Over 4 Million Gen Zers Are Jobless (fortune.com) 286
Fortune reports that over 4 million Gen Zers are currently not in education, employment, or training (NEET), with experts blaming a broken educational system and "worthless degrees" for failing to deliver on promises of career readiness. From the report: While some Gen Zers may fall into this category because they are taking care of a family member, many have become frozen out of the increasingly tough job market where white-collar jobs are becoming seemingly out of reach. In the U.S., this translates to an estimated over 4.3 million young people not in school or work. Across the pond in the U.K., the situation is also only getting worse, with the number of NEET young people rising by over 100,000 in the last year alone.
A British podcaster went so far as to call the situation a "catastrophe" -- and cast a broad-stroke blame on the education system. "In many cases, young people have been sent off to universities for worthless degrees which have produced nothing for them at all," the political commentator, journalist and author, Peter Hitchens slammed colleges last week. "And they would be much better off if they apprenticed to plumbers or electricians, they would be able to look forward to a much more abundant and satisfying life." With millions of Gen Zers waking up each day feeling left behind, there needs to be a "wake-up call" that includes educational and workplace partners stepping up, Jeff Bulanda, vice president at Jobs for the Future, tells Fortune.
A British podcaster went so far as to call the situation a "catastrophe" -- and cast a broad-stroke blame on the education system. "In many cases, young people have been sent off to universities for worthless degrees which have produced nothing for them at all," the political commentator, journalist and author, Peter Hitchens slammed colleges last week. "And they would be much better off if they apprenticed to plumbers or electricians, they would be able to look forward to a much more abundant and satisfying life." With millions of Gen Zers waking up each day feeling left behind, there needs to be a "wake-up call" that includes educational and workplace partners stepping up, Jeff Bulanda, vice president at Jobs for the Future, tells Fortune.
student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issues! (Score:2, Interesting)
student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issues!
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It'd get the debt off your back, but it's not going to get you a job.
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A lot of student loans aren't dis-chargeable in bankruptcy. The only way out is to leave the country and never come back (Some people did exactly that).
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Better hope you don't get sent back for not paying taxes. The exit fee for renouncing citizenship isn't cheap either.
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issu (Score:3, Insightful)
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And this isn't even counting all of the donors who give money to athletics who could instead be giving their money to support educational programs (and yes, some donors do both, but it just goes to make the point how college
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issu (Score:2)
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issu (Score:2)
Or - gasp - public education, paid by tax dollars, without a profit motive, would become the norm.
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of iss (Score:3)
No, no, no! That would be soshulizm and we can't have that in our meritocratiest new world!
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of iss (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait - are you saying that meritocracy is a bad thing? I'm an old "white" guy. The very aspect of what is considered bad. I also happen to be really good at what I do.
In a meritocracy, I'd be hired before someone who fit today's proper demographics If meritocracy was chucked with the wastewater, I'd be the last to be hired. And in a meritocracy, the person best able is hired first.
Yes, in a TRUE meritocracy, you would be correct. But in actual, practiced "meritocracy", often times the fact you are a white guy (or, more accurately, the other guy is not) is far more important than whether or not you are really good at what you do.
If you truly are good at your job (and check the other boxes employers look for, such as good communication skills, able to work in teams, etc.), history tells us you will likely be able to find a job eventually, with decent pay. History also tells us that if you were not a white guy, but with the same skills, your chances of landing that good job are lowered.
While I do not wish to speak for the person to whom you replied, I believe he was mocking the idea, almost exclusively peddled by white people, that white people get their job based on merits and everyone else based on diversity hiring programs, an idea you seem to also be promoting in your post. If you cannot see how the idea that white people get jobs based on merit and everyone else based on diversity hiring practices is an incredibly racist idea (especially given history), then I'm guessing the point of my post and others like mine will go over your head.
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Wait - are you saying that meritocracy is a bad thing? I'm an old "white" guy. The very aspect of what is considered bad. I also happen to be really good at what I do.
In a meritocracy, I'd be hired before someone who fit today's proper demographics If meritocracy was chucked with the wastewater, I'd be the last to be hired. And in a meritocracy, the person best able is hired first.
Yes, in a TRUE meritocracy, you would be correct. But in actual, practiced "meritocracy", often times the fact you are a white guy (or, more accurately, the other guy is not) is far more important than whether or not you are really good at what you do.
If you truly are good at your job (and check the other boxes employers look for, such as good communication skills, able to work in teams, etc.), history tells us you will likely be able to find a job eventually, with decent pay.
I have outfits chasing me. You can decide if they want me there because of my skin color if you like.
History also tells us that if you were not a white guy, but with the same skills, your chances of landing that good job are lowered.
And my own history shows that I was several times not promoted, because as I was told " We have a certain number of promotions as a quota, but they are for women."
My response was to tell them "Okay, promote the ladies, but since I have a pretty good skillset, my pay has to ref
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of iss (Score:4)
I have outfits chasing me. You can decide if they want me there because of my skin color if you like.
**snip for brevity**
Y'all racists are just two sides of the racism coin. you just pick different shades of skin to hate.
There are numerous issues with your response here, most notably the fact it seems to have ignored significant portions of mine in its desire to tell your personal anecdotes.
With all due respect to you, your personal anecdotes are mostly irrelevant. The anecdotes of other individuals who have experienced the same thing as you (and I have no doubt there are others), is also mostly irrelevant. Ignoring for a moment the fact your personal anecdote cannot be validated in any way, even if we take everything you have said as 100% accurate, the fact is the experience you are describing is, and has been, happening on a relatively large scale to less represented and more disadvantaged demographics since...well, let's just say for a very long time. In America (don't know if that's where you live or not), there were literal laws to prevent certain demographics from holding certain jobs. America explicitly banned all who were not white men from having the political power to change those laws up until, relatively speaking, fairly recently. Those attitudes and mentalities still are prominent amongst many many people, and it just so happens that, due to history, it is still predominantly white men who get to make the ultimate hiring decisions.
You are correct that discrimination based on demographic is wrong (though you seem to not understand the meaning of racism very well). We agree 100% on that. Which is why I started my comment by saying, "Yes, in a TRUE meritocracy, you would be correct.". But pretending we do now or have ever lived in a society which judges solely by abilities is just that...pretend. It's a fantasy that has never existed and probably never will, at least not in our lifetimes or in the lifetimes of our offspring. It is silly to pretend otherwise.
I have no idea what your skin color is, nor do I particularly care. At no point did the color of your skin factor in any way in my post. My point, from the beginning, is that those who are white (or, perhaps in your case, look white enough) are historically advantaged when it comes to money earning potential. I also pointed out that your post suggested any promotion you received would be based solely on merit, while a promotion received by any other would not be is incredibly offensive. And it was not a "less than clever insult" to point out that if you do not understand that concept, then the point of my post would go over your head...it was simply a truth.
You can try to dismiss reality by claiming race is a social construct, but it never once has the ability to dismiss that reality. It being a social construct quite literally means society cares about it. We know society cares about it. We know society uses it in making determinations. We know society has, historically, used it to advantage certain groups of people to the disadvantage of others. Trying to wave all that away simply by shouting "social construct" does not work.
Again, I could not care less your skin color or your personal anecdotes. I agree with you that people should be judged on who they are and what they can do...but I am also realistic enough to know that has never been the case throughout history. I can also clearly see that most people who claim they want a merit based system do not really want a true merit based system, they want to use the term to justify why THEY should get the advantage over someone else. And then they want it to be an excuse when they do not get the advantage, especially if the advantage is granted to someone of a different demographic.
The real question is can YOU understand that reality? Can YOU understand that there is no meritocracy and never has been, that there has always been "social constructs" used to advantage one group of people over another? And, if you can understand that, can you then understand why any fair system would seek to minimize such behaviors and seek to equalize the wrongs which happened in the past, yet still play an oversized role in shaping today's world?
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That's pretty much a thing of the past.....
Sure it is...
Trump's Cabinet selections. [nymag.com]
Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of iss (Score:4)
While I agree with you about racism, DEI isn't about not doing that. It's about creating policies and practices that actually make you do that by removing bias, e.g. with question pools for applicants that are the same no matter who they are. Quotas for hiring are a misapplication of the idea.
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Wait - are you saying that meritocracy is a bad thing?
No. It is an illusion.
I also happen to be really good at what I do.
Which is what and going by whose opinion?
In a meritocracy, I'd be hired before
Very significantly depends on what is considered a "merit".
And in a meritocracy, the person best able is hired first.
Indeed.
For example now that "DEI" is completely dismantled in your country, we see all kinds of "best able" people hiring even better people.
Like, grifters hiring petty criminals.
Just great under today's definition of "meritocracy", which is pretty much the same as "blind obedience".
Re: DEI should have included justice (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of iss (Score:3)
Now, it's even easier. To be politically correct management no longer has to use the merit excuse, you can fire someone simply for being DEI. Word to the wise: no grumbling about the now permissable racially segregated federal facilities, it's unmerited.
The Catch-22 of it all is that researchers who have long been motivated to include the DEI angle in
Re:student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issue (Score:4, Insightful)
All filling the same container of water (Score:3)
- Gen Z not working, not in education or training (NEET)
- Gen Z with degrees not working
- Gen Z living with parents, being an fashion/food influencer or playing video games in the basement
- Gen Z on social media instead of 'socializing and meeting people in public places'
- Gen Z taking way too long to meet prior generation's (boomers and earlier) life milestones (school, dating, marriage, children, house, car, GDP mushrooming consumption funded by debt)
- The oldest Gen Z at 29 years old and last of the Mill
Re:student loan bankruptcy can fix an lot of issue (Score:5, Insightful)
then what happens to all the student loans
They want to move administration of student loans to the Department of the Treasury. I suspect their ultimate goal is to privatize it all with a federal backstop for defaults, so the risk will be on the federal government and the profits will all be private, while students get exploited and abused.
So what? (Score:2)
We're in a golden age. Elon and Trump, two people who are better than you, informed us so. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with these plans is there's no need to wreck the economy to do this. Long lead times on the tariffs along with a gradual phase in would give companies time to relocate to the US and time for supply chains to reorient. This? This is fucking chaos, companies dont know whats going on so not only will the public take the full brunt of these tariffs for a while but we're also cratering the stock market.
Everything this administration is doing from the tariffs to the firing / rehiring in our bureaucracy to just keeping a fucking war planning meeting private is being done with the utmost incompetence.
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Re: So what? (Score:2)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump has 4 years in office, 2 of them with the exact same congress. There's exactly zero reasons he couldnt at least phase these in over 2-4 years. Nothing he is doing has to be done NOW.
The competence you are looking for requires a dictatorship.
You don't need a dictatorship to take a several months to figure out who should actually be fired and who is an essential employee before beginning layoffs. You don't need a dictatorship to implement tariffs gradually over the course of a presidential term in office. You don't need a dictatorship to keep war planning meetings private. You don't need a dictatorship to create relative certainty in an economy rather than sowing chaos.
The difference in competency between this administration and any other of my lifetime (Republican or Democratic) is startling. Trump has put a premium on loyalty over all else and it's very much showing.
Where could you even start, tariffs on whiteness?
Ohhhhh, I get it. I'm talking to a person who would rather believe in right wing fantasies of persecution and victimhood then observe the horrible job their own are doing.
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We're in a golden age.
I think Trump meant to say Gilded Age.
Or Glidden [wikipedia.org] Age considering how they're trying to white-wash this multi-level Signal fuck-up ... :-)
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Re: So what? (Score:2)
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You know there are documentaries on manufacturing everywhere on YouTube. In exactly none of them are robots running the place while accredited engineers sit at a desk doing stuff worthy of their brains.
In virtually all of them the workers are usually operating machines that produce as much in a day as that worker could produce by hand in a year. It should be obvious that, as the machines improve even more, you'll end up with a worker operating a machine that produces as much in a day as the worker could produce by hand every ten years. So, what happens to the other nine workers? Now, demand for the product can go up as the productivity improves and the price goes down, but there's are limits where that sa
Re: So what? (Score:3)
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Re: So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's parts of it where that's the case, but that's been true for a number of past Republican administrations. There are programs that they just can't take away because it will be political suicide and they know it. The didn't realize that Medicaid and likely Obamacare are on that list until the idea of cuts started floating around. As far as the election goes, Trump won the election by focusing on showing his opposition to unpopular social causes, a promise he is fulfilling. The lawfare committed against him also allowed him to play the victim card. I read (I think on the New York Times website) that about 70% of Americans thought the charges against him, both civil and criminal, were politically motivated, regardless of where the person asked stood on a conviction. If you think about it, as far as NY goes, the plan was to bankrupt him and then put him in jail. It backfired, badly.
Yup, that pretty much follows along with my post election research on the curb stomping the Democrats as a party received.
The social issues, such as the strange spread of Trans stuff, where a man is a woman if he says so, and in states like California, public schools can assist in "gender affirming care" and the child's parents have absolutely no right to know. Messing with people's children seldom works out. And Democrats also supported physical men playing women's sports. Way to get liberal leaning mothers to think their party has gone batshit crazy. In a world where telling a woman that you like her earrings is sexual harassment and damaging to women, yet don't have a problem with me as a 250 pound linebacker build playing against women half my size and musculature is right and just and proper. Sorry folks, the tiny slender woman who beats up gangs of men is something for the movies, not real life.
I know I drone on about it, but if can't be stressed too much that people don't like having their children secretly messed with, or that most of us understand that in general, men are stronger and faster than women. And that if you dare to oppose those ideas, they want you cancelled.
Men - It is no secret that womanism has done a job making "until it is no man, it is all men" and have demonized males. To the point that young and even older males have decided to lean way out. Stats show that around half of all women of childbearing age will be single and childless in just a few years. And while it might be fun to rack up a high body count in your 20's to mid thirties, the urge to reproduce can hit really hard, and already there are a lot of unhappy women who if they have a child are looking at IVF.
And young men. When you are raised being told you are the enemy and the cause of all the world's problems, yet you see women getting more education, preferential hiring and promotion practices, while you are sitting in your parent's basement playing video games, and still being reviled as the cause of everything bad, you are not being irrational to believe that voting for the party that hates you isn't the way to go.
Moms. While women are in general more liberal than men, a whole lot of them are not the far left women that the Democrats believed would ignite an estrogen wave, sweeping the Republicans into the dustbin of history. That was a university and media fever dream.
The working class, As evidenced in Ms. Harris telling the president of the Teamsters that she was going to win with or without them, simply illustrates the Democrats vilification of non-academic people who are in the working class. The problem is, many people are not college oriented, and develop other skillsets. And yes, they are mostly male. We have a generation where men are considered useless, and it carries on (quite bizarrely) that fields in which men work are irrelevant. Perhaps we should incorporate DEI into oil field workers?
My prescription for the Democrats is lose or alter the DEI, invite males back in on the male's terms, get back to understanding that there are rank and f
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Do you honestly think that any of the legal stuff would have ever happened had he not run for President, and even more specifically beaten Hillary? And have you ever exceeded the speed limit, forgotten to use your turn signal, etc.? Of course you have and that makes you a criminal.
And have you ever exceeded the speed limit, forgotten to use your turn signal, etc.? Of course you have and that makes you a criminal.
Ok. Well thank you for making it clear that you know nothing about the law. Except for extreme speeding, those are all civil offenses. They are not considered criminal.
Do you honestly think that any of the legal stuff would have ever happened had he not run for President, and even more specifically beaten Hillary?
Well, the classified documents stuff and the Logan act violations, the insurrection attempt, etc. would not have happened if he had never been President, so that legal stuff would not have happened. Even the felony charges he was convicted of were the result of a coverup that he took part in as part of his campaign. Also, the various cases wh
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As the top of the world economy, if we take a dive, the world will most certainly follow us. The world heavily relies on the American consumer buying all the junk made else where.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com]
Their economy is also larger than just exports. Exports make up around 20% of the Chinese economy.
https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]
There are other factors, but on a cowboy calculus basis, Chinese exports to the US make up only 0.15 x 0.20 = 3% of Chinese GDP. The US is certainly a large customer but China would not collapse if those sales didn't happen.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
Sights set too high (Score:3, Insightful)
From my limited observation of people I know, and from what I read, they all have very high expectations, and there just aren't tons of high-paying jobs where you just show up, or "work" from home.
That said, I know several gen Z who do some kind of hands-on job, including construction, plumbing, electrical work, manufacturing, etc., and they're doing very well.
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...and considering that there are probably much more Gen-Z than the 4 million mentioned above.... your experience is not in any contradiction to the article.
Not ALL are unemployed, not ALL are lazy.. and so on.
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...and considering that there are probably much more Gen-Z than the 4 million mentioned above.... your experience is not in any contradiction to the article.
Not ALL are unemployed, not ALL are lazy.. and so on.
The article doesn't even ask whether this percentage is higher or lower than normal. A number like 4M is meaningless without this context.
Re:Sights set too high (Score:4, Funny)
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From my limited observation
I snipped the bit you got right.
In reality most jobs are now insanely hard to get for someone with no experience. Multiple interview rounds, fewer positions mean that there are always far more applicants than jobs. Can't really blame them for giving up. Meanwhile, they get guff like yours from boomers who got everything handed to them on a silver shovel and zero understanding of what it's actually like out there as they were given a nice banking job back in the 70s despite not having a degree.
Companie
Feynman warned about cargo cult academia (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1970.
For those too GenZ or later to have learned such things, a cargo cult is an aboriginal superstition that springs up after first contact with the industrial world. Its most famous instance was in the South Pacific during and after the Second World War when primitive islanders saw industrial scale war play out in front of them after having been living in grass huts for thousands of years.
Having to understanding of industrial production or economies of scale, and barely knowing anything about the places where the Japanese and American mechanized militaries came from, they reasoned that the plentiful food and durable clothing delivered as cargo by airplanes were gifts from the gods that were rightfully theirs, and the foreign devils usurped them by performing special rituals.
So naturally by aping these rituals, by building bamboo control towers and talking into coconut headsets, the gods would deliver the cargos to its rightful recipients.
This is fundamentally an error of superficiality: you do something that superficially kinda looks like what the other guy is doing when he gets his reward, so you expect you'll get yours too, any predicate or underlying context be damnded.
Similarly, "college=easy street" is a similar error of superficiality. Successful people when to college, and if that's all you know and all you ape, you reason you'll be successful too.
What did these successful people do in college? Did they have their noses to the grindstone taking 6 classes per term double majoring majoring in physics and asian languages or did they bum around in rocks-for-jocks? And if the latter, did they have a cushy job lined up already and college was just finishing school?
If you don't bother finding out the details and go about figuring out which ones matter, "college" may as well be a poorly xeroxes diploma from RightwingNutjob's School of Computer Stuff for all the good it's gonna do you.
Lest y'all mistake me for knocking on people who didn't have the cultural capital and family pedigree to know better, I saw the exact same pathology play out at both my alma mater and where I went to grad school among upper-middle-class coastal suburban and private school kids and young adults. Except it had a little twist on it: rather than assuming that *any* college or grad school on their resume was automatic gold, they acted like the fact if having been accepted to those particular places (both regularly make the top 10 or 20 lists), they were automatically touched by God, and were as good as those institutions' most illustrious alums.
No need to work smart, no need to avoid bullshit dead end research projects. Just by virtue of the particular kind of piece of paper you got in the end, you were good.
Not at all surprising that many of these people and their cohort are falling flat on the hard slab of Mommy's unfinished basement.
Did you just have that waiting to post? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again we are literally shutting down the department of education so I guess we're going to just stop teaching how to read and write. I'm sure that'll turn out well in a country with more guns than people. You know violence is super cool in movies, not so much in the real world. And sure you can buy a gun yourself but if you think back to those old westerns sooner or later the guy who relied on violence got shot and killed too.
Re: Did you just have that waiting to post? (Score:2)
Yeah most of the people I was talking about got a piece of paper that said Bachelor of Science in some kind of engineering. For some is was a master's or a doctorate. And they acted like being accepted into the degree program was proof enough they were awesome already.
Also...there are no undergraduate medical degrees in the US. And there are plenty of "business" degrees at nominally accredited nonprofit schools that exist soley to suck in subsidized tuition dollars and spit out 22 year old know-nothings who
Tell me you haven't been near college in 20 years (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point you're just coming up with excuses to shit on kids. Old people have been doing that for a very long time. Eventually the kids are going to push back and take your meds away but by then it'll be too late.
I put a kid through college not too long ago. Their workload was insane. Take all the bullshit classes us old farts Got our degrees on and add to that a fuck ton of additional real hard coursework and then on top of that a fuck ton of additional coursework that exists only to be on the job training you have to pay for. If you walk into a college nowadays when you get to your 300 level courses they literally do an interview because they have too few slots and too many students and part of that interview is making sure that you're not working because if you are you're not going to be able to keep up with the course load and so they won't let you into your 300 level courses they'll pick a kid who doesn't have to work instead...
You're making the mistake of thinking that nothing ever changes. It's something conservatives always do. School isn't like what it was when we were kids it is orders of magnitude more difficult. Christ even high school was brutal for my kid. I remember getting up sometimes at midnight to go piss and finding them still banging out homework. I'd ask the teacher if something was wrong and a teacher just said no, the kids fine but we just have to give out that much homework every night. Local businesses demanded it.
I don't understand why it's so hard for old people to believe that young people have it harder and worse but I know it is absolutely critical to the identity of an old person to believe that
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I have interviewed many computer science majors who could not program their way out of a brown paper bag. I asked them for details about what their classes were like, what kinds of exercises they did, a summary of the topics covered, etc. And what I found was that nearly all of them had a very surface-level education in computer science with very little depth. In particular, they simply weren't made to write enough code that solves actual problems to develop the core skill that software developers need.
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"I have interviewed many computer science majors"
You interviewed computer science majors, but wanted programmers.
Imagine you wanted car mechanics but interviewed only mechanical engineering majors. Some of them may be able to do the job, but not because of the college classes they were taking.
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They chose computer science as their major so they could become programmers. The school councilor told them that this major would prepare them to become programmers. They then sought out jobs as programmers, with "computer science degree" on their resumes.
The exact same way I did when I went to college, and then got my first job, many years ago.
Once upon a time, "software engineering" didn't exist but "computer science" did, and it was focused on how you use teams of human beings (who had the job of "comp
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I'm literally in college right now. Finishing a degree this semester as it were. I was a college drop out 20 years ago but decided I really wanted to finish my degree.
With that said, I find college EASIER now then ever before. I've also watched about half my instructors bend over backwards to help make things easier on their students. It's a joke compared to twenty years ago. Instead of challenging the students, I see instructors passing out extra credit, extending due dates and offering makeup work. WTF, t
So do you ever actually leave college? (Score:2)
Sorry but I smell bullshit. I mean it's possible that you have somehow made it through a bachelor's, a masters, one PhD and you're on your second PhD and yet despite all that education you are incapable of seeing past the most rudimentary anti-education propaganda.
But if so then I guess maybe you're in that 1% of useless degrees? Because I find it extremely hard to believe th
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You would give Socrates a run (Score:3)
I'm going to guess you're one of those ladder pullers. You know the phrase, pulling the ladder on the way up. I'm not going to give you more ammunition by getting into specifics but I know you're kind. Desperately trying to cling to the idea that you made it all on your own so demanding that he advantages that were granted to you be taken away from everyone else.
They'll come for you you know. They always do. Whatever property you
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You simply refuse to see the problem don't you?
Fundamentally if you strip away everything from the right wing what's your left with is a belief in hierarchy and the divine right of kings.
But the thing about it is the right wing is completely immune to hypocrisy because the only thing that really matters to the right wing is their place in the hierarchy. That is the central promise of capitalism. However a lot of people mix up the promise of authoritarian right wing extremism with capitalism. The idea of tha
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What did these successful people do in college?
Which college did they go to and how well connected were the other students and faculty. There aren't many Harvard or Yale grads out of work and its not because they all had their nose to the grindstone. Or the quality of the education. Almost all the "studies" that demonstrate the value of a college education and degree pay little attention to the other things some colleges provide - and others just don't. Social connections being the most important difference. Obviously there are other factors that are in
Re: Feynman warned about cargo cult academia (Score:2)
Dedicated PhD's have no job security and can barely afford to live in their car despite working full time. Ther's a serious disconnect in academia when the football players and coaches are paid more than the faculty.
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The one thing I think your comment leaves out is that havibg a college degree certifies that you can do what you're supposed to with minimal guidance.
When less of the population had a degree this was a good differentiator from the general population (college attendance went up 50% as a percent of highschool graduates between 1960 and now, I can't find college graduation rates back before 2000, but since then it was relatively flat).
So for every generic white collar job that demands a college degree, but wit
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I'm not saying it's easy, but I have friends that don't have degrees that work office jobs and are doing just fine. One's making 70k as a administrative assistant. She's got no degree but she did finish a medical coding and billing program. Her first real office job opportunity came partially because she had 10 college A's. So even though she had no degree, the employer took a chance on her given she at least had good marks on the education she did attempt. It shows she can learn.
Most of her colleagues also
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That's actually promising I think.
The real trick is that once you get that first job, of you do well then you're pretty much in that ecosystem and have a career. It's not glamorous, but that's why they pay you.
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They want to be (Score:2, Flamebait)
From what I have seen, they don't want to work.
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Your elders said the same about your generation. And their said it about theirs. Back when I was a kid I walked to school barefoot in the snow and it was uphill both ways. Kids these days and their shoes have it too fucking easy. Now get off my lawn.
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But also, having seen a lot of Gen Z come in, and get kicked out our doors at work... I'm starting to think the stereotype has some truth behind it.
When I was 18, slinging burgers to pay my tuition, I'd have given someone an old fashioned under the desk for a raise.
Now, I'm not saying that's good... but in 20 years, I've had 4 people stop coming into work for days at a time, come back, and act like nothing happened.
They were all within the last 3 y
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Who does? I have hobbies and interests to fill my time. Add on the maintenance and upkeep of owning a home and you'll always have something to do.
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Only a rightwing nutjob would think that's a thing that happens. ... Oh wait.
Re: They want to be (Score:2)
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(Post) Cyberpunk Society. (Score:3)
Pretty much this. My daughter is "stuck" in a new-agey eco project in the jungles of central America and is struggling in a quarter-life crisis in trying to find out where to go from here. And given the overall current state of things I really can't blame her. And I actually _do_ think that joining some eco-permaculture-community project really isn't the worst of ideas for someone of her generation in that situation. If the going get's really tough at least she will know how to grow food. Couldn't say that about many people these days.
Re: (Post) Cyberpunk Society. (Score:2)
Jobs. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll say it again.
The purpose of education, especially higher education, is NOT to exclusively function as a guarantee of entry to a high-paying career.
It's a very American disease to think so.
And regardless of your opinion on that... to end up not in education or employment or training after a degree means that - unless you have a serious medical condition - you haven't got off your arse and found a job.
Rubbish (Score:2)
Bullshit (Score:2)
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Expectations (Score:2)
Health related careers (Score:2)
Re: Health related careers (Score:2)
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No excuse (Score:2)
On the other hand... (Score:2)
women in trades? (Score:2)
Unemployment is inevitable (Score:2)
In the first case, the employee buys an education (which an employer might value). In the second, the Employer gives experience. Mass automation and women in the workforce led to down-sizing and the gig-economy: Employees stopped being an investment as capitalists raced to the bottom (line). Employers made education and 'experience' a Government responsibility. This has been happening for 30 years.
I've seen vocational training change, to training provided by a third-party - for consistency, to workers
Trumps massive consumer TAX. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trumps Tariffs are a massive consumer TAX. It's not foreign nations paying the bill. It ultimately US citizens that are paying the tariff charges.
Trump keeps floating billion dollar numbers around on how a tariff is going to raise money for the government. Those tariffs are paid for by the people buying those products in the US.
When you spike inflation like that, people stop spending. If they stop spending less money is circulating which means less jobs and lower wages.
Yes foreign companies will feel a sting. They simply won't be selling as much product. Which might also increase prices even more. Economies of scale and all being eroded.
Trump somehow has forgotten that the US has a highly integrated international supply chain. So domestic goods in the US are also being hit with tariffs. Just to get the parts for the domestically produced goods.
Internal trade agreements will adapt far faster than US industrial ramp up. Most companies will be hesitant to ramp up anyway. As the US economy craters as it is. Companies are not going to risk investing domestically on production. They'll actually seek foreign opportunity to invest and develop where economic growth and stability are stronger outside of the US.
The US is really on the an economic edge here. Trump is gambling hard on this strategy. Hoping the world will blink. I just don't see it happening. Rather quickly the rest of the world is enacting economic stimulus packages to offset the impacts of the US tariff wall. They are very quickly reworking trade agreements with each and cutting the US out almost completely. Then there is the absolutely massive shift in military spending in the EU. Some reports that number at $850USD. That's almost a trillion dollars NOT going to the US. Just instantly shifted to Europe and it's close allies.
OK All of that was about TRUMP. But the above says. Less money circulating, Massive inflation, Lower real wages and less jobs for everyone in the US. Trump has destroyed for a lot of people any hope of a healthy + happy future in the US.
a bit tricky (Score:3)
It's easy to ascribe things to one cause, but that's rarely true.
Yes, there are a lot of people whom you should seriously look at and ask what exactly their career plans were when they decided to do gender studies or whatever.
Yes, the economy is in the dumpster and that obviously means a shortage of job openings.
Yes, Gen Z has a different attitude to work-life-balance than previous generations. (and, frankly speaking, my attitude to work would've been different as well if it had been clear from the start that I'll never be able to afford a house.)
But - studies show that only about half of the students end up in careers directly related to their field of study. There are some obvious lines - you can't be a lawyer without a law degree or a doctor without a degree in medicine - but in most other fields, there are students going on to different careers and workers who never studied it.
So 4 Million - that's the sum total of a bunch of causes, only some of which are within reach of the graduates to influence.
Re:Worthless degrees (Score:5, Informative)
I partially disagree. Some people aren't cut out for hard science majors in college, and they don't want to take a blue collar job. The problem is, they choose something which is going to get them a degree, but the eduction they received is of little commercial value in the job market. (Whether they do this to party all the way through college may also be one of the reasons.
It might have been have been better for them to stay out of college and becoming a plumber, electrician, or car mechanic. These jobs pay well, but there comes a point where you can't do them anymore due to your body aging to the point where you get things like arthritis.
Another likely scenario: Johnny couldn't major in Engineering because his brain wired in such a way to not be able to comprehend advanced mathematics. This was my problem, but I somehow found a way around it by not having a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and instead in Computer Science. I was able to work as an EE for most of my career. It made it next to impossible to get accepted in some places, but there were still others who hired me due to my experience.
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There are a lot of majors that don't require math skills but still enable people to provide a useful service.
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I partially disagree. Some people aren't cut out for hard science majors in college, and they don't want to take a blue collar job.
That's why some of the majors pay a lot.
The problem is, they choose something which is going to get them a degree, but the eduction they received is of little commercial value in the job market. (Whether they do this to party all the way through college may also be one of the reasons.
Yeah, a terrible lack of planning. That's the part I don't get. I had my plans mapped out in Junior High. Then I implemented them with tweaks here and there. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but by the time you are considering college, you should have some sort of plan for how you are going to live afterwards.
It might have been have been better for them to stay out of college and becoming a plumber, electrician, or car mechanic. These jobs pay well, but there comes a point where you can't do them anymore due to your body aging to the point where you get things like arthritis.
The idea is not to be a 70 year old Plumber. I'll not there are a fair number of mechanics who are pretty long in the tooth. But the men in my family genera
Re:Worthless degrees (Score:5, Insightful)
even guidance counsellors were afraid to tell students they were wasting their talent
LOL. Guidance counsellors were the ones with those majors.
Guess what, a major has nothing to do with your ultimate job. It's just a reflection of a tiny number of total subjects you did at university. You know how stupid your complaint about this is? I have a major in Human Resources written right on my degree. I'm an Electrical Engineer. Oh by the way my Electrical Engineering degree also says I majored in microelectronics, except straight out of uni I got a job in the process industry and now work on safety system calculations. I've not picked up a soldering iron or designed a circuit professionally ever. Nor have I hired or fired anyone, but those are my majors.
How's that fit in with your distorted world view? What's your qualification? A degree in ignorance majoring in creation of anti-woke narratives?
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even guidance counsellors were afraid to tell students they were wasting their talent
LOL. Guidance counsellors were the ones with those majors.
Rick and Morty, "Morty's Mind Blowers" (s3e8):
Principal Vagina: What's this?
Morty: Proof that Mr. Lunas isn't who he says he is!
Principal Vagina: He's not a guidance counselor?
Morty: I-I assume he's qualified to be one, who isn't?
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If the job creators don't want to do their job we'll do it for them.
What are you waiting for? Do it! Stop waiting and just go out and do it!
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That's before we talk about the complete lack of antitrust law enforcement meaning that if I do get a business off the ground best case scenario I get a buyout leaving any employees of mine screwed but most likely I get run out of business.
It's almost as if the ga
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With that attitude you will always be dependant on others for your job. It's easy to find reasons to blame others for what we are not prepared to do for ourselves. All you listed were excuses. Why should anyone risk their retirement on you when you are not prepared to take the risk yourself?
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Sorry but I'm not a multi-billionaire who gets the tax breaks to do it.
Seems like they don't want to do their job any more that the Gen-Z....
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Just an excuse...
I know many Gen-Z. None are unemployed. Most are growing their own businesses.
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The problem Federally guaranteed jobs for college graduates is the graduates expect paper-pushing (or bit-flipping) jobs in air-conditioned offices.
The orchard pruning crew across the road is quite busy. A spray crew was at a different orchard as I drove by, are the graduates willing to put on a protective suit and respirator and drive the rig up and down the rows? Both of those jobs are still beyond the capabilities of AI.
As for me, with my Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering was I coming home covered in mu
Re: Federal jobs guarantee (Score:2)
In modern parlance we have Million Dollar Murray showing it's cheaper for governments to house people with round the clock care than incarcerate them.
Look at how much Wisconsin saved with the cheesehead solution of saving money by shutting down state mental health care facilities without considering the cost of riots tha
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