That was not my point- no, they do not offer desirable tenure track jobs.
But I’d love to see evidence of your point that students have somehow created a huge demand for elite colleges which is hurting “all other colleges” (which is what you said. ) This flies in the face of the actual shifts (for sure there are shifts) in higher ed.
The College of New Rochelle, Marlboro, Mt Ida college- these colleges didn’t fold because students gravitated towards the elite…their student populations did not overlap with “elite” school applicants in any meaningful way.
Performing arts definitely. You have to rise above a lot of others and be prepared for a lot of rejection. Most performers I know are very diversified in their careers. Musicians teach or do recording. Dancers teach. Drama folks and voice teachers…teach.
Especially right now, those live performers who have diversified are still having some income…at least.
But let’s face it…you have to be extraordinary to get a Broadway part, or a major orchestral seat, or a show at the met.
And such a society hasn’t ever existed in human history and isn’t likely to either. Automation and mechanization is more likely to just free more people up for other creative and service related professions. Pre-pandemic the unemployment rate in this country was about as low as it ever has been in our history despite so many jobs vanished since the 50s.
The trick is figuring out how to future-proof your kids. I don’t think anyone really knows how to do that. I think a very big part of it involves being flexible, creative, and seeking out vibrant growing places to live.
The issue isnt just having “a” job, but a “good” job - in the 50s and 60s, you could work for a large company/industry (GM, IBM…) even as just a HS graduate, make 3-4 times minimum wage depending on seniority, get 2 weeks paid vacation and benefits, retire with full pension at 55 or 60. These are dtill the jobs people want, and they now require a college degree. However since the 2010s even college graduates may not be able to secure these jobs.
Similar to performing arts is culinary arts. Here I separate the chef’s of fine dining restaurants who try to push the edges of culinary innovation and creativity from the cooks of casual dining who just execute a recipe. Cooks for the masses can make a steady middle/lower middle class living, maybe even better if they move into management. The chefs though often live a high wire act. For every Gordon Ramsay or Bobby Flay, there are hundreds if not thousands of graduates of culinary schools or self taught chefs who struggle to make it at independent restaurants, often saving what and when they can to open their own place that will still be inadequately capitalized with just a few bad Yelp reviews away from failure.
So you are talking about careers that have become so competitive that only those with elite-level skills can find work in those fields? Is a “bust” in your view not having a high level job, or any job?
I can’t think of an example where non-elite skills mean you bust, except for fields in which talent is required - the arts (although one can argue whether all famous musicians/actors have elite level skills), or pro sports. That doesn’t necessarily require an elite education.
But for other fields, not being elite level doesn’t mean you bust. To become a lawyer at a top firm, you need to come from an elite law school OR for a few, prove your skills elsewhere (e.g. as a prosecutor) and then jump over. However, you can still have a good career as a lawyer if you aren’t at a top firm. That is what is confusing to me about your question. Similarly in accounting, computer science and other fields. Even academia - to get a tenure track position requires elite skills in many areas but you may still be able to get a job at a local college.
In medicine. If you don’t have the grades and MCATs for a US MD school, you can go to the Caribbean, go to a DO school, or do something else in the health field. Again, maybe not an elite career but not a bust.
I wouldn’t recommend the Caribbean. It’s very, very difficult to get residencies from there. Middle son is on a board that shares interview offers and more among those applying. There are a fair number with no interviews. Go in eyes wide open. DO should do ok, though not necessarily as easily for certain specialties. DO schools are also very difficult to get accepted to though. Again, check out what is going on vs what one thinks should go on.
There are other jobs within medicine, of course. It’s becoming an MD or DO that’s very competitive.
I’ve hired PhD’s (for corporate roles, not requiring a doctorate, not in a relevant or adjacent fields) with the most stellar resumes you could conjure who quite literally could not get a tenure track position at a “local college”. These are people with post-doc’s at world class institutions who can’t get a tenure track job at a third tier four year college.
Community college- yes. But not tenure track. Prestigious college- yes. But not tenure track, no commitment beyond “two year contract to teach”. You can’t imagine how difficult the life is for an academic “gypsy” who has to pull up stakes and relocate, or find four institutions within commuting distance to patch together a full time job (with no long term advancement or job security) every single year. Getting “a job” at a local college- do you know what adjuncts make???
It’s a win for my company (and for the other places these folks end up). Articulate, write well, studious, incredible work ethic, smart as anything. But there is a glut of professors in some fields- the days when tenured folks retired at 65 (making room for the new generation) is over. And without the older professors leaving- and with a shift towards adjuncts in some fields- where are the spaces, even at the mythical “local college” for a newly minted PhD?
Some lawyers have a knack for running a small business and others don’t. For every Perry Mason or Matlock out there with an endless supply of wealthy clients who can afford bail and private investigators, there are a hundred people hanging around calendar calls, handing out their business cards. Fifty years ago, you could count on innumerable public sector jobs to fall back on but those jobs are drying up.
Either no job in the field, or a very low level job in the field that is lacking in either the job satisfaction or pay level of the targeted job. For example, an aspiring academic is unlikely to be satisfied after ending up trying to get new adjunct jobs each semester.
It’s a few years old now, but when we were touring colleges for my youngest I recall a person leading a group (the President of the College if my memory is correct) telling us they had just hired a new Professor and mentioning they had well over 100 applicants to choose from. His intent was giving us confidence in the program assuring us they had chosen the best.
This was for a college most on CC won’t have heard of (still a very good school IMO).
I would add foreign language-related professions to the “elite-or-bust” category. Fewer and fewer highly skilled people will be needed to correct computers doing most of the (written) translation, and soon also (spoken) interpretation. For some language pairs, Google Translate is already more accurate than an average translator.
But then again, the last 30 years has shown that many jobs for the new generations didn’t even exist when the older generation was making all the doomsday predictions about no job prospect for their kids.
But @blossom is working for your company a bust? No doubt it is tough to get a tenure track job anywhere. In some fields it is not necessary having elite skills, it is the match between what was studied and what the university needs or focusing research in a “hot” area. However, a pivot to industry or teaching is not necessarily a bust. Perhaps the question should be are elite skills required to reach an elite level in certain fields, which IMHO has been true for a long time.
There are two literatures in economics that I think are relevant. There is a literature on tournament industries, in which an increasing percentage of the returns goes to a smaller number of people, and winner-take-all economies (the logical extension if all industries go that way). I think the latter is more pop economics. But, the advent of the internet, which provides less expensive distribution and the ability to scale quickly globally, has created/accelerated that trend. A fintech startup called Pando Pooling (www.pandopooling.com) tries to respond to this accelerating trend by helping people join pools of similar people competing in a tournament industry (like professional baseball or tech entrepreneurship) that pool some of their upside and hence get some downside protection in the event that, say, 2 out of 10 make it big and the other 8 get very little.
Some of these industries use elite schools as a proxy for who gets to play to be a winner. Law in the US has been going to a bifurcated distribution. A small number of big firms that hire mostly from a small number of law schools.
But as @BKSquared points out, not all do. Chefs for sure. Visual artists actually have a much easier path to stardom in NY (and teaching jobs) coming with MFAs from Yale or Columbia or to a lesser extent RISD, but there are many ways in and the routes in Berlin and London are different.
Medicine seems a little different. Post-Obamacare, while doctors’ incomes are still increasing, the gap between the specialists’ and primary care docs’ incomes has been declining. See https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2768721. I don’t think the average specialist’s income puts him/her in the top 1%. Still on average a great job from an income standpoint, but attractiveness is declining relative to the costs of the required education and long educational period.
Yeah. If you were a black kid in Mississippi or an Hispanic kid in California or Texas, the 1950s weren’t such a great time full of abundant opportunities. And companies weren’t throwing good jobs with pensions and vacation pay at you right and left. You pretty much had to be white and have a Y chromosome for that to work out. Let alone how difficult it would have been for a Black or Hispanic girl to pursue dreams like med school, law school, or business school.
The past was only a time of widespread opportunity if you had the right circumstance of birth.
Not a bust for the company, not a bust financially for the employee, not a bust for society to have smart, educated people deploying their skills. But surely not the outcome one expects at the hooding ceremony…
I hired a speechwriter with a doctorate in history a few years ago- a fantastic speechwriter, no question, but he did ask “Is this why I spent 6 years writing a dissertation on Anarchy as a social movement”? He will out-earn his professorial colleagues in the not-too-distant future, but I don’t think anyone starts a PhD program in history because they care about money!
The question is intended to be whether someone who is merely good, but not elite, at doing the job can find and hold that kind of job.
Whether someone who aspired to a tenure track faculty job but never got one found a job at @blossom’s company, and whether they are satisfied with that job, does not change the fact that tenure track faculty jobs are elite-or-bust (or elite-or-go-elsewhere if you prefer). Of course, there is still one more hurdle, which is getting tenure.
Have to wonder why primary care specialties typically have been the lower paid ones (not just in the US). A primary care physician needs to be knowledgeable about anything a patient may show up with. Yes, they often refer patients to specialists, but, in that case, they need to know enough to know which specialist to refer the patient to.
On the other hand, physicians generally were elite as undergraduate pre-meds in order to have been admitted to medical school. A lot of their classmates who could have been perfectly fine physicians were weeded out.
I think it is a function of supply and insurance/elective economics. The number of residencies offered for specialties is limited, some more so than others, creating a limited supply. Some specialties require much longer residency or even subspecialty residency periods. GP/primary care physicians may have broad knowledge, but in a sense they offer the most commoditized product. They are not qualified to treat patients for certain illnesses or perform the vast majority of procedures. That is where the money is and insurance is willing to pay up. Alternatively, physicians in elective areas (e.g. infertility, cosmetic surgery) often don’t even have to deal with insurance companies and their primary source of income comes from the very affluent.
As the spouse of a physician I can confirm that highly desired residencies such as dermatology or orthopedic surgery are EXTREMELY competitive. While primary care residencies such as internal medicine or family medicine at big inner city teaching hospitals in places like Detroit struggle to fill their spots and mostly have to rely on international applicants on H1B visas and such.