5,000 U Wash grads (and other college grads) face bleak job market

[AnotherMcIntosh]

Thousands of college graduates from (the state of Washington) are about to enter the job market during what some are calling the bleakest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Among them are 5,000 University of Washington students who received their diplomas Saturday at a commencement ceremony at CenturyLink Field.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/komo/article/5-000-students-graduate-from-UW-amid-bleak-job-3622397.php

Any solutions?

Compromise with Republicans? Play nice? Sign another "free-trade" agreement?

[Zalatix]

1. We need more automation, more offshoring of American jobs, this will help bring jobs to these grads!

[riderinthestorm]

2. Its their fault! They majored in the wrong things! They should have been able to see the future

in 2007 or 2008 when they started to get their degrees, that 4 years later the economy would be so tanked their diplomas would be worthless (and instead they should have gone to plumbing school).


(do I have to insert the sarcasm things?) I guess so....

But honestly, there is a subsection of DUers who honestly spout this shit.

I really feel bad for these new graduates. I see it personally with my daughter and her friends, they are really in trouble (large debts, and unemployed or most certainly under-employed).

[AnotherMcIntosh]

3. Yea, I've seen that subsection as well. n/t

[coalition_unwilling]

9. If we think of labor (whether skilled or unskilled) as a resource, then we

must see this situation as a critical failure of capitalism to use all resources available to it. What is the solution? Do we tinker with capitalism or junk it and replace it with an economy built around new principles?

Instead we have created a new type of indentured servitude -- student debt is generally not dischargeable through bankruptcy and stays with the debtor until death -- as though that will 'fix' the problem.

[DotGone]

15. It's their fault for making that lifestyle choice.

Yeah, there are some DUers who are gonna make that argument.

[jtuck004]

4. 1,750,000 graduates this year, U.S. - 49.7%, abt 850,000 are reporting not finding job, iirc,

and that's if you went to college, which has always been sold as improving your chances.

I was talking to a gal the other day collecting and rolling carts back in to the store. Has a grad degree. Was doing a great job at lassoing those carts. Hate to see what it would have been like without that foundation of knowledge.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. Even post-graduate degrees will not ensure employment.

Only 65 Percent of 2011 Law Grads Have Jobs Requiring Bar Passage, a Record Low
according to the ABA.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/only_65_percent_of_2011_law_grads_have_jobs_requiring_bar_passage_a_new_rec/

The percentage for 2012 law grads will be even lower.

And, of course, we can look at the teachers with post-graduate degrees whose jobs, if they have them, are at risk.

[riderinthestorm]

6. My daughter has her masters from the top university in the world in her field

top of her class, has an EU passport so she can work anywhere in the world. Graduated 2 years ago and finally found full time work as...





... wait for it...






.... a horse back riding instructor.

[jtuck004]

14. I hope she enjoys the job, and doesn't have a bunch of student loan debt to carry as well.

Frankly, except for not likely to make a whole bunch of money, I would rather spend my time around horses than in many companies.

Beyond the debt, what does it do to people after they invest 6 years in a general and then more intense study of something, gaining a knowledge of how to analyze and think in more productive ways, maybe some specialized knowledge, only to enter a world where we allow opportunity to be put into the bank accounts of a few supremely wealthy people, and where that is not likely to be different for at least another decade, if ever?

Tell her congratulations, even if she doesn't think so yet. The time may come...

[riderinthestorm]

18. Thanks! She does enjoy it (my husband and I own and operate a horse training facility

so she's grown up in the biz as it were). And she's good at it.

But she really wants to get into the museum field and they're simply not hiring anywhere. She's an artifacts expert with a ton of field archaeology work on her CV and can't get a full time job in archaeology either. There's no guarantee that with a PhD that she'd get anything in academia as well. So she's kind of stuck.

Ah well, she really doesn't have a lot of debt - she got a lot of scholarships, graduated college in 3 years and got her masters in a year so she can ride out the instructor job for a while as she continues to search. She took the instructor job because its near DC. She figures she'll start volunteering in the artifacts area of the Smithsonian on her off days and try to work her way into a position from there.

She's just lucky she has another viable skill. While she's technically "underemployed" she makes great money. Her "underemployed" friends in retail are in desperate straits.

[coalition_unwilling]

7. Cut government spending -- that should

do the trick!

[CK_John]

8. The only solution I see is a 5yr mortorium on freshman classes.

The only other alternate is close 50% of all higher ed schools.

[coalition_unwilling]

10. That's some 'solution' you're talking about there. IOW, let's

choke off human learning to induce a capitalist shortage of labor.

Yipes.

If we had an economy built around meeting people's needs rather than satisfying their greed, we might have a better use for this resource than the current capitalist system and your proposed reforms allow.

[MadHound]

11. Well, that's stupid

First of all, what are those freshmen supposed to do with their lives? Live at home until they're twenty two, twenty three years old? Simply put their lives on hold?

And what about those schools, you're asking them to go without a quarter, then half, then three quarter, and finally no student revenue coming in for two years. That would shut down much more than half the colleges and universities in this country, throwing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people out of work, people who won't easily be able to find work since their field, college education, was just destroyed.

It amazes me the insane ideas that people are willing to try. Don't you even think these things through before you propose them?

[CK_John]

12. Of course i did, So now they are $80,000(more or less) in debt and no job. There are

just more people than jobs. Other programs need to evolve until the population catches up with the technology of this new era.

[MadHound]

13. So your solution is what?

Diminish an entire generation's earning power while simultaneously shutting down our higher education system and throwing tens of thousands of people out of work.

I'm glad you're not in charge of anything, because your "solutions" are worse than the problem.

[CK_John]

16. What's your solution? We can't keep pileing debt on them, and we have

50% more grads than jobs. Many us in the 50's spent a couple yrs in the service or working before going to college. The kids will work it out and find something interesting to do.

[MadHound]

19. Well then, that require reforming how we pay for college education

Personally, I would like to have free college education, much like they do in various countries around the world. But that's not going to happen, at least not right away, so I would propose a roll back in the rules regarding Pell and other grants, not to mention student load rates, back to the late seventies or before. During the eighties we essentially privatized the funding of college education, and we see what has happened.

As far as spending a couple of years in the service, sorry, but I don't think that we need to feed our already out of control war machine. Besides, if you haven't noticed, this isn't your father's Army. Most of the skills that military folk used to learn are now gone because of the vast amount of privatization of the Army. No longer can some kid go into the Army and learn how to work on trucks or tank or whatever because private corporations, using their own employees, do virtually everything in the military these days, outside of actually pulling the trigger.

And you're not asking these kids to put their lives on hold for a couple of years, but rather you're asking some of them to put their lives on hold for four or five years. "'Scuse me, it's for your own good if you don't go to college until you're twenty three." I'm sorry, but WTF?

As far as jobs, or the lack of them go, that isn't the fault of these kids, that is the fault of corporations and the people in government. Perhaps if we adapted some of the sound policy positions of Krugman or Reich, we could get some jobs back But holding kids out of college for half a decade, or more, won't do them any good, it simply means that they will fall further and further behind, and be trying to play catch up all their lives.

[Initech]

17. We need to stop calling them job creators and start calling them wealth hoarders.

The top companies in America made billions, stockpiled it, hired no new employees and paid zero in taxes. What is wrong with this picture?