In its latest Daily Dispatch, Casey Research (CR) paints a gloomy picture of the US job market. Citing a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, CR points out:
The U.S. has sown its primary and secondary education system with curricula that are overweight on the social sciences and underweight in science, technology, engineering, and math – the so-called STEM fields. And today’s unemployed are reaping the consequences.
The challenge ahead might be summed up using a popular joke format:
Q: How many social scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. STEM graduates have developed a hundred-year light bulb. When it burns out it won’t need replacing, as it will be obsolete.
That is the predicament in which too many of today’s unemployed find themselves: They are obsolete. The headwind facing today’s unemployed in their search for work is formidable. It’s a sobering thought.
Here’s a sampling of the statistics presented in the report about the jobs picture in 2011:
• 20% of the men in the population are not working today, up from 7% in 1970.
• The workforce in 2020 will contain an estimated shortage of 1.5 million college graduates.
• 40% of the companies planning to hire have had openings for 6 months due to lack of qualified applicants.
• The rate of new business creation has dropped 23% since 2007.
• The number of U.S. jobs has declined by 7 million since December 2007.
The hurdles that must be overcome include adapting the structure of the U.S. education system to better meet the shifting needs of the marketplace. This will be a herculean task, because by extension the report implies that many of the departments in today’s universities are themselves obsolete. Any cuts or reapportionments in a college curriculum mean teacher layoffs. And the unions will resist this change with ferocity.
There's more at the link.
I wish I could disagree with CR, but I can't. I've been appalled to learn about some of the 'courses' offered by modern colleges and universities:
- "Queer Musicology"
- "Learning from YouTube"
- "Alien Sex"
- "The Joy Of Garbage"
- "Dirty Pictures"
All those courses are (or were) offered for degree credit. I can't believe the degrees concerned are worth the paper they're printed on . . . but those who've 'earned' them will nevertheless expect an employer to take them seriously.
Verily, the mind doth boggle . . .
Peter
One thing to point out about these companies with long-term unfilled jobs... They're offering entry-level jobs, and then demanding 5 years of experience with multiple and very diverse technologies and programming languages and skill sets. So, of course, they can't and won't hire recent grades. They feel that, because the unemployment rate is so high, they can write up these "blue sky" job descriptions, and offer entry-level wages, and fill the positions.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing - companies don't want to provide any training to new hires these days. When I started at a large company 20+ years ago, they hired me right out of college, and gave me a 6-week paid training course, right off the bat - I was in classes with a dozen other recent grads, to boot. In other words, they were willing and eager to take people who had the right mindset, and the right education, and invest a little in them to get good employees.
And, companies don't want to train existing employees in new technologies, either. They'd rather try to hire a new college grad who learned the latest-and-greatest whatever - if they can find someone who didn't major in underwater basketweaving or something.
I can't help but agree vociferously with everything else in this post, though.
I went to a very good liberal arts college in Maine (Bates). I think you have to be careful just looking at course titles. For one, I can see an art history prof calling a course "dirty pictures" when it's about conservation techniques. Or to make it more attractive and stand out in the course catalog. Secondly, Bates had a one month long "Short Term" where people took only one course. Those courses ranged from Bio S42-which was in the catalog under the title "Cell Hell"--the foundational course for all cellular and molecular upper level lab courses, and was lecture and lab daily to "Philosophy of Star Trek" where they looked at how Plato and Kant etc showed up in Gene Roddenberry's universe. Admittedly, the philosophy course was lighter weight than the bio course--but you could say that about the whole bloody department.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree, if an art professor calls a course "dirty pictures", he's not serious about the subject. Or he is dumbing it down to such a degree that it would fit students that cant be bothered to read a course description. And then expecting future employers to do the work they dont expect students to do.
ReplyDeleteAppearances matter, and making a course name sound like an MIT student joke is not what I would consider a good college would do. It's like when Disney calls their internal employee degrees "Mouseter" and "Ducktorate". Not something any outside employer can take seriously.
As for the courses, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people taking those courses will end up with cushy government or NGO jobs, their college resume will show that they have the correct liberal pedigree to fit in.
In the US, the college degree is the holy grail. Everyone is encouraged to get a degree to land that high paying job.
ReplyDeleteWe have clogged up colleges with folks who don't belong there. The universities dumb down the course work so they can fill the classes or invent useless degree programs to attract the marginal students. Don't forget that Uncle Sam pays grant money to almost anyone. The college has a financial stake in attracting more and more students. I read that the tUniversity of Phoenix, a for profit university, has homeless people making up 10% of it's students. Just for the grant money.
Trade schools are expensive to run. It takes a lot of space and power to equip a machine tools lab, or welding lab. Easier and cheaper to stick a 100 students in a lecture hall and talk about dirty pictures.
I read that there are a million empty positions for machinists in the country right now. But that requires math, and willingness to get a bit dirty at work. No college degree required.
We'll need to refit education and perception from stem to stern to pull this fiasco out of the crapper.
Prosperity seems to be a two edged sword. We forget the hard work it took to get where we are. Hopefully, we can pull this out before we stall and spin in.
As an experienced engineer, I'm seeing a lot of new grads who have completely inadequate skills to back up their credentials. The deficit in education is appalling.
ReplyDeleteI don't care so much whether colleges offer these courses. I care a great deal that "multcultural" classes such as "African-American Hairstyles" are required as part of the core curriculum.
ReplyDelete'Scuse me... "multicultural".
ReplyDelete^ Oh yeah. I have so many ridiculous "Essential Studies" requirements for "diversity" and crap like that that I'm anticipating five years of college, not four.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it was practically a running gag in my Systems Programming course that companies need Computer Science students. I actually chose the major not only because I was interested, but because it is flexible - if my plans don't work out, hey, I still know how to program.
When I was in school, you could take social science course, but only a couple of the classes actually counted towards my degree as some electives outside the engineering curriculum were required.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you want to talk about degrees that aren't worth much in the real world, there are many.
As far as unemployment, I don't think it is just a training/education issue. You also have unemployment, food stamps, and other programs that last longer and are easier to get now than 1970. Being a machinists or welder is hard work where you are held accountable for your quality of work. I think a lot of the "self esteem" generation today can't handle that.
MechAg94