Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has had a theme going for several months on the "Education Bubble". Given low cost student loans, colleges everywhere, public and private, have swelled their staffs to capture the loose money. Using easy student loans to pay for this education has had much the same effect as "liar" loans had on the real estate market; the price of the product has sky rocketed as people used someone else's money (at least it seems that way at the time) to bid up the price.
Of course, the downside of student loans is that some day you either graduate, or quit school, and don't have house to show for it. But the loans live on. And, increasingly, graduates often find it difficult to get a job in the field they studied for:
Looking at BLS data for 2008, over 10,500 persons with Ph.D. or professional degrees were employed as “cashiers” (excluding gaming); over 27,400 were retail salespersons; and well over 4,700 were hairdressers, hairstylists, or cosmetologists. My sidekick Chris Matgouranis found 10 occupations like these: the ones listed above plus waiters and waitresses, landscaping workers, amusement and recreation attendants, receptionists and information clerks, secretaries (except legal, medical, and executive), truck drivers (heavy and tractor-trailer) and electricians. Collectively, these occupations had well over 74,000 with doctorates or such professional degrees as a J.D.This is nothing new. The skills to be a student are often quite different from those required in the profession. As a scientist, I would have done better to take a few accounting and management classes, rather than some of the "core courses" in my major. A significant number of people have always "failed to thrive" upongraduation and end up doing something else and others take a lateral arabesque into another field later in their careers. That is how the economy actually serves better than the education system; people move into areas where competition is less intense, and the prospects for success greater. As a grad student, a post-doc I worked for went back to school to become a medical doctor. As a Senior Scientist, another colleague quit to become a cabinet maker.
A close friend of my sons, a boy (now a man) who was smart as shit, and just a hair stubborn, went to college at the local "hippie college", Saint Johns, where they only have one major "Liberal Art", which they study by reading "The Great Books". Now, he read a lot of great books, but when he finished he had $85,000 in student loans, and no immediate job prospects. So, he went abroad for an advanced degree in Marine Biology. At present, he and a partner are starting an oyster hatchery in a marsh in South Carolina. I feel a little guilty I didn't talk him out of it. Maybe the internship he had in my lab in high school ruined him...
Reminds me of something I read it one of fishing writer John Gierach's books. His academic background had been in philosophy, and after college he drifted to the open areas of the American West in pursuit of trout but with little vocational planning. In the late 60's and 70's apparently a number of other educated young men with outdoors interests went there also.
ReplyDeleteGierach passes on the story of one such young man who applied for work in one of the few jobs available: construction laborer. He proudly announced to the hiring construction supervisor that he had a Masters Degree. "Sorry," the boss responded, "We're only accepting those with a PhD."