Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don't Use Their Degrees | Hacker News Reader

Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don't Use Their Degrees

wsj.com

32 pointsxqcgrek218 comments

Education was once broader than just some kind of ladder that led to a cubicle, it was about creating people with a penchant for lifelong learning, a challenge that tested people and improved them, a means to share information and discoveries.

Bringing money into the contract - for higher education - very much changed that perception and the expectations that students had for it.

> Education was once broader than just some kind of ladder that led to a cubicle, it was about creating people with a penchant for lifelong learning, a challenge that tested people and improved them, a means to share information and discoveries.

Yes. However, when it was like that, college was pretty much the domain of the wealthy. If your family was already wealthy, there was really no need for college to provide skills for a job.

In addition, when it was like that, the assumption was that high school would provide the needed job skills, and there was also a very robust apprenticeship system. A person with a high school degree could support a family and own a home.

Theology and medicine were basically the only careers other than academia that required college. Even for law, you could apprentice under a lawyer and sit for the boards without law school.

Once college became a universal expectation and was supported by taxes (via government backed loans, GI Bill, etc), it became far more oriented to a jobs ladder.

I feel like this is one of the things where you can find an ancient Greek philosopher complaining about the same stuff.

>Education was once broader than just some kind of ladder that led to a cubicle, it was about creating people with a penchant for lifelong learning,

Education was never about this and I don't know where that myth came from.

The first schools were created to train government bureaucrats and clergy. Then came military officers, medical doctors, and lawyers.

At no point in human history has education been about "finding yourself" it's been about training to enter the workforce-- from Plato's Academy (politicians and military leaders) to the University of Bologna (lawyers) to Harvard (clergy) to American GIs using the GI Bill to get vocational training after WWII it's always been about jobs.

Where the myth comes from is universities, of course.

Studied political science, I’m slanging code. Actually, starting my own business now and writing a book.

Who cares, if a graduate is using their degree? Is an 18 or 20 year old supposed to understand what they are passionate about in life - and pursue that immediately after high school?

What a joke. Maybe someone else could be so lucky.

The article's headline is a little misleading. It is only referring to college graduates that are "underemployed," i.e. have a job not requiring college-level skills in general, as opposed to a job that is unrelated to their major.

Your case would not count as underemployment (of which examples are office support, retail sales, food service).

> Who cares, if a graduate is using their degree?

Whoever paid for that unused education probably cares, especially when the graduate ends up unemployed or underemployed.

For most people, most of the time, work isn't about "passion" but rather it provides the means through which to support themselves financially.

In addition, working class "passionate" people are vulnerable to exploitation, as e.g. seen in the videogame industry, the media industry, etc. "Passion" is only a benefit to those too wealthy to fail.

Most people are passionate about things that require money, such as hobbies and family life. For such people the function of work is to bring money to support those things. Studying something for 5 years without economic benefit is basically a waste of time from such viewpoint.

But like others have pointed out, I don't think there's anything wrong with getting one master's degree, and then ending up working in some other field where a degree is beneficial. But people with master's degree working minimum wage jobs that don't require education and they don't like, now that is depressing.

Studied electrical engineering, slanging code.

I honestly don't care if I am using the degree, but I also didn't pay what the kids are paying these days.

Just need to require a 4 year degree in more jobs that don't need it. Problem solved.

Even as a software engineer I don't use my computer science degree. Companies aren't interested in code that requires a CS degree to write because then developers aren't replaceable cogs.

I don't think you understood the purpose of mass education. Companies don't care about code that requires a CS degree, but they care about the author of that code having a CS degree, precisely because that makes him a replaceable cog. Self taught developers are of varying quality. Each of them knows different things. If you want to fire a CS graduate you can just hire another CS graduate. If you hire someone with a unique skillset, how exactly are you going to find another one with the same skillset? The purpose of the CS degree is akin to the purity stamp on a bar of gold. Think about it. You have one bar of gold without a stamp and one with a stamp. Both are completely identical. How would you know? You wouldn't, hence the need for a stamp.

> Companies don't care about code that requires a CS degree, but they care about the author of that code having a CS degree, precisely because that makes him a replaceable cog

When I was a hiring manager, the reasons why I only looked at CVs with a degree in a relevant field (CS or EE) were two. First, because it gave me some confidence that this person knows all of the basics that are required for the job, whereas a self-taught person may be missing big parts of the picture -- after all, they don't know what they don't know. The second reason is because it suggested that the candidate was willing to remain focused on a multi-year project even when some parts of it weren't "fun".

I never saw anybody as a "replaceable cog". Even if they had the same degree, everybody is different, and each member brings different skills to the table. Your job as a hiring manager is finding whether a candidate will add significantly to the existing team or not.

> If you want to fire a CS graduate you can just hire another CS graduate

If it was that simple, we would simply issue an offer to every CS graduate we come across and would not bother interviewing them. Since this isn't at all how the industry works, it's clear that here's a good opportunity to re-evaluate your beliefs.

Slightly related. There is prevalent notion that one doesn't need (relevant) degree to work with software. Interviewers find confirmation that my degree is useless because I don't know the answers to their Angular/Scrum/Agile/TypeScript questions. Their homemade state management with Turing-complete TypeScript types requires out of the box thinking!

I remember reading that credentialism was a way to avoid the "disparate impact" hammer if you don't employ enough blacks.

You don't want a specific expert, you want someone who proved to be able to at least sit through years of college, and at the same time you want to be protected against alleged discrimination lawsuits.

Credentialism and using four-year degrees as a gate-keeping tactic was absolutely an attempt to keep corporate staff whiter and richer.

I’m one of them, but as long as the jobs are good I don’t see a problem.

Colleges aren’t trade schools, their purposes are different.

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