<p>chrisw - I agree, and I don’t think this is a controversial opinion. However, there is a large business sector that benefits from more and more people going to college, even if it is not in their best interest. aka colleges.</p>
<p>What happens as a result is you have people “graduating” from college who cannot write a cohesive paragraph or short essay if their life depended on it. Or you have people with economics degrees that do not understand basic supply and demand. etc</p>
<p>I would love to hear how students view the outlook of the job market and if it differs from what others and the media are describing.</p>
<p>[Job</a> Search Survey](<a href=“http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2HRHN87]Job”>http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2HRHN87)</p>
<p>Shows that it’s really necessary to get that college degree. But some of numbers might be misleading sometimes…</p>
<p>2 students I know
<ul>
<li>Top public university, state flagship, economics/accounting major with > 3.9 gpa, graduating 6/2011, got job offer 9/2010 from Big 4 for starting salary about $60k with full benefits</li>
</ul>
<p>Several of their friends have about same results (I don’t know them so no details)</p>
<p>Small sampling but it seems like top students from top colleges can find good jobs even in a bad economy. Not so top students or not so top colleges might need a better economy.</p>
<p>S was offered 3 jobs when he applied in winter/spring 2010, when he was graduating. He says some of his friends who were also in engineering at his U did NOT get any job offers. Some decided to go on to grad school & hope things improve when they look for jobs (we talked to one guy who got his masters in 2010 because he couldn’t get a job in 2009. He says that now he’s just further in debt and still has NOT job offers).</p>
<p>A friend’s niece just was hired full-time for a great full-time job for when she graduates with her MBA this spring. She got her undergrad degree from Notre Dame, worked for a bit & then went on to get her MBA. A friend we know whose S got a BA in psychology & has gone on to get a master’s in psych. His parents are HOPING he’ll get some job that he can start after he graduates in May. He currently works p/t while working on his BA.</p>
<p>S hasn’t mentioned whether any of his friends have recently gotten hired (particularly those who graduated with him last spring).</p>
<p>Among my friends the only children who have gotten jobs after graduating have been those in engineering and nursing. Even know some in nursing who looked for over 6 months. I have one who has only been able to find part time retail work and another who hasn’t found a job who is going back to school.</p>
<p>In HI, many in nursing are having a VERY hard time finding a job in their fields. SOME engineers are able to get jobs, particularly if they are willing to relocate. As posted previously, S said that last spring when he was job-hunting, he noticed that there were only 1/2 to 1/3 of the regular # of employers represented at the engineering job fair and of those employers, only a few were hiring. The others were just keeping their names active in students/school’s mind by showing up.</p>
<p>Five years ago I should have told myself to major in engineering instead of completing my degree in a finance related field. I have a little bit above average statistics and job experience and I make around 40k per year. Definitely not a great salary nor the most interesting job ever, but not a bad place to start. I definitely would have tried to get a higher gpa than I did in school since I virtually had no social life anyway.</p>
<p>Most of you sound pretty pathetic IMO.</p>
<p>These statistics have always been around, there have been people without jobs since the dawn of time.</p>
<p>Unemployment will ALWAYS be here.</p>
<p>What you need to do as a college student is increase your odds.</p>
<p>Liberal Arts is a fantastic way of doing so, studying abroad, becoming a well rounded individual, learning a new language.</p>
<p>If you are attending college to get a job, then you are going for the wrong reasons. </p>
<p>College is for people who want to grow as a human, to view the world in a different light.</p>
<p>What college does is show the employer that you have spent 4 years at an institution that taught you how to be responsible, it shows that you have had the patience of getting through another 4 years of education. </p>
<p>I dont know how many times I have talked to business owners and entrepreneurs who DONT have formal education, or tell me its useless. It is useless, they are working in the business world without having any prior knowledge. The best education is EXPERIENCE. </p>
<p>These days EVERYONE has a college education.</p>
<p>So stop sitting around and working part time jobs at a bookstore or pizza shop that is giving you ZERO work experience. </p>
<p>Go work as an Insurance Salesman, find out ways to improve the business, make suggestions. Start making friends with business owners, network.</p>
<p>My first job I worked at a family Insurance business. The business was still managing clients in manilla folders. RIDICULOUS. I quickly noticed how inefficient we were and started pushing for a paperless system. I networked our Client managing system with all the PC’s and began the process of creating Forms and a scanning system to get rid of all our files. </p>
<p>That is experience that an employer will see and like. I did this before I even started college.</p>
<p>I also sold policies, communicated with people, solved problems. </p>
<p>These are the kind of jobs you need to be searching for during your time in college. </p>
<p>Go study abroad in the summer, learn a new language, I am fluent in Russian. I know that will help me in the future.</p>
<p>I just came out of my second interview for a State job.</p>
<p>600 applied and 5 got the second interview. This is with all of the soft freezes going on.</p>
<p>My first interview I was able to be outgoing and make them laugh. They remembered and enjoyed listening to my stories. </p>
<p>My second interview was even more rambunctious haha. We digressed so much that I thought it was something from a movie. Charm people, tell funny stories, show how personable you are. </p>
<p>The interviews were sad that the interview ended so early. That is what you want. </p>
<p>You need to start early, start gaining experience as fast as you can.</p>
<p>I am going to apply to the SLI program with CSU. That will also help.</p>
<p>If you guys have any questions about anything just PM me.</p>
<p>^^ You are only a freshman at Sac State, what kind of State job are you being interviewed for?</p>
<p>tatman, did someone in this thread ask to see your resume?</p>
<p>No one asked to see my resume. I am just trying to prove a point to all these people that think its so hard to find a job. </p>
<p>Its a Student Position at BSIS.</p>
<p>Many people need to stop blaming the economy and start looking in the mirror. Many undergrad’s are simply woefully unprepared for professional and it is largely of their own doing. Where in God’s name has peronsal responsibility gone?</p>
<p>The push for many of our citizens to attend technical schools instead of a real college is nearsighted at best. It is almost entirely an economical and logistical argument and ignores what is in fact best for society overall. I cannot imagine if our society had pushed me to attend a trade school instead of college. My college ethics and literature coures have made me a profoundly better person and citizen (I am a computational math and statistics major by the way). History and government were good for me to take, although I can’t say they had the same life-changing aspect that ethics and literature did. Logic (PHIL) is a very useful class and my communication course was marginally helpful in that I gained experience talking in front of people. </p>
<p>I do admit that some of my liberal arts classes were a complete wast of time. Sociology was a JOKE. Psychology used to interest me, then I took the class and realized that the only legitimate parts of it were taken straight from the biology department. Composition I was pretty much BS, but I think that had to do with the teacher I had. </p>
<p>I actually don’t think there’s much of a problem at all. 5% unemployment for college graduates is not optimal, but it’s also pretty close to the “natural” unemployment rate. I think the main problem I can think of is that the adults are not being honest and clear enough to young people about their career options. I think getting an undergrad degree in the liberal arts followed by career training at the masters’ level is totally fine, as long as graduates are aware of that being their most likely path towards success. There are too many psychology and english who get hit with the hard reality that their bachelors degree is not employable until it’s too late. But there’s really nothing wrong with going to graduate school for professional career training.</p>
<p>So wait a second… assuming this isn’t a ■■■■■, you’re saying that encouraging people to enroll in trade schools is shortsighted and neglects the best interests of society.</p>
<p>Now let me ask you. Do you change your own car oil? Did you wire your home for electricity? Do you take your own garbage to the dump? Do you plan to build the house you live in when you start your career? Do you pick up your electronics at the factory they were developed? Do you plan to build the highways you drive on? Do you cut your own hair?</p>
<p>If the answer to just one of those questions is no, then answer one question: Would your life be better or worse if none of those things were done?</p>
<p>If the answer to that question is “worse,” then that means that there are some people who need to do those jobs, and none of those jobs require a college education. You talk about what is “best” for society, but is it really best for someone who has no interest in high logic, English literature or “communication” as defined by universities, to attend a four year university, where he will pay tens of thousands of dollars to receive subpar grades and no career training?</p>
<p>If you are a “better person” because you have had your liberal arts classes, that is just great for you. Personally, I am no better a person or citizen for having taken curriculum in political science (I have never missed an election, including primaries where the only thing to vote on is a question on the ballot about adding a few trees to a random park in Philly, and when I was called for jury duty as an 18 year old, I was beyond disappointed to find out that I was excused from duty the morning of); I am more equipped to succeed in business than I was coming out of high school, but I also know that I am NOT very well equipped to, say, change the alternator in my car if it were to break.</p>
<p>Some of my friends, however, can change their oil in their sleep, but have no clue what a derivative is.</p>
<p>The fact that I have attended a real college and taken a logic class that would likely not be offered to someone at a trade school has given me the gift of being able to point out some of the many fallacies your post is riddled with. </p>
<p>Fallacy #1: "you’re saying that encouraging people… best interest of society? --Strawman fallacy; you are attempting to make my argument something it is not in order to more easily defeat it.</p>
<p>I did not say that. I said that pushing people who would otherwise have gone to a traditional college to go to a trade school may have economical and logistical sense, but it also has some steep trade-offs from an ethical and social perspective.</p>
<p>Fallacy #2: Second and third paragraph involves numerous fallacies. </p>
<p>For one, a slippery slope is implied, as you make it seem as though if we don’t push through an agenda to encourage more and more people to attend trade schools society will suddenly be without tradesmen and our culture will take many steps backwards. This also involves a false dichotomy. </p>
<p>The choice is not between encouraging people to attend trade school or not having any tradesmen to do the crucial work society needs. If society has a demand for skilled trades, then the law of supply/demand will undoubtedly lead to a generous supply of people willing to do those trades for the right price, which is precisely how things currently are.</p>
<p>The second and third paragraphs also contain the fallacies of missing the point and possibly a complex question.</p>
<p>The rest of your post relates closely to the fallacies committed in the first three paragraphs, as your entire argument is based on a misinterpretation of what I said. My conclusion was basically that economically it might make some sense to steer some undergraduates into trade school, although one problem you have failed to consider is that an increased supply of skilled tradesmen will push the trades’ overall wages downwards and therefore, on the aggregate, tradesmen’s standard of living will suffer, but economics is considered a liberal arts class, so of course you wouldn’t bother thinking about something like that. </p>
<p>Anyways, my conclusion was basically that even though it might be better for some to go straight into a trade, it is not better for society overall to have fewer citizens who are politically ignorant (govt. and history), unable to analyze writing (compostion and lit.), unable to think in an economic context (economics), who fail to understand basic human behavior (psychology and communication), cannot think critically (humanities), and who cannot appreciate art (art and related). </p>
<p>I did NOT suggest that we shut down trade schools. Saying that I did is what led you straight into the strawman, slippery slope, and missing the point fallacies. What I essentially said is that making an agenda to push undergraduates into trade schools would likely have some negative externalities that a lot of people aren’t considering, with most of those externalities being related to having an uneducated citizenry.</p>
<p>
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<p>I think his main point is, why should we try to get our entire populace to go through a college education, possibly racking up large amounts of debt, when they’ll wind up with a job they could have gotten anyway?</p>
<p>14484200
925-6883</p>
<p>Inmotion 12…</p>
<p>I understand that you think it would be better for our society to be educated about all those things you mentioned “govt, writing…etc”</p>
<p>But I honestly believe that a highschool education or an AA would be sufficient in teaching a tradesman or a construction worker in how our government works and how to think critically when you are making decisions at the poles. Highschool teaches people how to write intellectual papers, how to think through mathematical problems. High school does a great job of laying down the ground work needed for anyone to have a basic understanding of how the world operates.</p>
<p>Some people would rather work with their hands and get on with their life, if they are receiving sub par grades and have no motivation to learn, they should not go to college.</p>
<p>Especially since now a days you need more than a degree, you need to show employers you have been striving to gain experience through out your time in college…and someone who doesn’t even want to be in class in the first place…definitely won’t be applying to any free internships during college.</p>
<p>Some people just don’t like academia.</p>
<p>I suggest you read this article</p>
<p><a href=“Page not found”>Page not found;
<p>It is interesting how our society, in a way almost “trains” people to become janitors and congressman.</p>
<p>Good discussion.</p>
<p>Shifting gears a little bit, has anyone seen the unemployment rates for workers in the construction, installation, maintenance, and repair, production and transportation industries? </p>
<p>They are 20.1%, 9.3%, 13.1%, and 12.4% respectively. The unemployment rate for those employed in Management, professional and related occupations is 4.7%. Can anyone out there explain to me how it makes sense to push people to go into occupations that are already suffering massive unemployment, therefore increasing the supply of labor and further adding to unemployment and also lowering existing wages?</p>
<p>That is a very valid point.</p>
<p>I would guess the best way to combat that problem would be to open up a new industry (i.e alternative energy), and encourage people to seek science degrees…that would open up new production lines and job sites.</p>
<p>tatman, I gather you mean the state of california then, when you said “State”? I, and likely the other poster, interpreted the “State” with a capital “S” as the place in DC that runs embassies in foreign countries.</p>