Are colleges teaching the wrong skills?
Nearly half of all graduates end up in jobs that don't even require a higher education. The 'bartender with a bachelor's degree' trend will continue for years.
Does having a college degree make you more competitive in the job market? If you're a recent college graduate, not necessarily.
A new report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity says nearly half of all employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests require less than a four-year college education.
And according to the study, more than a third of those employed college graduates are in jobs that require no more than a high school diploma.
The report also suggests there’s a "growing disconnect" between the needs of employers and the training of students in college. It also questions if America is spending too much on its current system of higher education -- especially if college graduates are ending up overqualified for the jobs they get.
"Student-loan programs and federal assistance programs are based on some sort of implicit assumption that we're training people for the jobs of the future," Richard Vedder, director of the Center and a professor emeritus at Ohio University, said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. "In reality, a lot of them are not."
Vedder believes the trend of what one of his colleagues calls the "bartender with a bachelor's degree" will continue well into the next decade.
But not everyone agrees with the Center’s findings. Washington's Committee for Economic Development says that, while America’s post-secondary education is faltering, the system has long been "the nation’s incubator" for human capital as well as innovation and continued prosperity and competition in the global marketplace.
"Right now you can look around the world and you can see a lot of high-tech, high-value high-productivity jobs that we are not doing in this country, in part because our country does not have the requisite skills," the Committee’s Joe Minarik told USA Today. And encouraging people to not attend college, he said, "is not what we should aspire to."
Last spring, the Committee issued a report calling on the nation’s business community to help reform higher education by helping to better outline the industrial sectors’ needs for the future.
Bruce MacLaury, Committee Trustee and president emeritus of the Brookings Institution, acknowledged there is a disconnect between higher education and the business community.
"But business leaders need to get involved," he said in a press statement. "They have the most to gain -- but the most to lose if we don’t improve our higher education."
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Is this the abstract? This article assumes that the schools are teaching the students a skill. If so, what are those skills as well as what are the skills that employers, you can group them however you want, are looking for? Mr. Minarik, what are these requisite skills? Where can they be found?
And why is it a poor idea to promote not going to college if they are not teaching you skills needed in the work force, or at the very least some skill that has a smaller chance of being outsoured? While it is good for a teacher to get a paycheck, what good is it to me to end up in debt with a poor skill set? That seems like another tax.
You had better study lots of science and math if you are determined to get a decent job when you finish school. You do not need a four year degee. You can go to a community college and get a two year degree as a electronics technician, an industrial mechanic, x-ray technician and a few others that pay well. In any case, you had better stick with math and science. Math and science will teach you critical thinking. The unemployment rate for STEM is 2.5% so that should tell you something.
After learning that regurgitating information exactly how the professors want is more conducive to good grades than actual mastery of the subject matter, I managed to keep a 3.8 GPA and graduated with Honors. I was fortunate to have much real 'on the job' experience after graduating; the Degree helped get me the job, and the skills learned working and surviving in the real world kept me there!
"But business leaders need to get involved," he said in a press statement. "They have the most to gain -- but the most to lose if we don’t improve our higher education."
Aren't all of our big businesses post-Founder and chock full of these 'higher education types'? Do YOU see them A) functional or B) dysfunctional? Standard procedure on all standardized tests is to fill in B on all questions you can't confidently answer.
Do we know of ANY major corporations with quality training that transcends into the employee's career or are they always looking for "talent" but really have no clue what talent is? Hiring authorities haven't been this lame- ever.
ABSOLUTELY. Three children going through universities. Odds are that ALL THREE will need to know entreprenurial skills in their lives. ZERO will get any exposure to it unless they formally attend business school. Business and finance school majors and grads have no entreprenurial exposure beyond how to make a spreadsheet (all that GAAP and FASB crap is great if you're a bookkeeper, not so if you start up any other type of enterprise). Folks... big platform import drop ship corporations might not make it through 2013. Once so, the vomit of paper pushing button pressing ignorant fools scrambling to cover basic costs without basic enterprise exposure will be laughable as we finally collapse.
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic and the fundamental hunter or gatherer mentality are requirements. A phony piece of paper bought at some college or university isn't.
Granddaughter attends a college in California. She wants to graduate in 4 years with a selected science degree and cannot because she is being strung along unable to sign up for REQUIRED courses because they are FULL. Instead of 4 years, her best hopes are approximately 6 years for her desired degree so she can make application towards a desired doctorate degree. What gives??
I have heard this time and again where some young kid with a consuming goal can be strung along taking courses unrelated to their degree seemingly to keep some of their courses alive and the professor employed!! Colleges need to reassess what they are there for----to get students educated as quickly as possible so they can move on to post graduate desires.
"But business leaders need to get involved," he said in a press statement. "They have the most to gain -- but the most to lose if we don’t improve our higher education."
I disagree with the above portion of the article. Business leaders/business in general, will not lose if Americans don't improve our higher education. Business will just get their people from outside the American higher education sector.
The major problem with higher education is that the lower levels of education don't start American kids off on the learning/career path that business leaders want. Business leaders want problem solvers, people involved with math, science, chemistry, physics, finance, accounting, and communication skills. When kids are taught by their high school to go to liberal arts colleges and take philosophy and sociology they are doomed to a life of paying back $50,000 in student loans with a $35,000/year job...if they can find such a job.
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