College Grads Taking Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated | Hacker News Reader

College Grads Taking Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated

bloomberg.com

I have a manufacturing company (started in 2004), and since 2008 the number of overqualified applicants has been huge. I have hired mechanical engineers as personal assistants, a person with a bachelors of mathematics as a nanny, and hired another mechanical engineer away from Pizza Hut to do CAD work (which does not require a degree, a 2 year community program is fine).

We get unsolicited applications all the time, and the variety of education and backgrounds is large. Who would you hire though? The person with several DUI convictions who just got out of jail, or the engineering graduate who hasn't been able to find work in their field for 2 years? I have had both apply for a low-level warehouse job, at the same time.

It is a tough job market out there.

If I may ask, if you have two comparatively skilled/driven/smart workers for the same job, would you choose the one with the college degree?

I do think there are a lot of people where college is not a value-add to their skillset, yet it seems like going to college solely for that edge is neccessary

Surely they'd interview and find out whether the paper lies in both cases (arrest record vs. inflated degree). An amazing asset to a company doesn't have to come from college. But it can.

> If I may ask, if you have two comparatively skilled/driven/smart workers for the same job, would you choose the one with the college degree?

Because you have no idea whether they are comparably skilled/driven/smart, especially for relatively entry-level positions, and you can't afford to spend too much time digging to figure it out. You do know that at least one had it together enough to apply for/get into/graduate from college.

That is my wife's argument. She says that a college degree means that you were smart enough to get a college degree.

We interview, and then we do a paid work test. The person comes in a works with several of the staff (the hardest working ones) and after a day we decide if the person is a good fit. In our world a 'good fit' does not mean young white male hacker, but instead means hard worker, understands new process quickly, and cares about detail.

Usually the correct person to hire is obvious. If it is not (if both candidate were mediocre in the work test) then we keep interviewing. The cost in lost time for training a new hire is high, so we want to make sure the choice we make is correct.

So to answer your question directly - we interview, and try to keep an unbiased opinion until after the work test. Then I poll the staff to find out who was better to work with. 99% of the time the staff doesn't know much about the person's education. I definitely would hire someone self-taught without a degree (like myself), and I agree than some people go to college for the wrong reasons.

Out of curiosity... do you have a degree? I wonder if the businesses owner's background has any influence on the decision. "School is a place where former A students teach mostly B students to work for C students"

I do not have a degree. I was an honor roll student who slipped to barely passing grades in my last year. I did not go to university until my 30's, after I married a professor.

So I would have to agree that I fit that saying somewhat, but my C's were more the result of high school rebellion than lack of ability.

Or, people who needlessly went to college take jobs they would be doing anyway.

either way, those with a degree take the job – although I don't see enough data in the article to justify such title

Yeah, who do they think they are? Going off and learning things willy-nilly without considering whether their increase in knowledge is economically necessary. They could have put that time to use by just starting work earlier. Not they would have got the job if they had started earlier, as it would have gone to someone with higher qualifications, no doubt also needlessly acquired of course...

Having a history degree doesn't exactly make you more qualified to be a bartender (going by the example in the article).

I'm not sure, I think in the UK it's a fairly common assumption that a history degree means you'll most likely be operating a beer tap to pay the bills. This is also useful in most pubs since they are a few centuries old.

>in the UK it's a fairly common assumption...

This story was about the US.

>This is also useful in most pubs since they are a few centuries old.

And? I've been to a pub in the US that was 3 centuries old and thought to be the first building in the city (used to be a private residence). The building's history was probably part of the orientation, and it isn't like it is hard to memorize. Having a history degree doesn't make him more qualified to talk about it, it isn't like the history of pubs is included in the undergraduate (or even graduate) curriculum.

>assumption that a history degree means you'll most likely be operating a beer tap to pay the bills

Yea, a history degree is known to be pretty "useless" to most people who obtain one, that doesn't mean one is more qualified because they have one, it just means there is very little one can do with a history degree.

Learning history is an end in and of itself though. You don't need to have an application in mind to justify getting a degree.

As consumption -- "I want to know about history" -- it's great.

As investment -- "I want a degree to get a better job" -- it may not be good for the individual, and for society it's probably a net negative, because the benefits to your human capital are minimal while you are putting more resources into a zero-sum status competition.

Now, it's perfectly okay to have consumption, but you shouldn't confuse it for an investment. Spending 4 years backpacking across Europe also sounds like an awesome time, another end unto itself, but you shouldn't borrow money you don't have to do it.

Not all returns on investments are financial.

Spending money improving the level of history knowledge in a population can have paybacks that range from better national security through to the quality of art. These things are very hard to quantify and to just look on their direct financial return gives a very poor measure.

There are plenty of ways of learning things. I consider myself as well-learned as most college-educated people I know, and I never had any student debts. I'm also incredibly lucky to be in a field where the lack of a degree is not a problem, but perhaps this will be more common in the future.

It is also their choice to put themselves in as much debt as they want. And it is an employers choice to hire someone with a piece of paper for arbitrary reasons.

The problems aren't with trying to change the minds of millions of people, it is with reconciling a system that no longer works because we are still operating under the false tautology that human labor, of any kind, has value.

Let us combine with the story earlier from the week about the SAT test being changed. Having a college education is marketed very heavily in this society and what do the ACT and SAT have use for other than determining which colleges are open to a student. With High Schools pushing these tests hard they in turn are pushing students to college even when it might not be the best choice.

Don't underestimate the power that marketing has. Between state and privates schools there is a lot of money to be had and it only keeps working if they can convince each generation that the education they provide is indispensable

Do you sincerely think History is a complete waste of time, a useless human endeavor?

You see... It would be great if people had better history/sociology knowledge, I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a technocratic dystopia. The fact that these fields are seem as "useless" is a terrible thing.

No one's picking on history speficially, relax...the bigger point is that in the past decade or so high schools across the US have been needlessly pushing everyone to at least strongly consider college, and many buy into the hype. Why do you think roughly only 30% graduate? Some just are not cut out for that pace.

Studying history is not a useless endeavor. Taking a 100K loan to do it is.

Why do you need to go to university to to improve your knowledge of history or sociology?

A degree in history or sociology is seen as useless because it mostly is outside academia. The people who are good in the field will most likely end up on the academic track, and those who aren't will most likely end up in low paying jobs having wasted several years and tens of thousands of dollars.

The problem isn't history or sociology degrees, it is people thinking that a degree is a ticket to a good job.

But the guy in the article wants to be a High School teacher. It's not like the guy wants to be some historian at some institution. And a college degree is probably something you really want if you want to become a High School teacher.

Is it wrong for him to think that he needs a college degree in order to teach high school? What are his chances of teaching high school WITHOUT a degree?

I think that having college educated historians as high school history teachers is a terrible waste of resources.

I think that's true for every field. Some people love degrees when they hire though.

Oh, well, good news then, if you actually examine the curriculum requirement for being a history teacher and compare it to getting a degree in straight-up history, you'll see that the teacher is not required to take anywhere near as much, and the teacher will not take the really hard history courses that grade in terms of reams of essay writing.

Some teachers take the initiative to double-major of their own free will (respect!), but it is certainly not required. When I was in school I casually assumed that my teachers knew a great deal more about the subjects than what they were teaching; when I got to University and had the opportunity to look at their curricula requirements I learned that was not true, at least not in general.

Gotta' have a teaching certificate for most public school institutions. Private schools is less formally strict in that sense, but where I'm from they struggle to keep up with the public schools - thus they require teaching certificates too.

>But the guy in the article wants to be a High School teacher.

I already mentioned low-paid jobs.

Also, at least here in Australia the only pure degrees that the high-school education system cares about are maths and science, everything else is "generalist" and can be filled by any teacher. In addition, at least here a general degree isn't good enough any more, you either need a teaching degree or a graduate diploma in teaching.

i wouldn't call a high school teacher a low paying job. i guess it is compared to software.

In the US at least, it sounds very reasonable to go to college to get a history degree if your goal is to become a high school history teacher.

To me, it sounds perfectly an achievable goal to decide to go to college, get a major in history, know that you're not even close to the best historians out there, and expect a job teaching high school. just like the guy in the article assumed.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out, and might have been a waste of money. But there was nothing unreasonable in his thought process, from my perspective at least. I would even bet it won't be too tough for him to get a teaching job in the future.

>expect a job teaching high school.

Yeah see the expectation is the problem. Here in Australia most of the people with teaching degrees are waiting for the boomers to retire, because there are very few full time positions (unless you are willing to move to the most remote and poor communities).

>But there was nothing unreasonable in his thought process, from my perspective at least.

The unreasonable thing is believing that just getting a degree will get you into a middle-class profession. That hasn't been true for at least twenty years. You need good grades, co-ops, and connections.

As the article points out the market for tertiary educated workers is smaller than the pool of tertiary educated workers.

I agree. But what can you do? You're a student and want to be a high school history teacher. You might not have what it takes to be a PhD Historian. You might not get a teaching job. Still probably want to get a degree.

And if they're doing out of a passion for the subject? What then?

They should be thankful that they are privileged enough to waste the time and the money on a hobby.

Absolutely not, history, literature, sociology, arts are incredibly important.

But we live (at least US/Western countries) in a capitalist society, like it or not.

This means that the monetary value of your skills is directly linked only to the monetary value they can generate, not other types of value that undoubtedly they have.

People choosing to study humanities must be prepared to face a job market where their skills are not in great demand.

Then again, money is not everything.

And the savvy kids who skipped college now can't get the job they'd otherwise have because employers think: "why hire him when we can get a college graduate for the job?" I think too many people go to college, but credential inflation isn't something you can opt out of. You shouldn't need a college degree to be an office assistant, but when the market is flooded with college graduates willing to work that job, you don't stand a chance.

"why hire him when we can get a college graduate for the job?"

Maybe the market will some day find that the ones that didn't go to college are valuable as well, usually know how to deal with unexpected situations better and learned more things "on the job" while the college ones were dabbing in theory.

Theoretical studies are nice, but it's one thing to study something theoretically, another, to experience it.

That's comparing apples and oranges. There's no reason someone will take someone that didn't go to college instead of someone that did if both are equally inexperienced.

Employers have very little incentive to look beyond their usual filters for "diamonds in the rough." Especially when it comes to lower-level, lower-paying positions.

The market can still irrational longer than you can stay unemployed. :(

That's assuming that the college degree is a worthless signal, BTW. The scary thing is that the college degree probably is a useful signal. It's an insanely expensive one in terms of time and money, though. And after you finish your undergraduate, you may find out that there is a new, more expensive, longer signal that you are expected to complete to be an office assistant.

You're misfiring on the "theory" bashing there. The whole theory-practice argument comes from whether given a desire to learn subject X, it's better to study for a while before practicing or jump straight to practice.

When the argument is whether it's better to study an entirely different X or jump straight to practicing Y, if the goal is to get better at Y there's no argument. The problem isn't that the college students were "studying theory", it's that they were on the wrong thing entirely for where they ended up. They're not going to get paid better for their subject X theory.

(And it's a dumb argument since the correct answer is "both at the same time to the extent possible", which at least the computer science programs have definitely picked up on in the last 15-20 years. And knowing the Internet as I do, the "to the extent possible" words are not extraneous... obviously we are not going to put a brain surgeon in a brain on day one of school, OK?)

And while "the market" is trying to figure this out a generation of people are suffering with no/minimal income, no real safety net, etc.

The market is great, but you can't just sit around and wait for it to figure things out while real people are suffering from its inefficiencies.

Well, if they spent those four years at one place of work, then they're probably the college graduates' supervisor.

In this economy, they never got the entry-level position to begin with, because four years ago they were an 18 year old with a high school education competing against 22 year olds with college degrees.

Maybe. I'm talking about being a bar manager, or movie theater manager, etc.

Fair enough. I'm thinking of all the office jobs that used to be within the reach of non-college graduates not too long ago.

I think my brain just got a new fold in it, from trying to imagine someone whose target job was being a McDonald's Corp drone being described as 'savvy'.

McDonald's Corp drone is a good fucking job. Programmers and management consultants have made lower-level service jobs hellish, with demand scheduling and highly regimented workflows. A corp drone gets to sit at a desk, won't get fired for being a few minutes late, and might even get health insurance!

To get a low-wage job I had to lie on my resume. Retail stores won't hire you if you put down you have a CS degree and a few years programming experience. They want long-term desperate people. I was desperate but it looked too much like I would bail first chance I get.

Why would I want a shitty job? Well I needed money and I never break the 1st and 2nd rule of my club: http://www.indiedeveloperclub.com

Looks like you might get flagged for spam, but that's a cool idea!

Yeah I think I double-posted while in anti-procrastination mode.

I don't want to spam, but I want some people to join my club.

The key takeaway from this article should be that 1980's-style resume and application bombing doesn't work, nearly as well as it used to. The market moved on and became more advanced. Using 1980's skillsets and techniques will yield the same disappointing results that using 1980's technology does.

My favorite part is where the journalist points out that those that are better educated earn more. Ceteris paribus, one would think it would be obvious that a better product / tool / employee would be worth more.

Ceteris paribus == "all other things being equal"

That econ course is paying off for all of us I see :)

As a random data point, at the salon where my wife has her hair cut, about half the stylists have college degrees. Plus their training to cut hair. I'd never heard of that before, but I guess it has become a fallback job that pays reasonably well.

Does this apply to CS majors? (I'm about to start college this fall)

Edit:

- I'll be studying in the US.

- I'm already a (somewhat) experienced developer.

- I'm interested in CS theory (but not that great at math, atm.)

If you're when reasonably competent you'll have no trouble finding a job. Just be looking into internships ASAP and be open to moving somewhere potentially far away if there isn't much tech near you.

First off, this is a huge subject sensitive to flame wars.

However, if you:

- are interested in CS

- know you want a career in CS

- can afford the degree

I would recommend it. The formal aspect makes sure that you have your bases covered and can also serve as an outward signal.

Also, remember that it's entirely possible to have a great career without a degree.

No, if you can programme, there are oodles of highly paid jobs in tech

Correct for the most part. With some exceptions.

I've seen a bright kid from Italy act very despondent. He was convinced there was no way to have a decent career in his country. I gave him a pep talk but it did make me wonder:

- are we in a temporary bubble of high salaries?

- how long-lived is the technical career? I see people get progressively despondent in their 40s and 50s. Unlike other fields, I don't think we treat our elders with respect.

- tech is notoriously inward looking (a toll on the mind). we also have ridiculously sedentary jobs (a toll on the body)

I am so addicted/madly in love with computers that I can't see myself doing anything else. But I am practical about stuff like housing costs and retirement. I see a very real possibility that the economics of tech will turn around and salaries will take a hit. Already, I've hit a salary wall (around 130K), which doesn't take you that far in expensive parts of the world. My MBA friends seem to be doing a bit better now - what is worrying me is that they get better/get paid better with age. Lets see how long I last ...

Btw, under 35 here.

> are we in a temporary bubble of high salaries?

There's no guarantee. I worry about the same thing.

> I don't think we treat our elders with respect

This is why software is an extremely immature discipline.

* We don't want to use discipline because it hurts our 'flow' (JS semicolon debacle)

* We don't learn from the past ("coupling's not real!")

* We don't respect our elders...unless, of course, you're famous (e.g. Carmack)

I love building things, but the sentiment (at least on HN) is disgustingly populist at times. It's like the whole industry tries to make itself mediocre.

nothing succeeds like mediocrity

Good insight. Mediocrity asks so little of people that they never become defensive.

Oodles? This depends very very heavily where you live.

I know many many people who after getting their CS degrees had to move away. In fact I know way more people who moved than stayed or went back to their hometown.

1. It is always circumstancial. Nothing said can be assumed to apply to everyone.

2. Depends on the school.

3. Depends on your talent.

4. Depends on how much extra you put in between now and applying for jobs or whatever you do in the industry.

5. Depends where you live.

6. Depends on economic conditions 3 - 5 years from now.

At that, if you live in the US, remember to take all the CLEP tests you can this summer to skip as many "mandatory" general ed classes as possible. Assuming you are actually incurring debt or spending money to attend.

But just as a general rule, just having a piece of paper saying bachelors of science in CS doesn't mean jack for most people. You need a portfolio. You need that much more than the degree, in the end.

Go to college.

Seriously. It sounds like you're at least considering a field that pays well and it's not like computers/computerized tech will ever see a downswing any time in the foreseeable future. Going to college can sometimes be seen as a waste for a liberal arts education (most of the time only here and on Reddit), but I don't necessarily think that's true either.

I have an art degree, with a minor in advertising, and am a professional software engineer right now. I changed my majors three times in college (from business to psychology/advertising to art/advertising), and stuck with it at the end to just finish up. Would I go back and choose a different major with more readily available job prospects after graduation? Not a fucking chance. College is a chance to continue mingling with smart people your age, who you've never met, and some happen to be extremely beautiful girls, and life's too short to be an efficient programming worker-bee when you're 18. GET EXPERIENCES. These lead to creativity, which in my opinion is the most important factor of all. If you're resourceful, open-minded, proactive when necessary and going with the flow when not, then I really think the world is yours. It may take a while to get to where you want to be, but it's still yours.

You may find this helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7253501

I will say that if you are passionate, work on something of your own free will that you can show to employers at the end of the process, and get the sort of practice in that you can get in college, all the sorts of things that are suggested by you already being on HN before college even starts :), that you will have no trouble finding a great job at the end. Even people who just put the time in and finish their courses with no additional effort will almost certainly find jobs in their field... though they will find the great jobs may not be open to them.

(In fact, don't wait. I'm not saying your entire summer has to be spent indoors hacking away, but start working on something over the summer. Oh, I envy you grads today with the easy Internet access and all the glorious, glorious documentation and dozens upon dozens of working dev environments... I managed to put up a static web site of about 10 pages in the summer before college started, and that was stretching what I could do with the resources I had in 1996 in the boonies. (And at the time that was enough to get me a pretty decent student job.) I would loosely suggest learning a language that you won't cover in school, but that's up to you.)

I don't know where you're going to college, but work on falling in with the right people. See if there's a local entrepreneur group or something. I say this even if you aren't going to be one. Hanging around on HN for this long has taught me I am not going to be an entrepreneur and have little interest in being one any time soon. But the local startup community is still a very fun and productive place to hang around even so! Far better than most of the "official clubs" that you may find on campus.

If there is no such community, consider swapping out to a college/university that does have one in your junior year. If you do go that route be sure to have long talks with both relevant advisors about what credits will transfer.

The job market is pretty horrible for those with no experience - I spent 2 years looking for a job before getting fed up and started teaching myself programming in an effort to make myself an attractive entry-level hire, and I possess a masters.

It all depends on what you're doing. I have no degree and started out manning the phones in a level 1 position on a help desk.

Almost anyone was able to get a job doing it. I was competent so I excelled and moved up fast. After getting 3 promotions in 18 months it was reasonably easy to get a better job elsewhere.

The example in the article are not very good. Obvisouly a deegre with low demand and a poor job market is not going to result in a good job. Jobs in health care and STEM are in huge demand in the US, history majors not so much

An open question: What's the impact of a minimum wage in a situation like this? Does it discourage the college educated from leaving the McDonalds job "because it pays the same as that ad agency job anyways"?

I think that a person with a passion for advertising/marketing would much rather work in their chosen field than serving food.

It's a pay cut (sometimes unpaid internships are required) and the pay cut is getting worse. But really this is really decision making on the margin. If someone is already willing to work at minimum wage for a job they're overqualified for, what's it mean when you mandate a raise for them? (And to the people who are adequately qualified, but not overqualified)

The key for people taking low-wage low-skill jobs after college (I've been one - valet/data entry) is to always do something related to what you really want to do, even if you have to do it for free.

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