<p>Last year, a Forbes.com writer discussed this very topic:</p>
<p>[Get</a> Over It: The Truth About College Grad ‘Underemployment’ - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/30/get-over-it-the-truth-about-college-grad-underemployment/]Get”>Get Over It: The Truth About College Grad 'Underemployment')</p>
<p>The article attracted a slew of heated responses.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link!</p>
<p>Here’s another one, from today’s HuffPo:</p>
<p>[Mark</a> Yzaguirre: Don’t Blame Liberal Arts Majors for High Unemployment](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Don't Blame Liberal Arts Majors for High Unemployment | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>I became fully aware of the unemployment situation for liberal arts majors when I attended my nephew’s graduation from Yale last year. One of the student speakers was trying to trying to make light of the fact that she, and most of her friends who also studied the liberal arts, had no job or any idea when they would get one. And if these seriously bright people couldn’t get a job, it must be brutal out there.</p>
<p>On the other hand, most of the STEM majors were pretty well set. Several started off with job offers greater than $100K. </p>
<p>I have often thought that the mismatch between student majors and job prospects could be solved pretty easily: Just adjust each student’s college loan rates to reflect the default rate for the selected college and major. Parents would think it over many times if faced with a 20% interest rate for degrees that don’t pay off.</p>
<p>But, hebegebe, we aren’t talking about liberal arts majors.</p>
<p>I know there are certain posters who want to believe that it is the Larts majors who are unemployed, but these are STEM majors. </p>
<p>So, your argument is just the same old boring trope.</p>
<p>From the article linked above:</p>
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<p>So, let’s just not ride that misinformation train again. Let’s look at what’s actually being said on this thread: engineers are having a hard time getting work.</p>
<p>NorthMinnesota,</p>
<p>The comments beneath the article are equally interesting.</p>
<p>Also, I like this from ThereseR’s link to Forbes:</p>
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<p>That they should look to anyone but themselves for success. This is what concerns me about these dialogues. Who among us graduated from college believing we had some sort of certain specific entitlements? I mean, I felt glad I had a beater car.</p>
<p>poetgrl,</p>
<p>I guess I just don’t read and post enough on this board to know that this is the “same old boring trope”. </p>
<p>I generally agree with the rest of what you are saying though. I wonder if this next generation is so over-coddled that they don’t know how to get out and do something to “make their own luck”.</p>
<p>“Last year, a Forbes.com writer discussed this very topic:”</p>
<p>I could add about 50 stories just like those examples in the article. I honestly don’t have any friend’s whose kids have not been able to find some job after graduation (and none had engineering or any other pre-professional degree) and that they haven’t been able to leverage into the next job, and the job after that. There are even a few who got their dream first job. These are recent, after the crash, grads.</p>
<p>my apologies hebegebe. Sometimes that subject just overtakes things. </p>
<p>I don’t know if they know how to make their own luck. I’ve been grateful, so far, my own kids have figured it out. For example, I didn’t want oldest to work while she was in college, but she told me that I didn’t understand the way “it works now.”</p>
<p>Luckily, she’s stubborn. But, when I hear some of these things I do find them alarming. We are the descendents of people who crossed oceans in steerage to get here. What’s gone wrong?</p>
<p>The spark is what separates those who were born to be engineers from those who chose to become engineers usually because it ‘looks cool’, ‘I was good in math’, ‘I liked car shop class’, ‘easy to find jobs’, ‘pays well’, and so on. There’s a big difference. </p>
<p>Mostly it has to do with curiosity, a quest for improvement of things, always looking for different ways to do things, and so on. Not necessarily grades :)</p>
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<p>No. Most contracts are signed in spring, including for privates. Advertising begins in January, with the first quarter of the year devoted to posting, screening, and some interviewing. Contracts are signed for fall in March & April.</p>
<p>Additional jobs can open up at any time (for fall or beyond), depending on sudden vacancies caused by illness, pregnancy, family emergency, or spousal relocation. And those would be posted as soon as that unexpected need arises.</p>
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<p>This probably varies by region. Here, they are usually hired the week before classes start. They don’t even know who is retiring the next year or which teachers will bump into open positions until after the current school year ends.Retirements are typically announced in June. Then teachers can bid on those spots and other open spots. Once that is all settled, it is August and they begin interviewing. Sometimes they hire a couple weeks into the school year when they decide that they need another <insert grade=“” subject=“” here=“”> class.</insert></p>
<p>I am divided on this subject, because although I generally agree with cranklyoldman (post 80) regarding some unusual, if not unique, modern employment problems, I also agree with this:</p>
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<p>The “way it works now” is not too different from the way it used to work “way back when.” Meaning, it was not necessarily true that one’s first job was after a B.A. or B.S. (or even an A.A.). Teenagers often worked – not only during summers, but during the year. Proportionally speaking, now much fewer college-age students have worked prior to obtaining their B.A. than in earlier times.</p>
<p>What do they (generally) do during summers? Special academic programs, special community service (domestic or overseas); many of my students in science fields obtain research projects – some domestic, some overseas. Most of these pursuits are designed to increase chances of high-level college admissions. A minority of them get jobs, and even a smaller minority start or continue part-time jobs during the school year.</p>
<p>Naturally, all this means that when they graduate, many of them literally have no work experience. If they have not been lucky enough, alternatively, to land any interim internships prior to graduation, it becomes difficult to imagine working in their field and bringing even that brief familiarity into their first job interviews or even resume submissions.</p>
<p>What any experience gives you is some sense of confidence and maybe poise. A life of straight K-16 academics, 17 years in a row, makes for a more startling transition to a very different “world.”</p>
<p>That said, I think that grads from the last 5 years (since spring of '08) can hardly be blamed for even more brutal decisions by companies and corporations regarding things like outsourcing and gaming employment law, than were true even in the previous 10 years. </p>
<p>One thing, however, I am not terribly sympathetic to (I hear it all the time from my students) is the complete lack of flexibility when it comes to location. Everybody wants Fun City (fill in your blank). Normally that means NYC, DC, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, LA, or the SF Bay Area. Must be coastal. Must be a happenin’ place, or bust. It’s the same thing we see in college application efforts, too often. Perfectly respectable college cannot be tolerated if it’s not Out There Urban, with guaranteed off-campus life. Yet some “less desirable” school titles have awesome internship opportunities which might have landed said students jobs in urban areas soon enough.</p>
<p>Edited to add: Well, Chicago’s not “coastal,” but you get my drift. ;)</p>
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<p>Which particular STEM majors? Biology majors seem to face poor job prospects at the bachelor’s level, according to the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html</a> . Biology is the most popular STEM major.</p>
<p>“We’ve gone through the worst economic times since the Great Depression, so I find it risible that so many parents declare that un- or under-employed grads are somehow at fault. All the Back in the Day stories make my head hurt. It reminds me of an old Broadway musical, Bye Bye Birdie…“What’s the matter with kids these days…Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way…”
It’s a genuinely terrible job market for newly minted college graduates, especially those with degrees in the humanities. Not finding a job doesn’t necessarily reflect a deficit of character; it more probably reflects a deficit of jobs. The fact that these grads are willing to take dead-end low wage jobs speaks to their willingness to try anything to get a true career started.”</p>
<p>Nah, I don’t read people saying that. They are just saying that things are different than they used to be, and encouraging kids to adapt to the situation at hand. I truly think that many people give up very easily, especially since they keep hearing how awful the job market is right now, and they need to have the confidence and persistence to do whatever it takes.</p>
<p>D has become very creative in her search, presentation of her credentials is quite unique or so she has been told by prospective employers, has had some really great prospects, companies varying from mechanical hearts/pumps to new upcoming tech stuff. I could see her doing any one of the things she has interviewed for, unfortunately the same line is given, we went with someone with more experience.
She will be taking a course to get certified as project management shortly. </p>
<p>I agree with a previous poster when they said a skill set in super specialization is almost what they are looking for.
Her friend an expert in a particular sport on a whim saw a job with a company that manufactures the equipment for said sport, the job description required a masters degree Mech Eng. This kid only had an insane love of this sport, below a 3.0(not much)no masters got the job over the phone. Paid for his relocation. Kid has since said he could have done the work this job required when he was 18 years old. He got the job based off his in depth knowledge of the industry. Time to start reinventing the wheel.</p>
<p>Good luck to your daugher, samiamy, she sounds very motivated! I know she’ll get to her destination one way or another, as long as she keeps going for it and doesn’t give up!</p>
<p>I have read all the posts and let me be honest in saying that the job market is really very very bad! It cuts across the ‘Choice of Major’ or the ‘Top Universities’ distinction. Many are compelled to take up jobs that don’t fit into their career plans. Similarly, many are taking unpaid internships, with a hope to land at better jobs in near future. I sincerely wish, we come of out of the current “depression” ASAP.</p>
<p>I teach grad students in public policy and I can tell you that the reason why your poli sci BA son or daughter can’t get a government job is because MY students with MA’s are taking all the jobs that technically only require a BA. And my students are taking these jobs because (here’s the dirty secret we’re not talking about):
No. One. In. America. Is. Ever. Going. To. Retire.
I have colleagues who are in their seventies who have had their jobs since before I was born. Just for a laugh sometime google the term "world’s oldest . . " and then insert the name of your dream job. Then google "one hundred year old . " plus the name of your dream job. There are college professors in their NINETIES, doctors who are a hundred years old.<br>
I know lots of people in my generation (40’s and 50 year olds) who are still waiting to be promoted to the next level, which will never happen until someone retires. and no one is ever going to retire.</p>