WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-college-seniors-are-falling-short-1493118000
Paywall-free version: http://nation.foxnews.com/2017/04/25/where-college-seniors-are-falling-short
…it’s not all major mismatch though.
Given how labor market conditions can change more quickly than one can complete a degree in a major that is needed or desired for a job that requires major-specific skills, it may not be surprising that there is a mismatch.
A commonly cited example is petroleum engineering. The four year delay between starting college and graduating meant that there were few petroleum engineering graduates when they were in high demand, but they were not in demand by the time those attracted to the major graduated.
Kind of hard to opine too much as all I could read was the link @OHMomof2 posted without a WSJ subscription. In that piece it is also worth noting that there seems to be a disconnection between post-grad job seekers and reality with too high salary expectations: “They also expect to earn over $53,000 in their first job, compared with average salary of $45,000 that recruiters expect to pay for those positions.”
@doschicos you can try clicking through via facebook, that gets me past the paywall to the entire article.
https://www.facebook.com/wsj/posts/10155877431733128
…but there’s not a lot more there than in the link I posted earlier, just a couple of paragraphs. IMO, there isn’t a lot to the article but maybe @barrons saw something in it that I didn’t.
The article also has this chart:
https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF-AQ128B_GRADJ_16U_20170424170607.jpg
…which I find really confusing because it duplicates social sciences and humanities, doesn’t mention math or stats, and suggests biz/accounting is what 80% of employers are looking for.
Here’s the study being promoted in the article: https://www.icims.com/about-us/news-room/press-releases/study-shows-class-of-2016-hiring-expectations-are-misaligned-with
…on the whole, I think WSJ just wrote a quickie clickbait article based on the press release from icims.
The chart is also misleading since (a) it does not indicate what proportion of jobs being hired are specific to those majors, and (b) it does not include major-agnostic jobs for comparison.
Yes, most employers have some entry-level jobs that require the specific skills learned as business or whatever majors. But that does not say whether the percentage of new college graduate entry level jobs requiring a business major exceeds the 19% that is the percentage of new college graduates in business majors.
The study is a quickie piece of crap itself, but it includes the following interesting responses: 74% of recruiters said that written and spoken communication skills were more important than major, and “only” 26% said that the prestige of the degree-awarding institution was more important than major. I didn’t expect that last one! (I would have thought it would be close to 0%, although I guess I believe major is unimportant enough that an almost completely bogus factor like institutional prestige could credibly surpass it.)
If you look at the chart supposedly showing the mis-match of majors and employer demand, in every category the percentage of college students with that major is below the percentage of employers looking for someone with those skills. But that’s obviously because no employers say they want to hire an anthropologist. What interests me is that the shape of the curve of the majors selected almost exactly mimics the shape of the curve of employer demand. There’s a much better correlation between market interest and major choice than anyone is admitting. (It would not be sexy to say that.)
I’m a bit confused about the chart. The totals percentages of the PCT of Seniors in Major comes to 58.3 percent. The categories of majors are extremely broad (Physical Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, etc.). What category are all the other seniors majoring in? It also doesn’t seem to line up with the ICIMS chart.
What I do find to be very telling from the ICIMS report was that recruiters seem to rank Communication Skills, Work Experience, ECs, and GPA above the university’s reputation. That would seem to indicate that many students would be better off going to a school with a lower reputation where they may have a better chance to get those coveted internships and research projects.
I think internships etc tend to follow selected schools to a great extent. Might be a chicken/egg Q but old habits die hard if they worked.