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Is 25 the new 15?

April 28, 2013 by

Twenty-five is becoming the new 15, argues Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How We Can Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old.

Young people who’ve grown up in a responsibility-free “bubble” don’t know how to find a job, manage money, cook or care for themselves, write Joseph and Claudia Allen. They’ve been socialized by their peers, not by adults.

We’ve done away with “competition (too masculine, I suppose) and real-world feedback (kids need high self-esteem!),” writes Dr. Helen, a psychologist.

Young people spend more time as college students, often taking five or six years to earn a degree. If it’s a non-technical degree — or they never actually complete it — they’re likely to be living at home at 25.

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College rush is slowing

April 20, 2013 by

“The recession convinced many young American high-school graduates to take refuge in college instead of try their luck in a lousy job market,” reports the Wall Street Journal. But, now fewer high school graduates are going on to college, according to the Labor Department.

On 2012, 66.2 percent of recent graduates enrolled in college:  The share of female graduates enrolling in college declined from 72.3 percent the year before to 71.3 percent. Men, who are lagging in college attendance, declined from 64.6 percent to 61.3 percent.

Some graduates think they can find jobs, though unemployment rates remain high — 34.4 percent for high school graduates who aren’t in school.

I suspect young people are more wary of borrowing for college, especially if they’re not strong students.

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Workforce dropouts rise

April 8, 2013 by

Discouraged workers are dropping out of the workforce, masking the true unemployment rate. Only 63.3 percent of working-age adults are in the labor force.  Some enroll in community college — or graduate school. Others apply for disability or take early retirement.

Manufacturers are looking for skilled workers in Minnesota, but technical colleges have a hard time filling all the seats in manufacturing programs, even though pay averages $56,000 a year. Factory work has a stigma.

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Educated but jobless in China

January 26, 2013 by

In the U.S., employment rises with education. In Chinese cities,  young college graduates are four times as likely to be unemployed as those with an elementary education. Why? Graduates want “clean” office jobs and won’t risk their status by taking factory work, even though it pays more. As in the U.S., vocational training is considered low status.

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Mommy’s college boy

December 2, 2012 by

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Jobless graduates

September 3, 2012 by

Here’s grim news for Labor Day: Only 64% of 2011 and 2012 graduates have a job of any kind and most working grads aren’t in jobs that require a degree, according to a survey by the Wall Street Journal‘s Market Watch.

College students are competing for jobs with older workers who haven’t been able to move up or afford to retire.

Another survey out of Rutgers found that about half of college graduates are finding themselves working in a job that doesn’t require any of the skills they obtained in the course of their studies. Only 1/5th actually managed to get that fit their major in a relevant way. Most find themselves in a paid position that wouldn’t have required a four-year degree to obtain, causing some survey takers to think that the the time and money invested in the higher education might have been a waste.

Via Education News.

“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life,” Paul Ryan said in accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination.

Already a GOP PAC has an ad up:

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Sallie Mae drops ‘unemployment penalty’

February 4, 2012 by

Under pressure from an online petition, Sallie Mae will stop charging a forbearance fee – $50 every three months per loan — to unemployed borrowers. Instead, what the private lender calls a “good faith deposit” will be applied to the balance of the loan.

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Stop Sallie Mae’s unemployment penalty

January 31, 2012 by

Stop Sallie Mae’s unemployment penalty demands a Change petition.

Federal financial aid is geared to full-time, degree-seeking students, complained Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s audience at Tallahassee Community College. Colleges can’t train 2 million skilled workers without aid for people seeking short-term job training or part-timers who need literacy or English classes to qualify for a job.

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‘Brain hubs’ create middle-skill jobs

December 8, 2011 by

“Brain hubs” with well-educated workers, such as Austin and Raleigh, also create middle-class jobs for middle-skill workers. Opportunity spills over — or, at least, trickles down. But, in most of the country, less-skilled workers face bleak job prospects.

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How we ruined the Occupy generation

November 16, 2011 by

Oldsters “ruined” the Occupy Wall Street Generation with very bad advice, writes John Cheese on Cracked.com. It starts by telling everyone to go to college to get a good job, implying that the good job is guaranteed so there’s no need to worry about about paying off student loans.

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“A master’s in psychology? Pretty impressive. How would you say that qualifies you to answer the phone?”

In 1950, less than 10 percent of adults had bachelor’s degrees and only half had completed high school, he writes. “College was something that smart kids and people with money did.”  (When I was graduated from high school in 1970, it was above-average students and people with some money.) Now a bachelor’s is seen as the bare minimum. College graduates do much better in the workforce than people with only a high school diploma, but there’s no guarantee.

So when you finally take those first steps out of university life and enter the work field, it’s an absolute system shock to find out your $30,000 to $100,000+ bachelor’s degree doesn’t guarantee you a position in your field of study … possibly ever. At least 40 percent of you who get degrees will wind up in jobs that don’t require a degree at all. And the rest will wind up in jobs outside the field they studied.

Cheese adds other steps on the road to ruin, such as: Telling young people they’re too good for manual labor and adding another seven years to adolescence by telling young men it’s OK to live with your parents into your mid-20s.

A UCLA graduate in her mid-20s, working at an entry-level marketing job, told me she’s the envy of her former classmates.  One is teaching English overseas; others are working at Starbucks or still seeking that poorly paid dead-end job. UCLA grads with three years at Starbucks believe they’re seen as losers when they apply for entry-level career jobs, she said. Employers prefer shiny new grads. And not working makes you an even bigger loser. These are not slackers with “me studies” degrees from Mediocre College. They are top students whose parents don’t have connections to get them started.

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