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Comment by andy99 | Hacker News Reader

Are there people who think college education is a shortcut to generic employment? This seems like a very misleading statistic. Average earnings (including those unemployed), etc might be better. Telling me that it’s harder to get a professional job that I’m qualified for than it is to walk up to a McDonald’s or whatever and get a job is not shocking.

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> college education is a shortcut to generic employment

That was/is the societal narrative for the last forty plus years, yes.

How else would you sell it?

Yep, I remember being told that it doesn't matter which major I pick because there would be jobs that wanted just any bachelor's degree.

I'm sure high school kids are still being told that today, and it might not be entirely false. Decent-paying jobs have certainly become more specialized for specific college majors, but I still see local job listings on the lower end of the white collar pay scale that ask for a BA/BS without expressing preference for a specific major.

When only the self-selecting intelligent/diligent/driven went to college, selecting college graduates was a huge win.

So then everyone decided everyone should go to college - to me that's manifestly not the case, but that's where we are; plumbers doing quite successfully for themselves with a degree in something or other that doesn't matter at all.

> Telling me that it’s harder to get a professional job that I’m qualified for than it is to walk up to a McDonald’s or whatever and get a job is not shocking.

This is so very easily said but how else is this supposed to work, exactly?

People have to start somewhere, and McDonalds experience doesn't count for any specialized job. Fuck, the "McDonalds-tier" jobs will often turn down graduates because they'll obviously walk the moment they get something better.

If no employer is willing to take a chance on graduates, then they just can't get any job experience. "A job that will pay for a roof over one's head" really isn't that extreme an ask.

As has been said a trillion times about AI and tech before AI: Senior level staff is going to age out, it has to be replaced or the entire industry gets sent offshore.

In terms of general unemployment across fields, youth unemployment is extremely corrosive to society.

This is already visible in how anti-AI sentiment is starting to boil over and the lurch rightward in politics. If this continues to escalate, the outcome will be nightmarish. Half of them bombing datacenters, the other half cheering as ICE raids the tech workers.

> or the entire industry gets sent offshore.

Assuming there are any seniors offshore either

I think the management answer to this is that you can just hire 9 offshore not-seniors for less money, and that somehow equals the experience of a single onshore senior. In that sense it's a kind of the experience equivalent of the 9 women/1month == baby analogy, and obviously wrong. Unless you're in management.

More or less correct. It's not that management believes in "9 offshore juniors", it's just that they don't know (nor care to confirm) who's actually working for them at the outsourcing firm.

The combined incentive of cost cutting at the outsourcing firm and foolish MBAs in the west opting for the cheapest outsourcing means that the offshore does actually employ juniors, who do build up the experience to become seniors.

If they think that will work what prevents them from doing it now vs later when the senior are gone?

>Telling me that it’s harder to get a professional job that I’m qualified for than it is to walk up to a McDonald’s or whatever and get a job is not shocking.

But as the graph also shows, graduate unemployment rate was lower for much of 2010s and before, so in some sense it really was "easier" with a college degree.

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