Lots of friend's kids aren't getting jobs post college. Is this common?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What happened to graduating from college and living with two to three roommates for a few years until you can afford your own place or get married?

That is what my sister and her peers did in the 80s and what everyone I knew did in the 90s. My other sister graduated in the late 90s and her peer group did the same.

We were living paycheck to paycheck for the first few years. Very few people if any had parent help beyond setting up the first apartment, and most had none. No one would have fathomed continuing to live at home off your parents dime.

Is it that many recent grads have an unrealistic idea of how most people start their adult lives?

That's what I want to know.

I was right there with your sister in the 80s and it was one of the best times of my life! Group house, living on ramen noodles and reception food, but you are right - no one would have dreamed of taking money from their parents.

These kids have no idea what they are missing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And yet we are hiring computer science majors straight out of undergrad at $70k a year and can't find good candidates. Gpa of 3.5 and above and certain languages and some experience: college class project counts if they did a significant portion themselves and can talk about it. Oh and take and pass a programming test we give.

Yep. My kid got a computer science degree and is writing programs for a mapping agency. He started at 120,000.00. It should be noted that when he came home freshman year in love and wanting to be a teacher we put our collective feet up his ass and sent him back to school for the science degree. This was at a time when people were laughing if your forced your child to pursue anything other than a liberal arts degree. Lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have two friends whose daughters are still living at home and refuse to work, even at waiting tables. They travel often to visit college friends. We have others where the work is very sporadic. Their kids keep moving in and out. It seems like most of the couples are still paying for cell phones, help with rent, travel expense, etc. well into adulthood. One couple has paid for extended grad study for two kids, who are finally employed, one marginally. My sister is doing this too. My nephew is 30, back in grad school again, and, as far as I can tell, has never had a job that was more than a part time gig in a restaurant or bookstore. One friend whose son was a national merit scholarship winner worked for years at a pizza joint, got on with a start up, now laid off and now working at a furniture factory. A couple others have formerly promising sons who are now fathers but unemployed or PT employed, living at home.

At the company I work at they hire h1bs instead of college graduates

Been that way for last 10 years and getting worse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I am just not seeing what you all are seeing. My 25 year old and her friends did internships and have jobs. My 21 year old and his friends actually did even better jobs and internships. They are seniors and many already have offers for next year. Mine is getting a ton of interviews and I’m sure will have options. These are kids from a range of colleges and plenty of them including mine are liberal arts majors. Unemployed college grads was an issue a few years ago but I am just not seeing it now.

I don't see it so it must not exist

DCUM educated elite

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

Not so. National merit semifinalist has an MA in physics from a top university and lives in an area where there are lots of physicists. Went back to local low level college to get a teaching certificate at age 29. He finally landed a teaching job this year.

You have needed a PhD in physics for decades to get a decent job. My DH majored in physics in the 90s, and realized that a PhD was the standard, so he had to look at other options. His university even had a "what else you can do with your physics degree" seminar.

Do universities have career centers anymore?

people really are clueless on what has happened

I’ve often mentioned that a 1989 internal NSF report forecast (and spoke approvingly) that an influx of foreign doctoral students would keep PhD wages down, making doctoral study unattractive to Americans. That is exactly what has occurred, as noted in the congressionally-commissioned NRC report in 2001, and put bluntly by Cisco Systems Vice President for Research Douglas Comer: “…a Ph.D. in computer science is probably a financial loser in both the short and long terms, says Douglas Comer” (Science Careers, April 11, 2008).

The pattern reaching back to 2001 is clear -- fewer jobs, more unemployment, and more post-doc work -- especially in the sciences. A post doc essentially translates into toiling as a low-paid lab hand (emphasis on low-paid as shown below.) Once it was just a one or two-year rite of passage where budding scientists honed their research skills. Now it can stretch on for half a decade .

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

At the undergraduate level, the number of foreign students is small. The graduate level is different. This was all planned for by the National Science Foundation. Their concern was that Ph.D. salaries were too high, and they said that they were going to remedy it by bringing in a lot of foreign students. Swelling the labor pool will reduce the salaries or reduce the growth in salaries, and that was at the same time NSF was pushing Congress to enact the H-1B program. NSF also said at the time that by limiting salaries, Americans would be dissuaded from pursing graduate degrees and, of course, that's exactly what happened. So now you see only 50% of the Ph.D.s in computer science go to Americans.

That study was a key link in a chain of evidence leading to an entirely different view of the real origins of the Immigration Act of 1990s and the H1-B visa classification. In this alternative account, American industry and Big Science convinced official Washington to put in place a series of policies that had little to do with any demographic concerns. Their aims instead were to keep American scientific employers from having to pay the full US market price of high skilled labor. They hoped to keep the US research system staffed with employees classified as “trainees,” “students,” and “post-docs” for the benefit of employers. The result would be to render the US scientific workforce more docile and pliable to authority and senior researchers by attempting to ensure this labor market sector is always flooded largely by employer-friendly visa holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals in the US labor market.

17. E. Weinstein, "How and Why Government Universities and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers" in , Nat'l Bureau of Economic Research, 1998, [online]
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did these kids have internships? I graduated the class the spring after 9/11 and everyone I knew got jobs because they already had internship experience. If you just messed around every summer, no you are not going to get a job easily after graduation.

why can't you just say you graduated in 2002? That was close to 20 years ago. Times change and internships don't mean as much these days.

I graduated in 2002.

My point was that I graduated in an uncertain time when many offers were being reneged because of the uncertainty. I work at an org that hires interns and often, if they are good, they get full-time offers if there are openings. And if there are no openings, they still end up in good full-time positions. Internships still matter. Sorry if your kid was so privileged they didn't need to have one and now they can't find a job. My parents didn't let me stay home in the summers unless I was making money.

[Anonymous]

If you graduate from a decent school with a degree for which there is a demand and you have any ambition you can get a decent job to get started. The economy is fine and it all comes down to supply, demand and ambition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

I have a degree in philosophy. I graduated 10 years ago. I make around $250k. Obviously some of my friends who went into finance or big law are doing better financially but I feel pretty good about my situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

Honest question, is HR management really a marketable subject?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

Honest question, is HR management really a marketable subject?

Of course. Companies always need HR people, recruiters, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

Actually my DC did major in women's studies and has a good job (not in that field of course). Not going the vocational route isn’t the end of the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did these kids have internships? I graduated the class the spring after 9/11 and everyone I knew got jobs because they already had internship experience. If you just messed around every summer, no you are not going to get a job easily after graduation.

Good point but please remember that not everyone can afford to do an internship. Internships are often unpaid & some students have to earn money for their college expenses during the summer. Plus, even if the internships are paid, they are often located someplace that would require the students to spend a good deal of money on rent over the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All depends on a college degree. If you have any kind of tech, science or anything dealing with numbers degree you are in good shape. Sociology or Art History, well not so much.

+1. If one of my kids comes home from college announcing the intended major is Women's Studies, or something equally inane, that will be the last day they see a penny for tuition. After I stop laughing at them, of course.

bingo. My kids all had job offers by winter break of their senior year. But they majored in ...wait for it...marketable subjects! Accounting, chemical engineering, and HR management.

Actually my DC did major in women's studies and has a good job (not in that field of course). Not going the vocational route isn’t the end of the world.

+1

I graduated from college in 2012 & several of my friends from both college & high school chose college majors that are being derided in this thread (sociology, art history, English, women's studies, etc). A little over five years later, they are all doing extremely well.