Shifting Value of Higher Education: Opportunity for Vocational & Skill-Based Training

Origin Reddit Post

r/futurology

Gen Z men with college degrees now have the same unemployment rate as non-grads—a sign that the higher education payoff is dead

Posted by u/Aralknight•07/28/2025

Top Comments

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/thethirdgreenman

What if they just don’t hire someone though and put that work on an existing team member? Or what if they just hire someone in India or Argentina at 10-20% of the salary? That’s what they’re

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/twistthespine

That's why I said "only a few years." A 29 year old is *very* early in their career in the scheme of things.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/Wilson0299

I tell everyone who will listen. Run down the best internship you can between your sophomore and junior years, not between junior and senior. Cultivate that experience into somewhere you wa

u/fastlerner

Yes, but also no. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and spending decades chained to a desk in a beige cubicle farm isn’t exactly the dream either. Take my relative, for example. He did ev

u/CluelessFlunky

Older genz is almost 30. We've been in the field for years now. I do agree that we will see the benefit down the line tho.

u/01headshrinker

I think this all depends on what you study and where you live, or are willing to live.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/albanymetz

Thanks for all of these articles, but what exactly do I do with my kids during the next 3-5 years as they graduate high school?

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/upyoars

I’ve heard a lot of people are considering trade school now, even forgoing literally medical school for it… I’m not convinced that that’s the future though. I feel like with how quickly and

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/billyions

It was never about the degree. You've gotta have skills - skills that someone is willing to pay for, and that you like to use and improve.

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/Better_Librarian_494

"No problems are real because they've happened before" is the inverse of a reason not to take this seriously. Even if what you say is true, that means that young people predictably face bot

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/I_fuck_werewolves

Even Reputable Schools have issues. With Generative AI and searching, I got to watch 4 of my friends go through a high reputation university. They used Group chats/streaming to share answers

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/MaxDentron

5.5% also really isn't that high.

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/twistthespine

Gen Z means they're only a few years out from college at best. The benefits of a college degree tend to increase over the lifespan, so it makes sense the difference would be smaller at this p

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/Corka

For me after I finished getting my PhD (Computer Science) in 2019 it took around 6 months of constantly applying to anything I was remotely qualified for to find work. I wasn't yet at the sta

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/AdminIsPassword

We don't know that yet. Those kinds of trends normally plays out over decades and AI, at least as a career disruptive force, only came about over the last few years. We don't know how this

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/neilligan

It did, but that's no longer the case. As it stands right now, you are actually better off picking up a trade like plumbing than college

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/TwistedSpiral

Same unemployment rate, but how about median income?

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/BawdyArt

Out of curiosity where did you look for work? Like state or city, but also industry? I graduated high school 2010 and had a job at Burger King at the time. I’ve had 6 jobs since that time in

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/whitewateractual

Not if you consider lifetime earnings. College remains far ahead.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/coldisgood

But how many of those grads are actually working in a field they studied? I remember seeing articles years back it’s less than 50%. So if a non grad and a grad both work retail or fast food,

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/knotatumah

Meanwhile executives cannot stop bragging how they're replacing and intend to replace any and all entry level with ai as soon as possible. Bad times are ahead for everybody.

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/Chinksta

Also what's worse is that I've noticed the younger generations opting for Masters (if they can afford it) after their graduation without work experience. What's even funnier is that they are

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/guilgom71

I was out there in the job market without a degree and with a degree. It's way better with a degree.

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/permanentburner89

Is there a reason that this applies only to men? Are women choosing more hireable majors? Looking harder? Why is it only men?

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/neilligan

It did, but that's no longer the case. As it stands right now, you are actually better off picking up a trade like plumbing than college

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/matt24671

As a millennial who went back to school and is about to finish my degree I’m very worried I will be working the same job I am now 2 years from now haha. Got a couple connections but of those

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/Aunon

I'm in the exact same bucket, it's even more frightening and demotivating when you're older than the average student and baby faced grad We need to have brutal but honest conversations about

u/theumph

That is correct, and it's good to see people catching on. College is critical for professional careers (STEM, medical, law, accounting, etc), but not at all necessary for general careers. It

u/SCP-iota

I'm curious what the stats look like when you break it down by how much of a network the graduates have. Degree fields often rely heavily on networking, sadly, so it's possible that the decre

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/SilverBuggie

No matter how many of this kind of articles comes,out, I will never, ever, ever, ever stop my children’s education after high school.

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/_CMDR_

Nice repetition of right wing talking points. ❤️ bad faith AF.

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/rop_top

... Which happens every single year for young people. Especially guys who pursue less marketable degrees. Women have been getting into different parts of medicine at high rates, and it's refl

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/laxnut90

This time might actually be different. A lot of the world is generating college graduates and the White Collar service jobs in the US are now experiencing foreign competition and outsourcing

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/mchu168

5.5% is still way lower than EU or China. [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Employment\_rates\_of\_recent\_graduates](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/IAMHideoKojimaAMA

yea snapshots of time don't really mean much

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/[deleted]

[deleted]

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/FenrirHere

While this is true, statistically it is still the case that college degree graduates on average make around 1.2 to 2 million dollars more over the course of their lifetime than non graduates

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/kithuni

Engineering and medical are still very safe bets. CS is inundated, so even if you get a job expect to be worked ragged and paid less than you should.

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/GenZ2002

This has nothing to do with “college payoff” or men vs women. This has everything to do with the corporate elites not valuing the worker. Deregulated AI will only make this worse in the comin

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/zabby39103

Yes that's true, but also in 1950 5% of the US population had a university degree. When you start sending almost half your population (in some states) to university, it has to become more pr

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/Not-Reformed

> This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on pretending that things will even out. > > Because the numbers and data simply don't agree with

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/Bart_1980

Especially that last comment is important. The fact that we are in part guessing what to study as fields shift, sometimes drastically. A friend of mine studies electrical engineering, but wai

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/talama191

not american, but i want to ask anyway. In my country, VietNam, i saw that hard working students, kind of people who actually starting to work on deadline the moment it announced, get salary

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/neilligan

It did, but that's no longer the case. As it stands right now, you are actually better off picking up a trade like plumbing than college

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/laxnut90

It is interesting that college versus non-college has now reached parity. Although things have been trending in that direction for some time.

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/mytransthrow

> I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… > > In my field or otherwise… Thats like 90% of people... most people do something not related to their feild

u/Crombus_

That's a fucking stupid conclusion to draw, especially considering the earnings gap between college-educated workers and non. Did Peter Thiel pay for this?

u/Touchit88

Im a millennial that stumbled my way through community college, (no debt) and kept falling up. Ive worked at exactly 3 companies and held 6 positions. Currently been at my position about 12

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/bluesilvergold

When everybody has a college degree, nobody has a college degree.

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/RingAroundTheStars

This. The unemployment rate for *both* groups is extremely low.

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/hotacorn

I absolutely believe this and that the value of most degrees is trending down yet at the same time simply having a 4 year degree is still a pass to get in a lot of metaphorical doors. Over a

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/Jimbenas

I’m in that demographic. I don’t make horrible money, but I do not utilize my degree at all.

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/theumph

That is correct, and it's good to see people catching on. College is critical for professional careers (STEM, medical, law, accounting, etc), but not at all necessary for general careers. It

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/laxnut90

Yes. A lot of other countries have college graduates too that are competing for these jobs remotely.

u/frederik88917

Not necessarily as the job offers found are usually better paid than non grad offers

u/Important_Setting840

First thing I did when I opened the article was ctrl F to search for the word "median" This is utterly useless trash.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This is bullshit though. For-profit colleges have made ‘saying you have a degree” meaningless.

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/notred369

Can’t really get a feel for the unemployment numbers relating to this age group without knowing what degrees they are getting. The 7% could be a mixture of traditionally unfavorable degrees o

u/ZeElessarTelcontar

It's worth looking at the fields they're in. Typically men veer towards technical fields like IT, which went from a very lucrative career line when the current 20s cohort started college to d

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/Sweet_Concept2211

Yes, recent college grads with little actual work experience face employment bottlenecks, while at the same time guys who got whatever shitty job they could find after high school - instead o

u/Torontogamer

As you say, a lot, if not most professors are not educators by passion or drive... teaching is a requirement to their university job that lets them do the research that is their real focus...

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/Eternal2

Even though only 7% are unemployed, I guarantee you that a lot more than that are employed but are working for degreeless jobs and making very little money. Those lifetime earnings statistics

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/MyBrainIsNerf

Cool. Now do median salary. Then do median knee/back pain. This article always comes out and ignores that college is still a good investment almost regardless of major. Honestly, it’s jus

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/Maleficent_Proof_958

I'm a construction worker in my mid 30s and I make good money but I'm here to tell you: get as much education as you possibly can. Go to college. Go to grad school. Work hard and learn lots.

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/theimmortalgoon

Yes. The academy is an ancient institution for things that are valuable but not necessarily marketable. Think Eratosthenes jamming a stick into the ground and figuring out the circumference

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/theumph

A lot of people also don't think about the supply/demand of the labor in their career choice. When I graduated in 2008, the amount of people that went for a business degree was staggering. It

u/MildMannered_BearJew

Seems a bit premature, I mean these kids have been out in the workforce for what, 3 years on average? Covid can’t have made the college => job transition very easy. Another nothing-burge

u/AveryFay

College is way too expensive to do it without getting a decent paying job after unless you're privileged with rich family paying for it. Its great for you that you were able to do it for sa

u/Jimbenas

I’m in that demographic. I don’t make horrible money, but I do not utilize my degree at all.

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/dekacube

Depends on your degree, if its engineering related, not working in your degree field fucking sucks.

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/Sawses

Yep! It always irked me that a solid majority of the people I knew were going to college specifically and only to get a good job, and resented having to get an education along the way. Like y

u/fastlerner

Yes, but also no. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and spending decades chained to a desk in a beige cubicle farm isn’t exactly the dream either. Take my relative, for example. He did ev

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/fingersonlips

Are tech and CS degrees the new “useless gender studies” degrees? Or will we never hear that argument because these degrees/tech type jobs skew heavily male? I feel as though any kind of fi

u/lazyFer

The problem is it's NOT cost effective, but the people deciding these things don't understand how any of it works so they can't see the problem. By the time they DO see the problem it'll be v

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/bluesilvergold

You're not wrong.

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/no-comment-only-lurk

American universities are research juggernauts. They use undergraduate students to fund that research.

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/slashrshot

Always been the case before even the US existed. Undergraduates is preparation to become graduates. Degrees as a proxy for job readiness is a very very recent phenomenon

u/TheBoBiZzLe

Idk if I like… did college differently than everyone else. But I learned a lot. Pushed my learning, social, and critical thinking to the highest it’s ever been. I spent hours learning how

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/mpbh

Working in tech, we don't care if devs have degrees anymore as long as they have experience. We've hired people based on personal projects and even bootcamps. In the end it's more about the

u/fastlerner

Yes, but also no. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and spending decades chained to a desk in a beige cubicle farm isn’t exactly the dream either. Take my relative, for example. He did ev

u/gottastayfresh3

lifetime salaries over longer life expectancies, too.

u/SXLightning

20 years you probably just in pain constantly, I used to love DIY but after a few big projects I realised I would rather pay than do it myself anymore

u/fastlerner

Yes, but also no. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and spending decades chained to a desk in a beige cubicle farm isn’t exactly the dream either. Take my relative, for example. He did ev

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/Borror0

That was my first thought as well. Moreover, unemployment ebbs and flows. It's currently a tough market. For skilled labor, there's often the possibility to higher someone experience for the

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/jert3

That concept of education is long gone. I was in school 20+ years ago and as an idealistic young person, used to aggrieved that most of classmates were there just to get a degree as a job ho

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/Gimme_The_Loot

I could be wrong (as I'm not in a trade myself) but I'd imagine a lot of that is much harder to automate than a lot of white collar jobs. One accountant with the right tools can prob do the

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/reelznfeelz

And so our problem of citizenry being under-educated and under-informed and unable to parse propaganda from fact will continue to get worse. Of course you can’t blow $90k for no benefit, but

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/tkdyo

The people with degrees are still making a lot more on average. I wouldn't call the payoff dead. There is just a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, plus companies trying out AI stu

u/BurningOasis

As a millennial, job hunting fucking sucked after graduating, I was lucky to know someone who knew someone. This is completely fucked for the new generation and I don't see how we can go on

u/doodlinghearsay

That's the problem. You need to make predictions on what the market will look like 3-8 years from now and you need to bet multiple years of your disposable income on it. If you guess wrong y

u/urgetopurge

Its not just for profit schools. Its also a lot of mediocre universities that graduate 15k+ students (think Penn State tier). Do you think the job market can absorb that many graduates each a

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/JonathanL73

Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. There are countless STEM and CompSci grads struggling to find work rn.

u/I_fuck_werewolves

Even Reputable Schools have issues. With Generative AI and searching, I got to watch 4 of my friends go through a high reputation university. They used Group chats/streaming to share answers

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88

>Of course no one cares about your degree if you have direct experience in the job. Ahahaha Not even close. I've got 7+years of experience in my job and have been openly told they didn't

u/am_reddit

Presumably the same colleges and degrees that were there for every single other time they ran this comparison.

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/randomkiser

The latest inventions are not about making people’s lives better, but making them easier. That’s not been a good trend for us.

u/theerrantpanda99

College vs non-college hasn’t reached parity. This is a measure of youth unemployment rate for generation Z men entering the workforce right now. College grads are still out earning non coll

u/Foppberg

Well, your body hurting while having an office job is more likely to be from lack of actually working your body. The trades have the opposite problem, but at least white collar workers can us

u/markth_wi

That's as big a garbage pile of a lie as it is every single time it's brought up. College is a business decision; if you don't want to spend the better part of your life scrambling harder ,

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/regoapps

Plus, robots and AI are about to do/already doing the same.

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/rop_top

Exactly. People make almost a million dollars more having an education compared to those who don't. The trades are highly volatile. I knew a union iron worker who would have to travel over 13

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/Seaguard5

… I’m an engineering grad…

u/e430doug

Someone is posting this bad faith meme all over Reddit. College was never about employment rates. It was about lifetime salaries. And people who attend college have much much higher lifetime

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/fromwhichofthisoak

Um you are incorrect. Entry level is supposed to mean no experience required otherwise there is no such thing as Entry level.

u/mytinykitten

It goes with the rise in conservativism. They don't want people to be educated so they manipulate data any chance they get.

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/AccelRock

Given a lot of Gen Z are still students or recent grads I'm not totally surprised... but I have noticed a trend at least in Melbourne where hiring has slowed down a little due to economic unc

u/lazyFer

They really aren't, it's just the latest buzzword. The economy being in the shitter is the reason companies are laying off people and not hiring. The markets punish companies for saying "we

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/thrawtes

>Yea but not everyone is getting a useless non-practical degree. That was a pretty subtle way to shift the discussion from "for-profit colleges are bad" to "degrees that aren't STEM are b

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/brainrotbro

Yeah, people often ignore the physical toll of jobs like construction. If you’re safe & lucky, you might avoid outright injury, but your knees & back are gonna hurt after 20 years.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

This article is also dumb. Someone who went to scam online college has a degree

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/yikeswhatshappening

This article is only looking at the gross unemployment rate. However, it’s not taking into account a few things. First, not all college degrees are created equal. There are a ton of fraudule

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/The_Elusive_Dr_Wu

> And obviously not everyone is cut out to start and manage their own business. You'd be surprised why. I'm in trades for over a decade now. Guys don't fail because they don't get the job

u/Appropriate_Lack_727

A lot of the best schools in the country are liberal arts schools. The whole “useless X liberal arts degree” things has always been nonsense. Obviously there has been a bigger demand for CS r

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/gottastayfresh3

Excellent points. We've also seen that men are more likely to turn down a job than women. It aint higher ed that is the problem, imo. The market is too accelerated.

u/DukeOfGeek

And the elite classes oppose an educated citizenry for the exact opposite reasons. Especially higher education.

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/bluesilvergold

I'm not saying that a college education has no value and doesn't provide the experiences that you had (which are valuable), but most people go to college because they spend ages 5 through 18

u/Duffalpha

My back, hips, and arms always hurt and I've worked in a chair my whole life. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I spent the past 20 years breaking concrete, carrying heavy shit up ladders, etc.

u/asurarusa

> —and that employers care less about credentials than they once did, when hiring for entry-level roles. Interesting that they didn’t bother to look into the fact that “entry level” means

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/cylonfrakbbq

A lot of employers were using Associate or Bachelor degrees as a means of filtering applicants as opposed to the degree actually having a bearing on the job itself, so you had lots of people

u/Madeanaccountforyou4

That is currently the case but it's rapidly shifting and these articles make it more and more likely that the balance will shift against that even faster as more young workers ditch the colle

u/L0ganH0wlett

Anecdotal, but I have a Chemical Engineering BS and 5 years of experience as a research engineer/research operator. I've been job hunting for 2 years and unemployed for 7ish months. Use th

u/APRengar

Professional athletes train every day. I train every day. I'm am the same as a professional athlete. About the same logic as OOP is making. Rate of employment is the weirdest metric to use

u/slashrshot

At least in my country, the universities still remember that their main focus is on research, not generating students for the job market

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/masamunecyrus

This only sounds reasonable if you view the purpose of college education as job skills training. That's the problem. Basically every state constitution establishing their university system

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

What colleges What degrees ‘College’ is fucking meaningless with for-profit colleges

u/Attenburrowed

Alsi it's comparing to a point where blue collar was at 15% which is two to three times worse than right now. College diplomas may still be protective in a deep recession. That's just the

u/brooklyndavs

Penn state is still pretty good compared to like a Western Kentucky/Eastern Illinois/Central Washington type school. Before it still use to pay to go to those places because you still got a

u/fractured_bedrock

Yeah, its like saying "if everyone is educated, no one is educated" which is stupid

u/SilverMedal4Life

Assuming they take anyone at all and it's not either: 1) legally required when they're already just going to promote from within or hire a friend of the manager 2) entirely fake to make it

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu

More college students too now. More competition for fewer on shore jobs.

u/veryuniqueredditname

Exactly this, I wish more people understood this. I remember when it was repeated without end that the most important thing we were to learn at school was critical thinking. That seems to hav

u/Seaguard5

As a millennial who graduated in ‘21 I still don’t have a job that uses my degree… In my field or otherwise… The job market is at an all time low, falling lower as we type.

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/notapoliticalalt

The real problem, as you alluded to here, is the debt part. Most other developed countries don’t have the crazy system we do. College may not exactly be free, but, it’s not something you like

u/WitnessRadiant650

Having an educated populace is not a detriment. There's a reason why we are moving towards a more service oriented economy.

u/daemonicwanderer

So… there is almost a percentage point and a half separating those with college degrees and those without. It sounds more like an issue of the US being at functionally full employment and col

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

I live in Ithaca, Ny now. One of my oldest friends is essentially homeless, lives in a hunting camp with no power. Masters from Cornell. Taught at Cornell for 6 years as a professor. Academ

u/xxtruthxx

False. They just hired a 22 yr old in my job making over $100k a year. Don’t fall for this billionaire funded propaganda.

u/Trainrider77

Because what else would they do? They're not gonna work construction..

u/BurningOasis

I'm not American, I'm Canadian but I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. When I was growing up, there was a push for higher education and it was unfortunately the wrong move to

u/daemonicwanderer

This article refers to 2010 when unemployment was much higher period. This comes off as yet another “anti-education” article. If college is so useless… why are the rich and powerful still sen

u/firmlygraspit4

Was looking for this. Went to an Ivy and many people studied social sciences degrees before walking into JP Morgan/McKinsey/Google

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/Diglett3

Funnily enough this oversupply issue is hitting Computer Science grads really hard because for the past 15+ years that was the major that was supposed to guarantee you a stable career with im

u/pyroman1324

People are always talking about how higher education doesn’t pay off, but all of my friends that went to college and took it seriously are in the 90th+ percentile in terms of salary. We are a

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

u/asurarusa

> Do people not learn in college anymore? Right now college is treated as the next step after high school, people aren’t really going because they’re dying to learn. There are people tha

u/somesketchykid

The problem is, companies are willing to accept "rife with mistakes" if its minimally viable and the cost to them to fix those rife mistakes everywhere is less than the cost of paying for a l

u/AlphaGoldblum

There's a push from the American right to try and get kids into the trades right now. What they really mean is, do the job for a few years and then upgrade to being the owner of your own

u/Whatifim80lol

Well, actually. Higher education was intended for *education*. Like as a practice. I've been reading a bunch of older articles about secondary education in the US and the "it's just job train

u/FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aralknight: --- The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on

u/cranberry_spike

They are a major issue.

u/Aralknight

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the unemployment rate among recent college graduates is on the rise, at about 5.5%. Although it remains lower than the 6.9% rate

u/TheAnalogNomad

College graduates have access to a vastly broader range of jobs than non graduates. Survivorship bias notwithstanding, the majority of jobs available to non grads are low status and low pay,

u/alovelyhobbit21

Im not even gen z or looking for a job but this comment section literally just reminds me of when i was growing up and boomers and gen x would shit on millennials LOL. Clearly nothings chang

u/somesketchykid

Agreed. They'll get their short term profits though, unfucking the situation is a "next fiscal year" problem.

u/AgeofVictoriaPodcast

I agree, education is now seen as merely a form of technical training for work rather than a part of helping a person become a fully reasoning, politically active citizen who builds the civil

u/Sweet_Concept2211

This headline pops up with every generation. Check back in a couple years: Gen Z guys with college degrees will have decent paying jobs more commonly than men without degrees.

u/Sam_Cobra_Forever

Its more about more worthless colleges being allowed. scam online for-profit schools

u/Munkeyman18290

To get the job, you need the experience. To get the experience, you need the job. In between is an industry looting childrens pockets in exchange for the "hope" they may get the opportunity

u/Timeformayo

We need to radically reform the laws governing finance in this country. So much of our wealth is just imaginary spreadsheet bullshit — and that's what corporations have been incentivized to p

u/slothbuddy

You don't get a degree to get more jobs, you get a degree to get a better job, usually one that pays better

u/CatalystComet

An employer is gonna take a person with a degree over a person without a degree though when they're similar applicants.

Origin Reddit Post

r/futurology

Gen Z men with college degrees now have the same unemployment rate as non-grads—a sign that the higher education payoff is dead

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