Degree creep- when will it stop?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't stop. The more accessible formal education is, the less valuable it is on the market. Supply and demand.

And people can't make a good living with working class/ blue collar jobs. What are we going to do, America?

Really? Ask your plumber what he makes. Now ask your electrician.

Don't delude yourself: most blue collar people are not working in a skilled trade. I'm talking about the nannies, restaurant employees, maintenance workers, fast food workers, big box store employees, etc etc etc. These jobs are essential to our society and our economy. It is unsustainable and unjust that the only jobs that offer living wages and benefits are those that require (at minimum, as we can see) a bachelor's degree.

I distinguish blue collar work from service work. Trade and trained (think construction) employees can make a living or very good wage, but it is hard long term and requires a lot of foresight for future financial planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't stop. The more accessible formal education is, the less valuable it is on the market. Supply and demand.

And people can't make a good living with working class/ blue collar jobs. What are we going to do, America?

Really? Ask your plumber what he makes. Now ask your electrician.

Don't delude yourself: most blue collar people are not working in a skilled trade. I'm talking about the nannies, restaurant employees, maintenance workers, fast food workers, big box store employees, etc etc etc. These jobs are essential to our society and our economy. It is unsustainable and unjust that the only jobs that offer living wages and benefits are those that require (at minimum, as we can see) a bachelor's degree.

Fewer people have college degrees than you think.

[Anonymous]

My nanny makes a living wage. High school education. My friends mechanic husband makes 6 figures. Trade school. My former cleaning lady ran her own business. high school education. Owned her own home as well.

All in the DC metro area. Folks do even better in the flyover country many of you detest so much.

Not making multiple 6 figures doesn't mean you are scraping by.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The PhD has become the next masters in a lot of hard sciences like chemistry and biology.

+1000
Actually a PhD is worse in these fields since it puts people in the overqualified category.


THIS IS ME, RIGHT NOW.

I was recently told I am "woefully over-qualified" for a job that would've been an excellent fit.

Sort of. It's a catch 22--super hard to get a job right out of a PhD (way harder than bachelors or masters), but if you want to progress in your career, eventually you need one. I was talking to someone in business development from a large biotech company, and they said that even though it technically doesn't require a PhD, everyone on their business development team has one. At some point to have credibility in management you need a PhD. Same for a lot of other careers like editorial jobs, the more technical areas of patent law, and some policy jobs. So frustrating. It's much easier to get a job with a bachelors/masters, but then you are stuck there.

You are freaking me out with this statement.
-a lowly BS holder

Both DH and I make over 200k with our lowly bachelors degrees. For my last two jobs I don't think anyone even cared if I had that. At this point my work speaks for itself.

Just because you have a bunch of signs on your office wall does not mean you are likeable, resourceful, creative, or that you could even manage to make your way out of a paper bag.

Thank You

[Anonymous]

I think if your a good networker, you may not need high creds but if your applying without knowing anyone, that's when the creds come into play. Though I once saw someone with a JD, PhD and MD, NO JOKE. I think he was in business for himself bc to me (and potentially employers) that seems like a lack of direction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My nanny makes a living wage. High school education. My friends mechanic husband makes 6 figures. Trade school. My former cleaning lady ran her own business. high school education. Owned her own home as well.

All in the DC metro area. Folks do even better in the flyover country many of you detest so much.

Not making multiple 6 figures doesn't mean you are scraping by.

Okay. How about the millions of folks making 7.25-10 dollars an hour? Not a skilled laborer, small business owner, and established nanny working in a high-HHI area. If you think the people you cite are the rule rather than the exception, you are willfully blinding yourself to the economic reality of many.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think if your a good networker, you may not need high creds but if your applying without knowing anyone, that's when the creds come into play. Though I once saw someone with a JD, PhD and MD, NO JOKE. I think he was in business for himself bc to me (and potentially employers) that seems like a lack of direction.

And/or some serious overcompensation for something!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nanny makes a living wage. High school education. My friends mechanic husband makes 6 figures. Trade school. My former cleaning lady ran her own business. high school education. Owned her own home as well.

All in the DC metro area. Folks do even better in the flyover country many of you detest so much.

Not making multiple 6 figures doesn't mean you are scraping by.

Okay. How about the millions of folks making 7.25-10 dollars an hour? Not a skilled laborer, small business owner, and established nanny working in a high-HHI area. If you think the people you cite are the rule rather than the exception, you are willfully blinding yourself to the economic reality of many.

Btw my point is not to get into a tit-for-tat. We bemoan the fact that degrees are increasingly devalued, yet as a rule the employment options available to those without degrees do not pay well and/or leave little, if any, room for meaningful advancement. If we want to stop "degree creep" we must make employment across the board sustainable for all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does "overqualified" actually mean "we don't want to pay you what your education and/or experience demands"?

Overqualified means "you were stupid enough to pursue a PhD, we'll instead hire someone with more sense than you."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with a PhD, I don't think formal education is necessarily the direct path to a well paid job any longer. It is actually the opposite, the lack of education is. Too many teenagers and college drop-out creating start-ups out their basements while the rest of us are left drowning in education debt.

Innovation is the path to a well paid job, formal education is the path to learning about what someone else innovated.

+1

While I get what you are saying, every start up really only needs 1 or 2 top innovators/ creators (and that is not talking about the MANY failed starts)- when one of them blows up they hire people with pedigree educations. Facebook only has 1 Zuckerberg, they have almost 10K employees and you bet your bottom that they aren't mostly college dropouts. I have a great friend who recruited for Google in SE Asia for about 4 years. She would always say that you not only needed credentials but you practically needed a "gimmick" to get in the door at Google US, great school and solid experience, just OK, also took sabbatical to travel to inoculate orphans on a mountainside village inaccessible by cars, well now we might interview you. (Not saying developing nation work is a "gimmick" just to say that in the field you are romanticizing as being filled with pioneers who drop out, it isn't really accurate.

No you have missed the point, simple because you are not thinking out the box (proving my point about lack of innovation). Typically, you assume the best examples of start-ups are always FB, Twitter etc, while the rest of the world gradually leaves you behind. By no means are Google and FB the standard.

In other words, the wealthiest ppl in the world today are very secretive, elusive, and actually don't need degrees or ppl with degrees to out do many on the Forbes list.

Picture a young SE Asian nerd sitting behind computer screens 18hrs per day pulling in millions in income from trade executions in one day; or many with 'Bin' or 'al' in their names who make billions making futures deals with their oil wells and wealth. I have studied with them, taught them, and also have some as friends. They only have Western degrees for legitimacy and the tourism experience, but they don't need degrees to make money on their own. The ones who leverage Western degrees to be recruited by Google etc are normally the outliers. Believe me when I say Google and FB CANNOT pay the best and brightest SE Asia and the Middle East have to offer. Trust me

Formal education can never teach you innovation, and innovation is the key to wealth today....not degrees or jobs.....but feel free to shore up your F1 and H1B visa quotas to cash in

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't stop. The more accessible formal education is, the less valuable it is on the market. Supply and demand.

And people can't make a good living with working class/ blue collar jobs. What are we going to do, America?

Really? Ask your plumber what he makes. Now ask your electrician.

+1 The plumbers and HVAC people I know are loaded. They are buying second homes, nicer cars, and going on grander vacations, all while they're kids are going to private schools. They don't have a bachelors at all.

[Anonymous]

My DH only has a lowly BS from a lowly southern school. He has worked his way up to second in his company, globally. He manages multiple MBAs and makes twice what those people are making. He did it by working his ass off. He got the job over in-house MBAs because he's awesome at what he does and the company knows it.

[Anonymous]

For the peeps out there with PhDs and difficulties finding jobs, I'm curious: who paid for your education? did you think about your job prospects and how much it would cost before deciding to pursue the PhD? If you did, did economic circumstance change in the meantime? Or did you just assume that you would be among the lucky few who would not become "underemployed"?

I am in the sciences (chemistry) and I was paid by the university or my research advisor as either a teaching assistant or research assistant (tuition paid + stipend for living expenses). As far as I know, this is standard for the sciences, and common in a number of other fields as well. At least I have friends who have been in doctoral programs in fields including economics, philosophy, and psychology who had a similar setup. The cost was more the opportunity cost of living on 22K for six years throughout my 20s. At the time, I thought I was being wise, because unlike my friends who went into medicine, law, whatever I didn't need to take out 200K worth of debt to get a degree.

I did think about how hard the job market (in academia at least) would be, but I was 22 and convinced that I was utterly passionate about what I was doing and that passion would make me the exception to the rule, as many people do when they are 22. Since the nature of research is that there is a great deal of luck involved, it became clear to me around my third year that becoming a research professor was an unlikely. However when I started grad school, with all this press about the STEM shortage, and with only professors (who lack non-academic perspectives) mentoring me about my career options, a fall back of a job in industry seemed much less competitive than it is in reality.

Since at least in the US, there are very few terminal masters programs in the hard sciences, most of the masters degrees have a bit of a stigma associated with them (you get them for dropping out of a PhD program). I have a number of friends who worked in industry prior to entering graduate school, and all of them mentioned that they saw a pretty steep ceiling at least in R&D for people without doctorates in biotech companies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

For the peeps out there with PhDs and difficulties finding jobs, I'm curious: who paid for your education? did you think about your job prospects and how much it would cost before deciding to pursue the PhD? If you did, did economic circumstance change in the meantime? Or did you just assume that you would be among the lucky few who would not become "underemployed"?

I am in the sciences (chemistry) and I was paid by the university or my research advisor as either a teaching assistant or research assistant (tuition paid + stipend for living expenses). As far as I know, this is standard for the sciences, and common in a number of other fields as well. At least I have friends who have been in doctoral programs in fields including economics, philosophy, and psychology who had a similar setup. The cost was more the opportunity cost of living on 22K for six years throughout my 20s. At the time, I thought I was being wise, because unlike my friends who went into medicine, law, whatever I didn't need to take out 200K worth of debt to get a degree.

I did think about how hard the job market (in academia at least) would be, but I was 22 and convinced that I was utterly passionate about what I was doing and that passion would make me the exception to the rule, as many people do when they are 22. Since the nature of research is that there is a great deal of luck involved, it became clear to me around my third year that becoming a research professor was an unlikely. However when I started grad school, with all this press about the STEM shortage, and with only professors (who lack non-academic perspectives) mentoring me about my career options, a fall back of a job in industry seemed much less competitive than it is in reality.

Since at least in the US, there are very few terminal masters programs in the hard sciences, most of the masters degrees have a bit of a stigma associated with them (you get them for dropping out of a PhD program). I have a number of friends who worked in industry prior to entering graduate school, and all of them mentioned that they saw a pretty steep ceiling at least in R&D for people without doctorates in biotech companies.

PP, it's good you have the time to answer with all of that, but I couldn't bother bcs the persons asking PhDs like us these questions have no clue what assistanceships and tuition waivers are all about. Can't be bothered explaining.

The fact is that with a PhD you have more options. Whereas persons with just degrees can only hunt industry jobs, PhDs (if they are so minded) can hunt academia, Federal, or industry jobs. So with a PhD it is not a race for good salary as it is a way of pursuing what you love and having options in the end.

Just like everyone else, your competencies determine your prospects with or without a PhD, but the latter makes you an authority in an area that you can be paid well to work in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in IT and don't see many people with masters degrees. It's not valued here. quite a few people with no degrees, but who have a natural technical or sales aptitude.

We definitely give zero fucks for PHDs and it might be seen as a deteiment.

Depends on where you work. I work in the IT dept and the World Bank. Just like the rest of the Bank degrees are important. We expect Admins to have bachelors (several have masters) and our analyst (entry level professionals) are strongly preferred to have masters degrees. I have been there over 15 years and some of my peers and I laugh b/c we know we'd never get our jobs today if we applied for them. Sad but true.