<p>yea, but Gates is still more iconic to many than other tech names; sorry but never meant to insult. sheesh</p>
<p>I love coding… apparently I missed my calling. I’d love to be able to get into that kind of work someday, though I definitely am never going back to school so I’d have to do it with my poli sci degree. :P</p>
<p>If you know how to code, just put it on your resume.</p>
<p>Did you take a class with an instructor who would give you a job rec that you know how to code.</p>
<p>You can probably tailor your resume for that, Ema.</p>
<p>Ema
[Code</a> Academy](<a href=“Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy”>Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy) in your spare time :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, she’s a D, but that is good news for this somewhat concerned mom. She was a physics major in college, but took 4 computer courses in her senior year. Fell into a software design engineer job after college and now has some experience. But it seems to me that it matters what languages you are proficient at. I hope that whatever it is she knows is not the equivalent of “the buggy whip.”</p>
<p>Well, we’ll see…</p>
<p>Archiemom…that is great…i was looking for a software site. I will check it out.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>
Not necessarily. If the person is properly grounded in computer science they can learn whatever language they might need to use. I’ve hired software developers who I knew didn’t have any experience at all with the languages I was going to require them to use but it didn’t matter because I had confidence they could bring themselves up to speed on the language(s) themselves in short order - and they did. Regardless, whatever language one is using currently likely won’t be the language they’re using a few years from now. They also will likely need to be able to write code in multiple languages within a short timespan - maybe almost simultaneously (depending on the company/projects).</p>
<p>In short, if your D is doing okay now there’s no reason that she couldn’t continue to do well even if there’s a need to develop in a different language.</p>
<p>Glad to hear that from someone in the biz, GGD…</p>
<p>^^So sorry ellemenope’s D 
I didn’t bother to plow through the 30pages of posts, but remembered your comment about “getting involved”. Is she in the SF area? Because it seems like my son is always attending industry social events and meeting folks from other start-ups and brushing up on skills. He assures us that if the start-up he’s currently at somehow disappears (very unlikely), he would have no problem getting another job. He says that GitHub is his resume (whatever that means).</p>
<p>And FWIW, my son doesn’t have a CS degree either. He’s a self-taught coder with project experience from college, but no formal training. I was surprised to hear that many start-ups don’t even care about college degrees.</p>
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</p>
<p>Thanks for answering the question about what was meant by “getting involved.” That’s useful. I think she will be looking in the Bay Area after her summer of travel and fun. </p>
<p>GitHub is his resume? What the heck does THAT mean? Sounds like a secret code…</p>
<p>Googled it…so he can show people stuff he’s done, I get it.</p>
<p><a href=“Jobs Few, College Graduates Flock to Unpaid Internships - The New York Times”>Jobs Few, College Graduates Flock to Unpaid Internships - The New York Times;
<p>Confronting the worst job market in decades, many college graduates who expected to land paid jobs are turning to unpaid internships to try to get a foot in an employer’s door. </p>
<p>While unpaid postcollege internships have long existed in the film and nonprofit worlds, they have recently spread to fashion houses, book and magazine publishers, marketing companies, public relations firms, art galleries, talent agencies — even to some law firms.</p>
<p>My dad is a programmer and I’d only be exaggerating a little bit if I said we were learning code along with our ABC’s. 
He was shocked and appalled that I thought there was anything else worth studying when I went to college. I kind of rebelled against that and as a result didn’t give computer fields as much consideration as I should have given my interests and talents… I’d need to improve my skills and knowledge a bit more before I could do anything with it professionally, but I think I have the aptitude for it and enjoy that kind of work very much. I’ve been thinking lately, before it came up in this thread, that maybe that’s an avenue I should explore… I wasn’t sure if not having a CS degree would be an issue. My dad got laid off in the late 90’s/early 2000s and doesn’t have a degree at all, and he had a bit of a hard time for a while finding another position even though he had over a decade of experience and was one of the lead guys with his former company.</p>
<p>Another path to becoming employable in the programming field</p>
<p>[Dev</a> Bootcamp](<a href=“http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/]Dev”>Startups Court Dev Bootcamp's Ruby Grads: 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K | TechCrunch).</p>
<p>^^ thanks archiemom! a dear friends soon to graduate son [ Economics degree from Bucknell] is jobless and they live in SF. I’ll forward this to her.</p>
<p>I would be more curious as to where these statistics are gathered and the variables the compensated for, for example:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How soon after college did they take this test? (e.g. 1 month, 6 months, 1 year would provide different knowledge)</p></li>
<li><p>The un-employment rate in the US is less than 10%, yet they produce a statistic of 1 in 2 jobless or underemployed? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Would have been better to provide the jobless and underemployed as a separate category. Would be nice to know what they mean by underemployed? </p>
<p>I can see a Oral surgeon working for a dentist as underemployed. A psychology major working as a case manager wouldn’t be underemployed, since they can use this to get experience. </p>
<ol>
<li> What experience do these underemployed students have? If they have no experience, but have an entry level job in their field of profession, then they are not underemployed, but should be grateful for a job.</li>
</ol>
<p>All these variables, depending on how they were addressed, would change this statistic dramatically. </p>
<p>If people don’t want to be underemployed after graduating then they need to gain experience through internships while going through school. Thus the catch 22 of college degrees. You have a degree, with no experience, you don’t get hired. You have a degree, experience, will be hired over former person, and less likely to underemployed.</p>
<p>This Rutgers study (Chasing the American Dream: Recent College Graduates and the Great Recession) has some of the statistics you are asking about, although taken from a relatively small survey.
[Most</a> Recent Publications | Heldrich Center](<a href=“http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/press-room/most-recent-publications]Most”>http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/press-room/most-recent-publications)</p>
<p>A 2011 Drexel study that can be found by Googling “Rising Mal-Employment” defines mal-employment as a job that doesn’t require a college degree being held by someone with a degree. They estimated the mal-employment rate at 29.9% in 2010 for college graduates aged 25 to 29. Drexel uses BLS definitions. This BLS report, for example, estimates that 20% of all labor market employment in 2010 required a college degree.
[Employment</a> projections through the lens of education and training](<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/04/art2exc.htm]Employment”>http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/04/art2exc.htm)</p>
<p>The size of the labor market that has a college degree now exceeds 31%, also using BLS data.</p>
<p>You could also look at the monthly employment numbers and compare that to the number of students graduating each year. The April jobs report was +115K. March: +120K. February: +227K. January: +243K. At this rate, that should be about 2.1 million jobs for 2012.</p>
<p>I looked around the web and found a number of 1,750,000 college graduates per year.</p>
<p>There are a lot of other people after those 2.1 million jobs too and many of them don’t require a degree.</p>
<p><a href=“Student Loans Weighing Down a Generation With Heavy Debt - The New York Times”>Student Loans Weighing Down a Generation With Heavy Debt - The New York Times;
<p>Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price. </p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education — up from 45 percent in 1993, according to an analysis by The New York Times of the latest data from the Department of Education. This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives. </p>
<hr>
<p>This is a nine-page article - I’m only on page one.</p>
<p>“A 2011 Drexel study that can be found by Googling “Rising Mal-Employment” defines mal-employment as a job that doesn’t require a college degree being held by someone with a degree.”</p>
<p>Thank you, “TheAnalyst”, according to this definition I would be one of the statistics of being underemployed then. With this it is definitely plausible that 1 of 2 are either jobless or underemployed.</p>
<p>5 recent grads I know of in my extended family: One, a 2012 grad, philosophy major, is delivering pizzas (about $15hr) in the evenings, looking for real(IT) jobs during the day. Shares rental house and is able to pay rent/food. The other 4, who are 2009-2011 grads are all employed full time. Second kid, 2009 grad is in “dream job”(still low pay)–theater management-- that uses her skills/major (theater/political science). It took 2 years and several temp. jobs before she found it. Heard of opening by luck/parent’s connections. Has own apartment.
Other 3 are employed full-time in low-paying jobs compatible with their majors. One has already gotten a masters (in journalism) and is working for a small-town paper, has own apartment in low-rent area. One (broadcasting major) is working in advertising in a small city. Had several part-time jobs before this expanded to full time. Lives with parents. both of these kids found jobs the old fashioned way–beating the bushes, networking, applying, interviewing and not giving up. Last one, another philosophy major, is teaching at a private high school–found job through college connections. (low pay, has own apartment, plans on grad school). None of these kids has a significant amount of debt–most had merit aid and/or parents paying for most of college. All of them had what would be considered “unmarketable” majors:
2 philosophy, one broadcasting, one journalism, one theater/political science.
4 are working in the Midwest, two of those went to east coast colleges.
1 went to college in CA and is working in another west coast state. These kids are all clean cut, well above average students-- but not super stars. None went to prestigious colleges. None had any great internships or awesome talents/experiences that would make them stand out. All were willing to move to different states/regions for jobs.
I’m not sure if any of them–except the pizza guy-- would be classified as “underemployed,” but when I read these articles/statistics, I think they’ve done pretty well under the circumstances. Is it really that bad?</p>