• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Want Fries With That Degree?

I think too many children, and probably parents as well, think that a degree is a way to make good money. And it probably used to be that way sometime in the recent past. But I think this is the wrong approach. You don't get the degree, then hunt for the job. Find the job that you want, or you think you want, and find out what education is required, and then go to school to get that education. I know this is easier said than done, as my interest in professions changed throughout college, but I think most people have a general idea of the direction they want to go.

Cranking out hundreds of college educated students with no skills or desire to use the skills they learned will leave them in a bad situation. Of course there are plenty of crappy colleges too that don't teach good skills too.

I think one major piece missing from this conversation is the lack of a living wage. I wasn't around at the time, but from talking to those who were around, and reading bits here and there, it used to be that a 'low-skill' job paid enough to support a family. A blue-collar working' class man (or woman) could make a decent wage. It seems like as those wages have deflated over the years, the demand for a "good education" has gone up. This is what my generation was taught. If you want to make a good living, you need a good education. The converse of this is then if you don't have a good education, then you won't make a good living. I say bring back a living wage so only one person in the house needs to bring home the bacon, and make sure there is enough bacon for that family.

I wish trade skills were given the same respect as other professions too. The world needs plumbers, contractors, electricians and all of the other professions I am forgetting right now. 4 years of apprenticeship should equal a 4 year degree. They may not be able to use a geographic information systems to analyze where a well should go, but I don't know how to replace a toilet or wire a house, so who is better off?

Yeah, you shouldn't have to go into debt too much for education. Low debt to income ratios are as true for student loans as they are for any other kind fo debt.
 
My opinion is, entry-level jobs are just that, entry-level jobs. Your job at McDonalds or Walmart or whatever is meant to give you a little income during summer break, or supplement you while you go to school to learn a trade or earn a degree. A cashier's job at McDonalds isn't _meant to_ provide a wage you can support a family on.
 
Nanci said:
My opinion is, entry-level jobs are just that, entry-level jobs. Your job at McDonalds or Walmart or whatever is meant to give you a little income during summer break, or supplement you while you go to school to learn a trade or earn a degree. A cashier's job at McDonalds isn't _meant to_ provide a wage you can support a family on.
Click to expand...

Forget providing a wage you can support a family on. Those entry level jobs at McDonalds and the like don't pay you enough to support yourself much less someone else. Now, factor in you need a degree to move up to fry cook at McDonalds and make that extra
 
What about when I was a janitor at the university? That isn't a sumer job, but is a career and I lived as a single guy at the poverty line. Throw in a wife and kids...now what?

I was thinking more entry-level carer type jobs, not the local bag boy. What is starting pay for entry level manufacturing jobs now days?

And even we say burger flipping is a summer job...the point is that there are people who depend upon those jobs because they can't get anything else.
 
Medical field is where it's at... Nursing, EMT, Paramedics, dispatching, etc, all in very high demand right now.
 
Heck, go into optometry. With all the kids squinting at those little handheld screens now, by the time they reach 30, EVERY ONE of them will be needing glasses.
 
I think anything in the medical services of geriatrics is going to do well. I mean with all these baby boomers getting older, there is going to be a boom in the geriatrics related industries.
 
captainjack0000 said:
And even we say burger flipping is a summer job...the point is that there are people who depend upon those jobs because they can't get anything else.
Click to expand...

ENTRY LEVEL!! Those people need to do what they have to do, to go get an education, or learn a trade, or get a two-year degree, or whatever. Unless they want to live off ME and their minimum wage job, if they even bother to get a job, forever. Poverty is NOT an incurable disease, if the person TRIES.
 
Nanci said:
ENTRY LEVEL!! Those people need to do what they have to do, to go get an education, or learn a trade, or get a two-year degree, or whatever. Unless they want to live off ME and their minimum wage job, if they even bother to get a job, forever. Poverty is NOT an incurable disease, if the person TRIES.
Click to expand...

I'm not finding this in my experience. I have a Master's degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, a lot of related experience in this area through internships, class projects, and my graduate assistantship, and some experience in the general field of HR. I graduated in May of 2011 and have been trying nonstop to get a job in my field.

Since then, I've had 4 jobs: one in accounting I got by chance; one in which I was relentlessly lied to, bullied, and isolated and I was forced to quit for my own well-being; one I was given out of pity which pays a pittance; and now fast food.

I send out 20+ applications a week. I am a member of every local temporary agency. I use my network of references to try to get me jobs. I interview regularly. I'm a member of two national organizations and use their job boards. How's that going? Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I am trying my darned butt off and all I've been is screwed. I'm in fast food because I need money. Nobody will have me, with a Master's and experience in the field, except for a freaking burger joint.

I am by far not the only one in this position.

I HATE it when people say that "oh all you need to do is try." The world is not like that anymore. I'm competing with highly experienced 50-somethings for the same pay. How can any recent graduate hold their own?

They cannot. That is all there is to it. We just have to knuckle down, take low-skilled part-time crappy jobs to pay our bills, and hope and pray that someone will give us a job in the area we want at a low rate so we can try to claw our way up to get a position we should have been able to get fresh out of school, if not for the economy and older people being forced to stay in their jobs instead of retiring and opening up positions for us to be able to get in.

I'm just a bit bitter about this. I've stayed out of the conversation until now, but Nanci set me off. I apologize for my venom.
 
Things are not what they used to be for sure. I graduated with a degree from a top research university and couldn't find any reasonable job. The best job that I had was the janitor position I mentioned before that paid about $18,000 a year and had benefits. I used that as an opportunity to pursue a MS with the university tuition discount given to me, and now I'm working on a PhD. But I consider myself lucky. There are plenty of people who are not able to get degrees (cost, ability, opportunity, etc). Mental aptitude is like physical aptitude. Exercise helps, but we're not all going to be power lifting pro-sports players and not everybody is going to go to college. Some of us don't have the money to afford the univesity, and as the OP points out, student loans don't always pay off.

The bottom line is that there will always been winners and losers. Poverty is not an incurable disease, but there is more to it than just trying. The bottom rung of society should still have a living wage. At some point the cost to society to offer a living wage to low skill jobs becomes less than the cost to society from these people not being able to afford certain things, like health insurance.

The video somebody posted elsewhere shows the change in winner and loser distribution nicely. I don't think it is terrible to ask the top 1% to pay a little more to the bottom groups for the work that they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

My Dad came to me one time and was wondering why I wasn't paying my way through college. He told me he was able to work summer jobs to pay for his college tuition back in the early 70s. College tuition and fees for in-state students at Purdue is esitmated at $23,468 Goodness, look at the non-resident cost. Holy crap!
http://www.admissions.purdue.edu/costsandfinaid/tuitionfees.php

If I could have made the $23,468 in the 4 month summer break between semesters, then my annual salary would be $70,404. A full $20,000 higher than the median income in the US. I wouldn't need to go to college if I could make that kind of money without a degree. I actually know of people graduating with PhDs and they're being offered less than $70,000 annual income.

Complex problems, like poverty, cannot be solved with simple solutions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top