Well-Educated Job Hunters Still Stuck (WSJ)

Parents Forum
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<p>[Well-Educated</a> Job Hunters Still Stuck - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575342751927334436.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us]Well-Educated”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575342751927334436.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us)</p>

<p>Interesting article in the WSJ about the difficulties two London School of Economics and MIT graduates are facing in the job market. I certainly hope this situation worsens; perhaps those of you that think a university education is job training will modify your garbage belief system and choose alternate paths towards personal success. Some of us still see academia as a place to learn for learning’s sake.</p>

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<p>a bit snarky there, don’t you think?</p>

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<p>I don’t know if people need to rethink their so-called “garbage beliefs” but there is certainly nothing in this little article that should compel anyone to rethink anything. It is pretty much bereft of statistics, and those statistics it does present are less than frightening. As far as the MIT issue, I think with basically one example this is the textbook defnition of anecdotal.</p>

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I supppose you would. It would certainly have to for this article to prove anything.</p>

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<p>When I think of academia as a place to learn for learning’s sake, I think of “professional students” who become very smart, collect degrees, and fail to earn enough to justify all that education.</p>

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<p>My apologies. I grew up in an environment where education was seen as a tool for personal and intellectual growth and not for job training purposes. People like me could do without the university trainees alongside us. The trainees may attend trade school or pay $20k to a company for on-the-job training.</p>

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<p>The nerve! We do not need to justify our education. Universities are for intellectuals, not job trainees. What my earnings justify are my work ethic and practical skills; my education is justified by itself.</p>

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<p>She might have some personal issues (low GPA, doesn’t interview well, looking for specific kinds of jobs or locations or seeking a very high salary). We hired several MIT CS/EE grads in 2009.</p>

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<p>Enginox…Don’t get yourself in a dither…the job market stinks for everyone right now. Every graduating senior who has a job, my son included, is very thankful. This is not the same environment as even four years ago and most newly minted grads realize that even if they have graduated from MIT or the Ivy’s.</p>

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<p>My recent CS grad received many great job offers. There’s more to receiving a job offer than a degree - one needs good interviewing skills, interpersonal skills, relevant experience, etc. As someone who also interviews grads there ae clearly some, including those from the highest level colleges, who I’d never hire because of their inability to communicate well, lack of self-confidence, abrasiveness, etc.</p>

<p>The OP is certainly full of him/herself and taking a rather narrow view of education (perhaps this will change as the OP becomes - er - more educated). If one has the desire and means to be a ‘student’ of philosophy, literature, history, or anything else for the rest of their lives then great. If one wants to obtain an education in areas the OP might not be familiar with, such as CS, engineering, architecture, accounting, medicine, applied science, or many other areas because they’re genuinely interested in it and then leverage it to earn a decent wage, then great for them as well. The OP should be more open minded IMO.</p>

<p>(note - I know nothing of the OP other than the couple of posts above so my comments are limited to those posts)</p>

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<p>I find the OP to be quite pretentious, no offense.</p>

<p>Not everyone can afford to shell out $20,000/yr for a degree in under-water basket weaving. Some of us have to pay back loans and thus need to get a decent paying job immediately after graduation. I happen to be one of them. I am hoping to get a nursing degree while minoring in a foreign language (Chinese). If I had all the money in the world, I would study the liberal arts intensively, but unfortunately, I am not rich, and therefore, I will need a practical degree.</p>

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<p>The OP’s attitude is not limited to this thread…</p>

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<p>The OP happens to be a Mathematics and Physics major.</p>

<p>The university is a community of academicians and intellectuals engaged in scientific and scholar research. The purpose of said research is to advance knowledge for its own sake and little else. Mathematics, Physics, English, History, Literature, Philosophy, and other academic disciplines are best pursued in an academic setting. Very rarely these careers lead to professional employment and when they do, the individual must acquire practical skills or a more advanced degree.</p>

<p>The majors you listed, ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, fall under the umbrella of professional education. Professional education may be defined as the applied knowledge spat out by the academics. Law, Medicine, Business, Architecture, Nursing, etc. are professions that should be learned in a professional school (just as it happens in the case of Law, Medicine, and Business).</p>

<p>Finally, we have trade schools that train individuals in procedural, specialized, technical jobs. Think electricians, plumbers, interior decorators, machinists, welders, mechanics, etc. I’m currently a mechanic by training.</p>

<p>Professional careers are what many undergraduates pursue when they enter college. It makes little sense for an individual to acquire a highly theoretical CS degree when a more practical software engineer degree will do, assuming that is the profession said individual wishes to practice.</p>

<p>The issue with professional careers is that more education is rarely more beneficial than more experience. Professionals are expected to “become better” the more experience they accumulate. Why a person who wishes to be a financial analyst, consultant, software engineer, etc. needs more advanced education to improve job opportunities is beyond me.</p>

<p>I apologize for my hostile attitude; I’m simply frustrated with our seemingly dysfunctional modern society (even though I understand these problems originated at the onset of the Industrial Revolution)</p>

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<p>What in the world are you talking about? </p>

<p>My first degree was in Physics. A Bachelor’s degree. My father had Bachelors degrees in both Physics and Mathematics (and much later in his career a Masters in Math). We both worked in industry (defense, semiconductor, energy). As did the majority of the people who graduated with me, many of whom didn’t go on to acquire advanced degrees. </p>

<p>Now if you’re talking about people at the university to earn a PhD, that’s another matter. But that population is far smaller than the population of Physics and Mathematics undergrads.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/students/careers/why.shtml[/url]”>http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/students/careers/why.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>One more thing.</p>

<p>As far as I remember, at least in the sciences and mathematics, a lot of the funding so students can do “research for research” sake, comes from government and industry grants, in the hope that this research will yield some practical application.</p>

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<p>And, of course, high unemployment contracts the tax base, limiting the amount of money the government has available to support higher education and research. We need academics, scholars, and researchers, but we can’t have them (or have as many as we’d like) if too many people are unemployed.</p>

<p>I don’t care what your opinion on the whole, “College is for X and not Y!!!” argument; high unemployment is bad for everyone. Yes, even if Your Highness doesn’t approve of the reason why they spent their money to go to the college that their hard work got them into.</p>

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<p>Well, thanks for proving my point, Bovertine. You and your father became either applied scientists and/or engineers+. I think you could have provided a better example such as the Bell Labs, the former R&D wing of AT&T. Bell Labs’ mission was to conduct basic scientific research that would later be commercialized by engineers and other professionals. Still, there are many areas of Physics and/or Mathematics that remain highly theoretical and currently have little to no practical application. The more practical skills you pick up, the closer you get to the professional careers, which are essentially applied theory.</p>

<p>The main problem is that more and more people are being pushed into university just to obtain job training that they could have received elsewhere. I see no reason why a lawyer or medical doctor must go through 4 years of undergraduate studies (and picking up debt as they go) just to become eligible for Law or Medical School. Our society also seems to assign a low value to trade skills such as electricians, plumbers, etc. therefore not many people nowadays consider those careers.</p>

<p>Think about this: if people are willing to invest thousands of dollars into a college education in the hopes of obtaining a job in industry (where some of the knowledge they gained will not be valued by industry) why not simply pay a company $X for on-the-job training and make life easier?</p>

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<p>If I made your point it is simply because you have not explained your point very well. You ascribe some bright line differentiation between theoretical and applied which simply does not exist in the real world. </p>

<p>Advanced research by physicists and mathematicians is performed all the time in all the industries I just listed, often without any clear application in sight. Bell Labs is perhaps the best known industrrial research facility, but it is far from unique. For a while I worked at the now defunct Malibu Research Labs - pretty much the birthplace of the laser. At the time, there were no clear uses of the device, but a lot of “theoretical” and “experimental” work went into it thanks to the Hughes Aircraft company.</p>

<p>Additonally, most study and research performed at universities is done with at least some idea of potential future applications, even if they are not immediately obvious. I vividly remember that most of my professors were involved in plasma physics, and as I recall the reason for it was some notion of containing controlled fusion reactions, among other things. Would you get rid of all that too?</p>

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Perhaps you haven’t heard. Most companies pay people (and generally far more than college tuition) because they feel they return value to the company far in excess of what the same people could pay for this “on-the-job” training. Companies know the value of broad based knowledge and learning skills that one acquires in college, which is why companies often pay for Master’s degrees and PhDs. Sure, your typical company gives some OTJ training, but valuable employees are supposed to use the skills learned in school, and their innate abilities, to provide value far beyond what the company could ever teach them.</p>

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<p>Nothing new, the 99.5% of the population that does not attend a top school is often delighted to hear of the woes of those that do. It reminds me of the newly popular millionaire taxes, no problem getting 99.5% of voters to vote for them.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand the OP’s schadenfreude about graduates of prestigious technical institutes who are having trouble getting jobs. If it’s hard for them, what about everyone else? Even pure scholars such as the OP can’t eat air.</p>

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<p>""I see no reason why a lawyer or medical doctor must go through 4 years of undergraduate studies (and picking up debt as they go) just to become eligible for Law or Medical School. “”
you got a point here. I believe (don’t quote on this one) England or some other european countries have a faster route to go for Medical and law school. If someone wants to be a doctor or lawyer they start their education at the undergrad level. I believe there is not difference in the qualify of doc from these european countries and us doctors. I’m taling about doctors because is more universal. Lawyer applies more to the specifics of each countries unless they are in international law.
Any doctors in here…it would be interesting to hear their opinion about education in different countries and level of quality.
On the other hand, I believe in education. Even if a masters and/or phds don’t mean making more money, it does not matter to me.</p>

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<p>In France, after passing the *concours<a href=“France’s%20SAT/ACT”>/i</a>, students may enter professional careers such as Law at the undergraduate level. Here in the US, a similar approach could be implemented; unfortunately, it seems Medical, Law, and to a lesser extent, Business schools prefer an additional filtering system, perhaps with the aim of controlling the supply of said professionals and command higher salaries.</p>

<p>Sadly, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of socioeconomic background, are incredibly stupid. Common sense and critical thinking are skills many Americans lack.</p>

<p>Take the professional employment issue. There’s no reason why companies should not properly train employees for the jobs the companies want performed. Instead, companies relegate the job training to universities. Effectively, students pay for their job training through the university without a guarantee of employment. Companies can then hire employees with at a minimal cost (usually the salary offered).</p>