, and doing well for 1.5 years, but still not right where I want to be. I've been looking around lately, but prospects aren't that much better for someone with ~5 years experience than they were at entry level. I had an interview with a company that I absolutely LOVED, but I haven't heard back in 2 weeks despite followups, so I'm guessing that was a bust. Time to send out another 50-80 resumes.

I'm just lucky that I can look for work while I have work, rather than looking for work while on unemployment.

[pendell]

Keld: That song wins.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[colonelslime]

I hope you all like text!


Not entirely all of us, no...but why can't a great many of us do this?



Because there simply isn't a demand for that level of work on a mass scale. Putting aside things like individual skill and aptitude, and assuming anybody could do any job, a telecom company only needs on systems architect, and a hospital needs only so many doctors. A high degree of specialization usually means that the field in question is in limited supply, both because of the degree requirements, but also due to the highly focused nature of the profession. These dynamics change constantly, and markets do grow, but they also shrink, and there can be only so many game designers before all positions are filled. This is to even mentioning the fact that certain people lack the ability to do certain jobs, and the difficulty, both in cost and aptitude, in retraining from one sector to another. Labour mobility is a huge flaw in classic microeconomic models, since the actual flexibility of individual participants in the labour pool is far less than is often assumed. And there's always issues of classism in this too, since certain jobs are valued and respected(like doctors), will others are denigrated and treated as failures to achieve (like janitors or cashiers, and to a certain degree factory work), despite the fact that we need a varied workforce with a strong production base to sustain economic well-being. There is a whack of research and scholarship on this topic, and how it affects the attitudes of the public and people in power. One theory is that this, more than actual need, has been responsible for the huge rise in degree acquisition, and that what were are seeing now is the result of too many people trying to have "the good life" portrayed by culture as coming only from post-secondary education.



That's industrial age logic, not information age. The US crushes it in the food production sector, and only a tiny and shrinking amount of people are employed in it. See, per person production has historically increased dramatically, because of investments in research and technology.

You really, really need increased efficiency if you want culture to advance, but doing so WILL kill jobs, which need to move into another sector.


Oh the productive capacity of the US is really good, but it still consumes far more than it produces on a national scale. Basic economics says there is only one way of this to be possible: public and/or private debt. It's not a coincidence that over the last decade, median income in the US has stagnated and declined against inflation, but consumption continued apace. There's a whole whack of scholarship on that phenomenon, but it does all point generally to the fact that the US, especially since the USD is the world's reserve currency (for now, at least), has been able to fuel a decade long consumption binge by borrowing foreign capital. The idea that we could all be part of the "Knowledge Economy" was an idea but forth to explain why these huge labour shifts and trade asymmetries were OK, and that we really could have all the better jobs here will shipping the poorer ones overseas, regardless of the fact that China and India are just as good at researching as the US or Canada is. Bu these factors were really obvious warning signs of things to come. It's not just automation and increases in efficiency that harm US job rates, since even then you would need monitoring and staff, it's that the US has largely deferred paying for the increased standard of living it has been enjoying. The use of speculation in the financial sector also created illusory value, giving the US and its citizens more assets to draw against to keep up consumption. Things like demand for the USD had kept stuff from going south for a bit, but it took just a tiny bit of stress (oil prices, which if you recall in 2008 precipitated the interest-rate hike that started the mortgage industry's collapse) to bring the whole phantasmagorical construction down. We are really seeing, rather than a recession, a classic economic contraction following an asset bubble, as the economy adjusts itself to the actual productive output and value present in it, rather than the over-exuberant speculative value perceived in it.
(I speak as someone who was insufferably predicting doom and gloom since 2006, when I first started teaching myself economics in advance of going into my degree)

Not saying we should be routing for factory towns to come back, or cheering the opening of sweatshops, but the fact is that for people to consume, they must have some means of producing a good or service which they trade for money. The US will have to examine where it wants to go as a nation, and figure out how it can start selling something other than government bonds to other nations, to make up the difference. Or people in the US will have to accept an economic contraction and a reduced standard of living as their debt levels become unsustainable.



*shrug* I had 6k in loans after college, and got jack all for financial help from parents. Not even rent and things, let alone tuition. Admittedly, I took a non-optimal path through college, due to terrible advice and such, but still, I ended up with a degree and a job, so it wasn't all bad.

Yes, getting through college without spending a lot can be a good bit of work, but it's possible. And depending on what degree you pick, it may not be saturated at all. Med degree? Likely expensive, but almost certainly worthwhile. Cultural Studies degree? Probably not worth the time and effort.

Edit: I agree being willing to relocate is huge. If you're in detroit, and demanding a job both there AND in a sector that's oversold there...tough luck. You better be willing to compromise on one or both of those.

Glad to hear you beat the odds, but the actual statistics for American (or Canadian) graduates employed at jobs at their skill/education level is actually shockingly low, especially depending on where you are (for Ontario it's something like 18%). Heck, I can remember getting a resume at my job from an applicant with an MBA and a history of work at Merrill Lynch, and he was trying to become a postal clerk in a Shopper's Drug Mart. And there are people who are leaving school with in excess of 100,000$ in debt. Debt levels in general for the young are extremely high, and this will be a problem when they become the main production/consumption/taxation base of the economy.

But you are also right that people who go into arts degrees should not expect the working world to blossom open for them just because the have the letters "BA" suffixed to their name. And while there are hurdles to relocating, You're right that a lot of people have unrealistic expectations about settling down in one place early on. One of the things that helped fuel the manufacturing boom in the US postwar was the ability of people to go where work was, and this remains an important factor in labour dynamics (though if all the jobs move out of country, you're a little more screwed).

In the end, its a little from column A and B. You can't expect society to owe you anything, and post-secondary education is not some magic entitlement to a job, but the current situation is showing so more generalized social problems that will have to be worked out one way or another. Should be fun to watch.

Again, this is really just me musing on social/economic dynamics, more than purporting to give advice to individuals. We (everyone in this discussion) could probably all find some white-collar or higher level of work, but it can't be the economic base of a society, especially if we want to import anything from abroad.

Apologies for the TL;DR nerdom of what preceded.



What have I learned from reading this thread so far: living in the USA sucks right now. In spite of colonelslime's account I don't know anybody in my area with trouble getting half-decent work once they have finished a degree.

My cousin -- to parry cucchulainnn's examples -- who dropped out of University, was struggling until he took a long-haul truck drivers' certificate (not sure what it's called): then he made great money. He had to quit due to a heart condition, but that is hardly the economy's fault.

Really? Maybe I should move. To be fair as well, I was specifically talking about the outcome for PoliSci and Econ majors, which is a far more limited worksphere than they like to imply when you sign up for the degree. Plus the whole recent planned cuts makes it hard to find any government institution willing to hire. Plus Ottawa has never really recovered from the telecom bust (Nortel was huge here), though we are doing better than we were. It's good to know I could probably move and find a full-time job elsewhere, even if it's something not directly associated with my degree, though I do still have fleeting hopes of working for an NGO like Oxfam or Amnesty International.



Keld: That song wins.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Seconded, as does all of Avenue Q

[Xyk]

This is what's been my primary concern since I began college this August. I have no real passion for math or science and could not handle the lack of freedom in any business or engineering job in America (aside from Google, but that's pretty unlikely). I would really like to pursue music, visual art, and literature and somehow support myself, but that's looking to be several kinds of impossible. It doesn't help that I have an expensive medical condition.

No degree will help me do these things independently. I'd give myself a 95% chance of dropping out within the next year and getting a day job while working on all of those arts. Luckily, I happen to have my entire family living in the single most economically booming city in the United States (Austin, TX according to Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/09/recession-economy-cities-business-beltway-recovery-cities_slide_2.html)), so I should be relatively okay.

[Morganatic]

Because I was not a racial, ethnic, gender, or religious minority in high school, I was denied scholarships that other people were granted solely on the basis of their superficial quantities.

Sorry to be very picky, and single this out of your entire post, but I did really take issue with this, as it's a pretty alarmingly privileged view - all the worries about employment, etc. in this thread are pretty likely to be significantly magnified if you are a member of one of these groups. Either because of overt prejudice (which still very much exists, in pretty much every country, against pretty much all of the groups you mentioned), or because of broader structural/social inequalities, you will have a harder time getting and keeping good employment.

Black 'classical studies graduate' is more likely to have a harder time finding work than her white equivalent, trans 'computer science graduate' is likely to have a harder time landing that cushy CS job than her cis counterpart, etc. Whether scholarships are the best way of dealing with it is another issue, but I assure you that it's not a 'superficial quality'.

[colonelslime]

have a harder time landing that cushy CS job than her cis counterpart, etc.


Total tangent: This is the first time I have ever seen someone make the link between the term "trans" as in transgendered and "trans" as in cis/trans isomerism. I didn't know you could do that. You just blew my mind, Morganatic

[Tyndmyr]

Sorry to be very picky, and single this out of your entire post, but I did really take issue with this, as it's a pretty alarmingly privileged view - all the worries about employment, etc. in this thread are pretty likely to be significantly magnified if you are a member of one of these groups. Either because of overt prejudice (which still very much exists, in pretty much every country, against pretty much all of the groups you mentioned), or because of broader structural/social inequalities, you will have a harder time getting and keeping good employment.

Black 'classical studies graduate' is more likely to have a harder time finding work than her white equivalent, trans 'computer science graduate' is likely to have a harder time landing that cushy CS job than her cis counterpart, etc. Whether scholarships are the best way of dealing with it is another issue, but I assure you that it's not a 'superficial quality'.

Be that as it may, being not of any minority status does significantly lower the amount of scholarships you are eligible for. This might not be a big deal if you come from a family of means(which is admittedly more probable), but if you do not...it can be unfortunate. The only scholarships I picked up were purely academic ones based on grades alone...and those are pretty heavily competed for, and frequently only cover a portion of tuition. Full rides are quite rare. So, while I recommend pursuing scholarships, I can certainly accept that for many people, they are not a realistic solution.

Hell, in my first college(little community college in the midwest), diversity was pretty terrible in the area. So, they imported minorities from Chicago and gave them full rides, housing included. Fair, unfair...meh. People are always going to be a bit upset when they have to pay a substantial amount for what others get for free.

And, for what it's worth, I feel that the tech industry is pretty diversity friendly, as fields go. I don't feel like minorities are getting less from opting to get a degree in it than others are. After all...it's not like people who discriminate are going to stop discriminating if you don't have a degree.


I hope you all like text!

Responded in spoiler for brevity.




Because there simply isn't a demand for that level of work on a mass scale. Putting aside things like individual skill and aptitude, and assuming anybody could do any job, a telecom company only needs on systems architect, and a hospital needs only so many doctors. A high degree of specialization usually means that the field in question is in limited supply, both because of the degree requirements, but also due to the highly focused nature of the profession. These dynamics change constantly, and markets do grow, but they also shrink, and there can be only so many game designers before all positions are filled. This is to even mentioning the fact that certain people lack the ability to do certain jobs, and the difficulty, both in cost and aptitude, in retraining from one sector to another. Labour mobility is a huge flaw in classic microeconomic models, since the actual flexibility of individual participants in the labour pool is far less than is often assumed. And there's always issues of classism in this too, since certain jobs are valued and respected(like doctors), will others are denigrated and treated as failures to achieve (like janitors or cashiers, and to a certain degree factory work), despite the fact that we need a varied workforce with a strong production base to sustain economic well-being. There is a whack of research and scholarship on this topic, and how it affects the attitudes of the public and people in power. One theory is that this, more than actual need, has been responsible for the huge rise in degree acquisition, and that what were are seeing now is the result of too many people trying to have "the good life" portrayed by culture as coming only from post-secondary education.

There is a need for these things, though. Chronic shortages in the medical field in the US result in long hours, high wages, and high prices. Now, this is a complex area to analyze, but you could substantially increase the amount of medical professionals without worrying about oversupply. There is a finite demand for each field, yes...but all of these highly paid fields are generally under supplied...it's part of the reason for the high pay and high mobility within those fields. So, I don't feel that our current situation is due to too many people pursuing these things instead of production-line style jobs.

And honestly, cashier/janitor are given less respect than doctors both because they require far less education and because they pay a lot less. Yes...we need these jobs done, but they're far, far less critical than the dude who's hopefully going to keep you alive. They're also far easier to keep supplied. So, they're a lot less important, and are treated as such.


Oh the productive capacity of the US is really good, but it still consumes far more than it produces on a national scale. Basic economics says there is only one way of this to be possible: public and/or private debt. It's not a coincidence that over the last decade, median income in the US has stagnated and declined against inflation, but consumption continued apace. There's a whole whack of scholarship on that phenomenon, but it does all point generally to the fact that the US, especially since the USD is the world's reserve currency (for now, at least), has been able to fuel a decade long consumption binge by borrowing foreign capital. The idea that we could all be part of the "Knowledge Economy" was an idea but forth to explain why these huge labour shifts and trade asymmetries were OK, and that we really could have all the better jobs here will shipping the poorer ones overseas, regardless of the fact that China and India are just as good at researching as the US or Canada is. Bu these factors were really obvious warning signs of things to come. It's not just automation and increases in efficiency that harm US job rates, since even then you would need monitoring and staff, it's that the US has largely deferred paying for the increased standard of living it has been enjoying. The use of speculation in the financial sector also created illusory value, giving the US and its citizens more assets to draw against to keep up consumption. Things like demand for the USD had kept stuff from going south for a bit, but it took just a tiny bit of stress (oil prices, which if you recall in 2008 precipitated the interest-rate hike that started the mortgage industry's collapse) to bring the whole phantasmagorical construction down. We are really seeing, rather than a recession, a classic economic contraction following an asset bubble, as the economy adjusts itself to the actual productive output and value present in it, rather than the over-exuberant speculative value perceived in it.
(I speak as someone who was insufferably predicting doom and gloom since 2006, when I first started teaching myself economics in advance of going into my degree)

Debt is an issue...and I agree with your contraction evaluation(I've been frequently frustrated by the sort of "economics" you see on the nightly news), but I don't feel that the shift away from industry to information and services is directly causal. Trade imbalances are possible and equally harmful(if maintained over the long term) regardless of what your economy is based on.

And China and India(though India has come a long ways) are not nearly as good at researching as we are. In the medical industry for example, we're still far ahead of the rest of the world combined. We basically are the medical research community. China is fairly good at producing cheap derivatives...this isn't a slam, it's a useful thing to be good at...but they are not at all displacing the type of new R&D we do.


Not saying we should be routing for factory towns to come back, or cheering the opening of sweatshops, but the fact is that for people to consume, they must have some means of producing a good or service which they trade for money. The US will have to examine where it wants to go as a nation, and figure out how it can start selling something other than government bonds to other nations, to make up the difference. Or people in the US will have to accept an economic contraction and a reduced standard of living as their debt levels become unsustainable.

And an information economy can most certainly produce goods and services.

Honestly, I don't feel our past exporting of currency is too bad of a deal...the dollar became a standard currency for worldwide trade, and this results in us basically getting to print money and get the goods in exchange. Fantastic deal. But eventually, the market is mostly saturated, and you've then got the worry about the money coming back if the situation ever changes. So...while it's reasonable to exploit it while the opportunity exists, it's not something you can count on to exist forever.


Glad to hear you beat the odds, but the actual statistics for American (or Canadian) graduates employed at jobs at their skill/education level is actually shockingly low, especially depending on where you are (for Ontario it's something like 18%). Heck, I can remember getting a resume at my job from an applicant with an MBA and a history of work at Merrill Lynch, and he was trying to become a postal clerk in a Shopper's Drug Mart. And there are people who are leaving school with in excess of 100,000$ in debt. Debt levels in general for the young are extremely high, and this will be a problem when they become the main production/consumption/taxation base of the economy.

*shrug* I did military initially to get experience. It was not the most highly paid of jobs, but it DID get me that experience, and thus, later jobs. The first one's always the toughest. The expectation of a great job directly out of college is unrealistic for most. Unless you've been positioning yourself with internships, etc in advance of graduation, you're most likely going to have to work your way up. If it's a useful degree though, it's still a solid investment in the long term. I feel like calibrating expectations is probably the best thing to be done with this, though, and colleges and sometimes family are doing a poor job of that.

I agree that $100k+ debt is unreasonably high. However, such debt is not at all required(possible exception for becoming a doctor, though the high rate of pay afterward should compensate). State resident tuition and fees averages $7600 a year. That's not a trivial cost, but it's one that you can get a degree at without ending up terribly in debt. If you decide to invest the tens of thousands of dollars more to go to out of state/prestigious colleges, you should be crunching numbers beforehand to make sure it's a good choice. Sadly, I don't know that this is happening enough.


Again, this is really just me musing on social/economic dynamics, more than purporting to give advice to individuals. We (everyone in this discussion) could probably all find some white-collar or higher level of work, but it can't be the economic base of a society, especially if we want to import anything from abroad.

Why can't white collar labor be exported? Designs and information can most certainly be exported, and though there are some problems with copying these things, many solutions exist for this.


Apologies for the TL;DR nerdom of what preceded.

No worries, I feel like this is a nerdy place. An economics chat isn't unreasonable.

[KenderWizard]

How is Law art stuff?

I don't know how other countries work. Here, law is on the Arts side of the great Arts vs Sciences divide. Health is the third, but small, and strongly allied with Sciences.


Sorry to be very picky, and single this out of your entire post, but I did really take issue with this, as it's a pretty alarmingly privileged view - all the worries about employment, etc. in this thread are pretty likely to be significantly magnified if you are a member of one of these groups. Either because of overt prejudice (which still very much exists, in pretty much every country, against pretty much all of the groups you mentioned), or because of broader structural/social inequalities, you will have a harder time getting and keeping good employment.

Black 'classical studies graduate' is more likely to have a harder time finding work than her white equivalent, trans 'computer science graduate' is likely to have a harder time landing that cushy CS job than her cis counterpart, etc. Whether scholarships are the best way of dealing with it is another issue, but I assure you that it's not a 'superficial quality'.

Well said! Those scholarships and the occasional strongly implemented diversity program are really the only things pushing in the other direction in the jobs market. (For example, I hear it's easier to get a job in the coal/oil/gas industry in Kansas as a woman than as a man, because the employers get benefits for being diverse, and there aren't that many female geoindustry workers. So, as a woman, all I have to do is get into a strongly male-dominated field, put up with a bunch of sexist comments that are par for the course anywhere men from the "old days" still hold most of the power, get myself to Kansas and bam! I can walk all over some unfortunate white cis guy, get a higher-than-average starting salary if I'm able to assert myself in the interview program without being dropped because I'm a "pushy bitch", while the unfortunate white cis guy using the same tactics is called a "go-getter", and all I have to do then is sit back and watch my salary get eroded as I get passed over for promotion since I'm an unreliable woman who might leave to have babies any minute, because that's what all women and no men want, and anyway, my husband can support me while I stay at home like a good mother should.)

Also, I don't know about elsewhere, but here, the tech industry is still dominated by men. (I'd say white men, but Ireland is still very homogeneous. Everyone I know in the tech industry is white, I think, but then, almost everyone I know is white.)

[Nargan]

This is what's been my primary concern since I began college this August. I have no real passion for math or science and could not handle the lack of freedom in any business or engineering job in America (aside from Google, but that's pretty unlikely). I would really like to pursue music, visual art, and literature and somehow support myself, but that's looking to be several kinds of impossible. It doesn't help that I have an expensive medical condition.

No degree will help me do these things independently. I'd give myself a 95% chance of dropping out within the next year and getting a day job while working on all of those arts. Luckily, I happen to have my entire family living in the single most economically booming city in the United States (Austin, TX according to Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/09/recession-economy-cities-business-beltway-recovery-cities_slide_2.html)), so I should be relatively okay.

That's why the British NHS wins. People complain about all that stuff, but when I have to get a £1000 injection once every 8 weeks, then I get it free because of NHS, only had to pay for the first one like ~4 years ago to check they worked.

I realise it takes all kinds of people to make up the world, but how can you hate engineering/ maths for having no freedom? It makes things simple. There's a right way, there's a wrong way. No pussyfooting around it, right or wrong. Successful project or failure. I am biased, ofc, because i am doing engineering, and I hate art. With arts, there is no criteria for doing well or doing bad. I've seen peoples paintings in museums which a 3 year old could do, and they are priced in the millions. It made me rage so hard, because it did NOTHING, it just sat there looking bad. I can't stand portraits. Art in general is fine, because I like music, and art gives me video games. But portraits? God no, save me.

[Tyndmyr]

While it does take all kinds, IMO, having money brings a lot of freedom with it. And there IS a certain kind of freedom in many technical fields. Coding, definitely more than one way to get a job done, and often people will argue over coding styles and such to no end. Sure, there are indisputably wrong ways, but there's usually more than one right way.

[SDF]

Sorry to be very picky, and single this out of your entire post, but I did really take issue with this, as it's a pretty alarmingly privileged view - all the worries about employment, etc. in this thread are pretty likely to be significantly magnified if you are a member of one of these groups. Either because of overt prejudice (which still very much exists, in pretty much every country, against pretty much all of the groups you mentioned), or because of broader structural/social inequalities, you will have a harder time getting and keeping good employment.

Black 'classical studies graduate' is more likely to have a harder time finding work than her white equivalent, trans 'computer science graduate' is likely to have a harder time landing that cushy CS job than her cis counterpart, etc. Whether scholarships are the best way of dealing with it is another issue, but I assure you that it's not a 'superficial quality'.

The problem with that line of thought being it addresses equity, not an equality of conditions.


Law degrees also suffer because it is a one-country degree. Stuff like computers, engineering, english, medicine...you can use in any country. Much more ability to flex.

That isn't completely accurate. You can get legally certified in many countries with a legal degree in a different one. If you are an engineer or doctor you often have to get certified to work in another country as well. It can be very difficult for a foreign doctor to pay for and pass the boards if they move to America for example. There are also things like international law that allows a mobility of legal labor.

[Keld Denar]

Heck, even domestically in the US, each STATE has its own Board of Professional Engineers. If you get licsensed in one state, you might have reciprocity to one or more other states, but you can't just practice anywhere you want.

Granted, that is only for registering as a PE, which you don't NEED to do most engineering things, but if you want to stamp drawings and assume any kind of professional liability, you do need it. Oh, and it takes a minimum of 6 months, and most often about 4-8 years.

I don't even want to know what you have to do to practice in another country.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

I lucked out, as did my two best friends--we're going to some of the best colleges in the country (two ivy leagues and MIT), I intend to be a veterinarian, and one of my best friends is majoring in computer science and engineering. Even if we weren't intending to be a veterinarian (me) or a computer scientist/engineer (Mr. MIT), the name brand alone of where my two best friends and I are going is enough to give us very good job prospects.

I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. My younger brother has a civil engineering BS and a Meng (one year engineering masters) from Cornell, and it took an unpaid internship at a firm in NYC and working at Starbucks for almost a year for him to finally get a job. The climate for finding a job these days is just difficult, especially since there are a glut of everyone in every field with degrees.

[pendell]

[self-scrubbed]

[Xyk]

That's why the British NHS wins. People complain about all that stuff, but when I have to get a £1000 injection once every 8 weeks, then I get it free because of NHS, only had to pay for the first one like ~4 years ago to check they worked.

I realise it takes all kinds of people to make up the world, but how can you hate engineering/ maths for having no freedom? It makes things simple. There's a right way, there's a wrong way. No pussyfooting around it, right or wrong. Successful project or failure. I am biased, ofc, because i am doing engineering, and I hate art. With arts, there is no criteria for doing well or doing bad. I've seen peoples paintings in museums which a 3 year old could do, and they are priced in the millions. It made me rage so hard, because it did NOTHING, it just sat there looking bad. I can't stand portraits. Art in general is fine, because I like music, and art gives me video games. But portraits? God no, save me.

Firstly, I didn't say I hated math or science, I said I didn't have enough passion in it for a career. There's really no question that we need math or science. It's extremely important that someone does it, but it's not for me.

Secondly, it is the fact that something is either right or wrong in math that limits freedom. In literature, for example, even given a direction, there are literally infinite ways to go. If I were going to write about, say, the importance of cooperation, I would have a multitude of options. I could write an essay (conversational tone or formal tone), a narrative (and the thousands and thousands of options within that genre), or even a children's story. [EDIT]- Reread your post. I like the freedom for exactly the same reasons you dislike it.

Thirdly, the point of most art is not to decorate. I also don't have a lot of respect for portraits. The point of most art is to get a point across or to express emotions.

Fourthly, I do prefer Britain's way of doing health care, but I don't have a lot of choice in where I live for the moment.

[Claudius Maximus]

As a Classical Studies major graduating in 7 months with highest Latin honors, membership in a Greek organization, and a bunch of impressive extracurriculars under my belt, I can't help but be a little terrified at this thread.

Ultimately, I have to disagree with the person in the OP picture. I really doubt that person doesn't have a full ride scholarship with those kinds of credentials. I mean, I'm only slightly better off academically, and the only reason I don't have a scholarship is because I started college two years early, which I kind of expected to not be the worst academic decision ever, but which actually disqualified me for pretty much every decent scholarship in the state. But I digress. :smallfurious:

There are, in fact, a number of open positions in classics (http://www.aclclassics.org/jobs), some of which don't even involve teaching certificates, and I doubt that person has much debt to worry about as they go through applying to them. Personally, I'm looking into the JET Programme as I consider whether to teach at the K-12 or collegiate level, but failing that, I could throw an application to any number of those openings. I'm told the discipline is dying faster in terms of workers than in openings, as people continue to take classes, but major in it less and less often.

As for the broader argument, I don't think you should mock people for following their hearts instead of going for a highly practical specialized degree. Really, I've been a bit put off by some of the comments in this thread. One of my professors is an adviser to the state taskforce on jobs, and he has assured me that there are plenty of areas in which any degree will suffice for gainful employment, provided it's attached to a motivated or otherwise attractive candidate. And I for one knew that I wouldn't be making a fortune as a classicist. If I cared so much about money I'd be a med student or something.

[Brother Oni]

As for the broader argument, I don't think you should mock people for following their hearts instead of going for a highly practical specialized degree.

I agree in that you shouldn't mock people that follow their heart rather than what's most practical. I wish everybody had that sort of luxury to do so.

However when people follow their hearts then complain about their job prospects when they've knowing chosen to major in something that has significantly less employability, draws a lot less sympathy.

A number of people have highlighted some unorthodox careers or other options you can choose to do with a degree - you've obviously seem to be aware of them, however the person listed in the OP either seems unwilling or unable to search them out.
Given her supposedly impressive academic record, the former seems more likely.

[pendell]

While I agree that mocking is bad, pardon me if I am a bit skeptical of your professor's claim.



One of my professors is an adviser to the state taskforce on jobs, and he has assured me that there are plenty of areas in which any degree will suffice for gainful employment, provided it's attached to a motivated or otherwise attractive candidate.


In other words, you can still be hired if you've been working your tail off to build marketable skills and abilities in addition to your degree. That last bit sounds like weasel words -- that if you don't get a job, it's your fault.

And as to the idea that "any degree will suffice for gainful employment" -- I just came off a job search and that is not true . Those "areas" mean working at Enterprise Rent-a-car or substitute teaching.

And let me assure you, in this economy, any industry which is open to anyone with a college degree is going to be swarmed with applicants with degrees in everything from Western Lit to History to Mathematics to Religious Studies.

It is technically possible to be the one person out of ten thousand that the company chooses to fill an open position. That's probably what you're prof means by "motivated or otherwise attractive candidate". But I wouldn't bet on it. I still recommend getting the marketable skills and job first, then go for the "follow your dreams" degree at night school.

ETA: Incidentally, I've just looked closely at the job posting you put up, and I strongly suggest you look at it again. A good half of those jobs are part-time or substitute jobs. Not full-time employment in other words. A second job to offset your regular job. Even then, I guarantee you that there will be applicants for each of those positions, and quite a few of those applicants won't even have classical studies degrees themselves. They'll be chasing them because they believe "a sufficiently motivated individual can get work with any degree." And they will be turned away in droves. Employers can afford to be picky in this economy.
Respectfully,

Brian P.

[RabbitHoleLost]

These are just observations by people I've known through the years, and I'm posting this just for the benefit of those looking to go into school.

Degrees that are unlikely to help you get a job:
-Sociology
-Liberal Arts
-Literature
-Classical Studies
-Psychology
-English
-Anthropology
-Studio Art or Video Game Design
-Graphic Design
Many argue that you can be a teacher with these degrees, but the fact is people who are going to school to BE a teacher aren't getting teaching jobs. Schools across the nation are cutting positions to save budget.

Degrees that DO seem to offer good chances for employment
- Any computer sciences
- Engineering
- Anything medical (though I hear Nurses are being cut down on, too, and I know that, atleast here, we have more pharmacists than we can give jobs to)
- Law

Frankly, I know so many people who've graduated and got their degrees, and they end up as retail managers.

[Erloas]

Eh, I've heard that law degrees are way over pursued and there are a lot of people with them that can't get jobs.

As for anthropology... I know a lot of people around here that have good jobs with that degree but hearing them talk about it, it seems like we're in an area with a lot of stuff to find but there are other areas where not much is going on.

As for many of the other ones, it seems like they help get jobs, just not necessarily jobs in their field and not as good of paying jobs as the good ones listed. ...and being the manager at a fast food place is at least a bit of an upgrade compared to being a cook.
Most of the people I know with those sorts of degrees are working mid level office jobs... hard to really define, more then just answering phone, and jobs that wouldn't have required degrees 20 years ago but do now (mostly because they can) and tend to pay decently but not great.

[Shadow of the Sun]

As an anthropology student: if I wasn't going to move onto post-grad work, I could, as soon as I graduate, get a job as a consultant, earning $500 a day.

Sure, you don't hear about it as much as law, but the jobs ARE there.

[RabbitHoleLost]

As an anthropology student: if I wasn't going to move onto post-grad work, I could, as soon as I graduate, get a job as a consultant, earning $500 a day.

Sure, you don't hear about it as much as law, but the jobs ARE there.

You're also in Australia, where the economy is much different.
For me, it seems impossible to get a job straight out of Uni making 500 a day.

[KenderWizard]

You're also in Australia, where the economy is much different.
For me, it seems impossible to get a job straight out of Uni making 500 a day.

Yeah, we got our final year student advice meeting thing the other day, and everyone in the class was told to emigrate, mainly to Australia or Canada. Last one out of Ireland turn off the lights!

[Tyndmyr]

While I agree that mocking is bad, pardon me if I am a bit skeptical of your professor's claim.



In other words, you can still be hired if you've been working your tail off to build marketable skills and abilities in addition to your degree. That last bit sounds like weasel words -- that if you don't get a job, it's your fault.

Not at all. The word "motivated" can mean exactly that. I have had a hand in hiring for my company, and it's amazing how many people, when given a hypothetical coding problem to solve, don't even bother to try. Look, I don't expect you to get it exactly right. Hell, I'd settle for "makes a good effort, but get's it completely wrong for reasonable reasons". But "I don't want to do that" is a poor answer. And a really, really common one in this field, apparently.


And as to the idea that "any degree will suffice for gainful employment" -- I just came off a job search and that is not true . Those "areas" mean working at Enterprise Rent-a-car or substitute teaching.

And let me assure you, in this economy, any industry which is open to anyone with a college degree is going to be swarmed with applicants with degrees in everything from Western Lit to History to Mathematics to Religious Studies.

He described state jobs. It's not an inaccurate depiction. State jobs frequently hire poly sci, history, or other such degrees, and you will be given some preference because of that degree. It's certainly not true in every industry, but for what he described? Yes, it is.


It is technically possible to be the one person out of ten thousand that the company chooses to fill an open position. That's probably what you're prof means by "motivated or otherwise attractive candidate". But I wouldn't bet on it. I still recommend getting the marketable skills and job first, then go for the "follow your dreams" degree at night school.

Nah. If you want to be motivated/attractive, demonstrate it. Accomplish something. It can be volunteer stuff, hobby work, or whatever, but having something interesting or impressive to point at and say "I did that" is huge. Too many people go to college, show up for classes, and never bother to actually take initiative.

I agree with RabbitHole's evaluation in general...though I personally know a LOT more coders than graphics design people, and in my experience, there's always a need for affordable graphics in the aspiring game developer field* and the like. I think it's an area where if you're talented, self employment is a very reasonable option.

*Note that the game developers themselves are probably not likely to be successful. Charge cash up front instead of hypothetical percentages if it hits it big. I'm all for game dev...but for most people, it's a better hobby than a career.