<p>[‘Overeducation</a>’ Linked With Poor Mental Health](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/overeducation-linked-poor-mental-health-123410941.html]'Overeducation”>'Overeducation' Linked With Poor Mental Health)</p>
<p>Does the “overeducation” cause the distress, or vice versa?</p>
<p>It’s not unheard of for people with poor “real-world” coping skills to stay in full-time education for a long time. It’s usually because school is their comfort zone; they know its rules and customs, and they are afraid to go out and submit to the unknown demands of employment and the market. Of course, these are also the same people who are the least likely to have successful academic careers as well. </p>
<p>I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, “I don’t know what to do with myself so I guess I’ll just go to grad school.” As if that’s a blanket solution to their problems.</p>
<p>Oscar Wilde once said “you can never be overdressed or overeducated.” </p>
<p>That being said, I think this is a correlation/causation issue. People aren’t developing poor social skills because they’re educating themselves. The individuals you’ve mentioned had no direction, so they went to grad school; it’s not as though they went to grad school and educated themselves out of direction and social skills. Nearly all schools have career centers that help with real world things like direction of study, internships, mock job interviews and career assessment tests. The students staying in school for comfort are not the students that go there to succeed. It isn’t the fault of “overeducation.”</p>
<p>avita01, I agree. Grad school as the default option in one’s life is a symptom, not a cause, of problems.</p>
<p>The article isn’t really talking about that problem at all. As I understand it, it’s talking about people who had direction and got training for specific careers, but for whatever reason don’t have a job commensurate with their training. It could be someone who was a doctor or lawyer in his home country who is driving a cab here (after being forced to emigrate for some extraneous reason). Someone with an MFA in dance who can’t get work other than as a waiter. The father of one of my kids’ friends, who was a university professor in the Eastern Hemisphere and a building custodian in the Western Hemisphere. This has been a mounting problem with young people in southern Europe and the Middle East – there are a lot of people with MBAs or other types of business degree who are in their 30s and have not ever really had a management-type job.</p>
<p>In my own experience, I know or have known quite a number of people trained as lawyers who have chosen to teach high school – starting with my own mother, for many years – and not one of them has ever shown so much as a hint of depression.</p>
<p>I think I pretty well qualify as overeducated for everything I do and I think that I am over qualified because things changed around me and this made if very difficult for me to continue being employed at my level in my field. I do not think that my extra education causes stress, but since I took early retirement I found that the little jobs that I pick up here and there have been getting less respectful and I feel more and more that by taking them all I am doing is taking the away the chance for advancement of some young researcher. So I am trying to find something more suited to me, where I can be useful. Right now I believe my volunteer work is more important than my paid work. </p>
<p>I look around me in my community and a lot of the people I see who fit into the category of doing work they are overqualified for are often doing so because of personal choices. When I was young I accepted leaving a very good position because I was trying to stay married, I accepted a lower level job, for a bit, because I was trying to do the right thing. In hind sight it was a mistake, but I made the choice for the right reasons. I now have a disabled child and I see a lot of folks who accept a position that is not what they want because it provides a type of security that they need for their child. I think that a lot of people who are overqualified for their jobs are likely stressed, but it may not be the degree, but the circumstances in their lives causing the problem.</p>
<p>I think a better term may be “underemployed.” These are people who have a college degree but for whatever reason cannot find a job related to their degree - the bad economy and lack of jobs in Europe are two big factors (see Spain, Greece)</p>
<p>Perhaps part of the problem is that we increasingly rationalize and promote higher education primarily as a means of advancing economic opportunity. When people realize that education does not necessarily lead directly or logically to employment, it violates all the expectations they have been trained to have. </p>
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<p>I agree.</p>
<p>There are also people, like many stay-at-home parents and volunteers, who are “overeducated” but whose educations enrich their lives and the lives of the people they care for in non-tangible ways.</p>
<p>I think another problem is that because the economy is bad, employers are requiring bachelor’s degrees for jobs that can be done without one and master’s degrees for jobs that only required a bachelor’s. It’s partially because that helps them eliminate some of the hundreds of applications they are getting for these jobs and partially because why <em>not</em> hire an MA holder if you can get one for the same price as a BA holder?</p>
<p>I know this is the case looking at paralegal jobs. When I was in HS I wanted to be a paralegal, and at the time (this was 2002) you could be one with a HS diploma and a 2-year training program. Then slowly people wanted bachelor’s degree holders who also had that certificate. Nowadays, I’m looking at part-time paralegal jobs and they want JD holders! And they’re getting them too, from the glut of JDs who can’t find a job.</p>
<p>I agree with NJSue on this point. </p>
<p>Education doesn’t make you into something that you are not, and a lack of it doesn’t hold you back. Jobs and Gates obviously didn’t need to go to college. And there are lots of others.</p>
<p>Advanced degree candidates sometimes wind up being recruited into their programs by professors who need graduate students to teach, and to help teach. Its buyer beware out there.</p>
<p>Yes, I know MANY people with college degrees who are underemployed–some are clerks, some are secretaries, some are agents at rental car agencies. Do you NEED those credentials to perform the job? Not really, but since they have their pick of the candidates, they choose those who have the credentials over similar non-credentialed candidates, because they can.
Our S was happy to get out with his BEE instead of listening to us and getting his MEE. He figures he will go back for a masters when he WANTS and NEEDS one instead of because it was convenient. He may get an MBA and a certification in project management, if that appeals to him more; his employer is also willing to help subsidize, depending on what sequestration does to the funding.</p>
<p>Great post NJSue.</p>
<p>Actually the enrichment can be tangible and/or intangible, whether or not the person is compensated or a volunteer. We are a sum total of our experiences, including formal, informal and on-the-job training and experience. </p>
<p>There are so many reasons for choosing or not choosing a particular path and/or higher education.</p>
<p>He who increases knowledge increases sorrow; for in much wisdom lies much grief.</p>
<p>Underemployment is not random. It is systematic, and its pervasiveness is only going to increase in highly educated societies. </p>
<p>Everyone is vulnerable to mental unwellness for a different set of reasons. Some will happily settle for a job where they feel appreciated and make enough to provide for their loved ones, but will stress into self-destruction if a person in their care has problems they can’t fix. Some are great as part of a team but can’t resist the temptation of substances if left alone. Some let their rage turn into their bad medicine. And then there are many people, myself fitfully included, who melt down in the face of overwhelming evidence that others will never value you for what you perceive as your abilities, that you are useful to society only as a janitor (a software janitor, in my case, with a comfy chair and a wooden desk and in that sense, acknowledgedly vastly better off than a real janitor economically and health-wise, but no more autonomy and mental health wise). Getting more education is probably a mistake for such people, since it increases the worth you ascribe to your intellectual abilities and knowledge when it is largely hopeless to create value with them. </p>
<p>So it’s not a perfect causative correlation, but yes, being educationally qualified to have a career that feels (and in most cases is) out of reach is psychologically punishing for many individuals. My version of it, being qualified to study, comment on, and uncover new truths about science with little chance of every being paid to do so, is especially punishing because it loops directly in with existential depression issues. </p>
<p>The immigration issue is an old issue. Grandparents on both sides of my family were college educated but were unable to work in their field here in the US and we are talking 8 decades ago. I also agree that for some, staying in the educational arena is “easier” than pounding pavement which produces well educated young people with not very strong skills in the workplace. I also agree with NJSue that many equate education with economic prosperity and that is not necessarily true. Finally, as far as poor mental health - to me it’s “which comes first, the chicken or the egg.” There are more unstable people in colleges in my opinion now than there was generations past. People really do rise to their level of incompetence. </p>
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<p>A few years ago, I worked at a company that employed several people with Ph.D.s to do work that did not actually require a Ph.D. In all instances, these people would rather have been somewhere else, doing something else, but for one reason or another, they could not find more appropriate jobs. </p>
<p>The people with Ph.D.s were mostly unhappy with their jobs. The other people doing the same jobs were a lot happier.</p>
<p>I have four college degrees, engineering and science, (four and a half if you count half of an MSEE :"> ) and the best thing it has done is allow me to find a very narrow niche in a fun industry (consumer electronics) and wear two hats. I’m underpaid as heck for what I can do but the hours are good (French hours) and the job is a lot of fun. </p>
<p>Overall, tho, overeducated people are more ‘depressed’ as Marian above suggests. We occasionally hire PhD’s and at best they stay there for a few years on the way to something else.I interviewed a few of them for hiring and told my boss as such, and true to their words they bailed on us. Ironically, none to a better position, just a different company doing largely the same thing.</p>