<p>You should blame the outsourcing of jobs (I will withhold blame to keep politics out of it) that make it very difficult to get a factory job or almost any decent job without a degree, NOT the people coming here for a “better life” the same way that all of our ancestors got here.</p>
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<p>No, but then I’m not hiring for the government, which like Wall Street, likes degrees (and prestigious ones at that). </p>
<p>But in this case ek, academia, degrees can matter in any job. A community college will hire a PhD, for example, when a MA is all that is required. </p>
<p>Personally, I think having a receptionist who can write decently (hopefully learned while attending college) would add value to the organization. And of course, having someone who is multi-lingual answering the phone in an urban juco could be of value.</p>
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<p>I am certain that the positions were filled by immigrants already authorized to work in the US. Either by those who won green cards, or by the refugees (the status of refugee gives people a right to work in US).</p>
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<p>Yep, that too.</p>
<p>By the way the same happens in engineering. I work in research and if you look at our org chart, we have far more people in the “global” labs all over the world (in cheaper parts of the world). It was not the case 12 years ago, when I started working for my employer. No ones job is immune to outsourcing now.</p>
<p>’ People were here from Europe already."</p>
<p>I think I have a great+ aunt who was born here in the 1500’s.
Most of my relatives that long ago are from the Netherlands.
Supposedly even related to Johannes Vermeer.</p>
<p>Requiring a degree for a job that pays $ 24,000 seems insane.
No wonder she said she will go back to the UK to have her baby.</p>
<p>but they are not requiring a degree for the job; a degreed lady applied for it knowing the pay scale…why should the hiring manager turn her down to take a high school grad instead?</p>
<p>A huge chunk of American research is being done by foreign born post docs being paid in the 25-30k range. They have been in college at least 10 years but come cheap in some of the basic science majors.</p>
<p>On the original generalized point … it seems reasonable that a degree be the tie-breaker when there are like-qualified applicants.</p>
<p>I am also pretty sure a British woman will make the cut for most jobs in America. :p</p>
<p>It is interesting to me that the thread went right to my frustration to hiring recent immigrants, and completely bypassed the maintaining the status quo and separation of classes by reinforcing what separates us, its not only money - but education.
But its embarrassing to admit that, much easier to point fingers at someone who isn’t PC enough.</p>
<p>Btw, when Boeing moved to South Carolina for example, they halved the pay for the skilled factory workers. The annual wage quoted in the papers is not 40 hrs x 52, but includes forced overtime of up to 3 weekends a month( or more).</p>
<p>Not that great for family life & since many families depend on a spouse to both work & share in child care, it also results in higher child care expenses, which of course isn’t noted when the income is mentioned.</p>
<p>[What</a> Families Need to Get By: The 2013 Update of EPI?s Family Budget Calculator | Economic Policy Institute](<a href=“http://www.epi.org/publication/ib368-basic-family-budgets/]What”>What Families Need to Get By: The 2013 Update of EPI’s Family Budget Calculator | Economic Policy Institute)</p>
<p>Many families live in a ribbon of constant struggle. In some ways lower income families who have housing, food or other subsidies, have more breathing room than those who make more, but do not qualify for any subsidies or help.</p>
<p>The poverty index needs to be reevaluated, if we really want to see clearly what families are facing. There are plenty of people struggling who make more than double the poverty index.</p>
<p>When many people * with college degrees * are living in poverty, what hope is there for those without?</p>
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<p>So unPC, but so true.</p>
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<p>We’d waged war on poverty since 1960s. How’s that working out for the poor? Or for the middle class? Re-evaluating the poverty index is not going to make a difference for people. They are still going to be struggling.</p>
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<p>“It’s the economy, stupid” (Bill Clinton)</p>
<p>Well, yes, when the top 1% in this country has 40% of the wealth (with most of that in the top .1%) and the bottom 80% have a lovely 7% (and the gap is growing), what do you expect? There is a reason the top is growing and the bottom is shrinking, and no- it’s not because more people are getting degrees. The vast majority of those with degrees are in that 80%. Even focusing just on income, the top 1% earned 20% of all income last year. Again, growing.</p>
<p>But, what personally bothered me was the fact that you wanted a “citizen” to get the job over an immigrant which apparently has every legal right to work here.</p>
<p>After 400 years, your family should be pretty well at the top of the education heap.</p>
<p>Why do you say that?
We didn’t all stay in Connecticut.
My grandfather dropped out of school at 13 to work the farm.
I had struggled all through school and after being sexually assaulted and harassed at school I dropped out after my father died young.</p>
<p>I’m sorry I started this thread. I feel personally attacked and I really can’t take that right now. I was simply trying to express my frustration with the class disparity I live with.
I never said that an immigrant didn’t have a right to work.
But I didn’t understand why it was necessary for the job to go to someone who wasn’t even going to stay in it.</p>
<p>I think you are bringing up a great point EK4. But, poverty is more complex then those having degrees needing to take low paying and low skilled jobs. With income disparity, the class we were born into is more ingrained in our culture than ever before. How else does the top 1% continue to grow their wealth? Immigrants seem to do a better job of breaking out with a more entrepreneurial spirit. Is that because they come from countries with perhaps a more official “set” social class and therefore see opportunity here with less official class structures? We who were born here, were told to jump through hoops to get opportunity. Unfortunately, for the lower class, those hoops are difficult to procure. The college degree hoop the middle class counted on, seemed to be the final hoop at one time, and now is at the beginning of a pretty uncertain future. </p>
<p>As to the immigrants at the community college, we may be assuming they were more qualified due to college degrees. Perhaps they interviewed better? Were more personable? Multi-lingual? Had experience?</p>
<p>I see a huge downside to hiring degreed applicants in positions not requiring a degree.
Turnover.
On paper, it looks like a no brainer to be able to nab a person with a college degree for a relatively low salary. But how long do they stay? 6 months? A year?
When they invariably move on to higher level positions or continued schooling, the organization is faced with the monetary costs of recruiting, retraining, etc.
And the dept is faced with disruption in staffing levels.
Not worth it to me.</p>
<p>If I were hiring (and I’m not), I’d try to find a bright, motivated person with ONLY a high school diploma, who might enjoy and commit to a job with fair pay and full benefits for the longish haul.
Those people are out there, aren’t they?</p>
<p>I work at a community college, and our HR department is VERY careful about following the letter of the law. I would doubt very much that a community college would be able to apply for an H-1 visa to hire someone for a staff position. The more likely case is that the person hired is a student, or has a green card through some other means. International students are allowed to have on-campus jobs.</p>
<p>I get what you are saying, EK. With the real unemployment rate what it is, we should certainly be considering the impact of legal and illegal immigration. When that issue is raised, the ignorance and racism charges are always played for the sole purpose of marginalizing the person raising it. But it is still incredibly important if we don’t want our country to become a place where a large percentage of the population doesn’t work, doesn’t have the satisfaction of supporting a family and doesn’t contribute. That is a recipe for disaster. I work as a volunteer with illiterate adults, many of whom are illegals, so I see the mindset of hardcore immigration activists from the inside, as well as native born Americans, usually black people, who can’t read well enough to be successful. the utter lack of empathy for the native born Americans absolutely breaks my heart. There are no jobs that Americans won’t do, there are only jobs that employers don’t want to pay enough to have people who expect those employers to follow the law to do. Much easier to facilitate ethnic cleansing, suck in as much profit as possible and ignore the destruction left behind in multiple countries. But it’s ok, they don’t have to be accountable because the opposition is raaaaaaacist.</p>
<p>I am a woman in late 40s with a great job and no degree. Unfortunately, without a degree, my 25 years of excellent work mean nothing because I have been promoted above my credentials and could never even get one of those reception jobs if I wanted to leave my firm.</p>