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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

"They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them. They went to university and graduated with a good degree."

This is the problem. Just showing up isn't enough. This fill-in-the-blanks approach to careers is why the university degree doesn't mean anything anymore. It's never about being the norm, it's about exceeding the norm. Yes, that means more than 50%, by definition, won't cut it.

What did they do while they got their "good degrees from good universities"? If the answer is "the bare minimum to pass", as it seems most of my former classmates did, then it's no wonder they can't find work.

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Perhaps I wasn't clear. By good degrees I meant not only was the subject they chose challenging and useful, but their grades were good too.

As an example, a friend of mine has a Masters degree in Chemistry. He was unemployed up until about 5 months ago when he started participating in a "back to work" scheme. The deal was he continues to draw social welfare, is free labour for the company he works for, and clocks the same hours as a regular employee. He has a 40 minute commute to the job each way and is not reimbursed for fuel despite his income being less than minimum wage. He has been applying for jobs in his spare time too. In a month he will have to quit this job as the law here says he can only work in such a scheme for 6 months. Presumably so companies can't abuse schemes like this to pay below minimum wage. While at this company he applied for a job internally. His competition included some of his colleagues with many more years' experience. They fear their division is about to be shut down and want to get into a more secure part of the company. How do you compete with that?

EDIT: I should add that prior to getting this position he was unemployed for nearly 2 years despite applying for hundreds of jobs. Given that in his industry it is already hard to find jobs this isn't doing him any favours.

No, getting a job is about being the norm. Or, well, it used to.

There are plenty of jobs. Just not necessarily in what they want to do with their level of experience. If the goal is to "get a job", then I can show you tons of places to get one of those, and you didn't have to bother going in to debt with a degree. But these jobs that require a degree, they are looking for exceptional people. That's the point of the degree, to break away from the norm. But somewhere along the line, we allowed the notion that non-professional work was somehow "lesser" work, and that everyone should be given the opportunity to go to college. Bleh. Completely misses the point.

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