college educated guy works 60hrs, 4 jobs, makes 20k/year - what his life looks like:

[SoCalDem]

59. People graduating into a "service economy" can have little expectation

of a secure future.

The middle ground has been trimmed away.

Liberal Arts has been under attack for decades. Once upon a time, people could go to college, get a degree, and find a job that honored that degree, without ever really "applying" it directly.

A person with a degree in English, could get a "middle management" job in just about any big company, and could work their way up the ladder.

Most of those jobs are gone now, as companies "trimmed the fat", and as more people go into debt to get degrees, they get more desperate to get any job they can, those jobs that remain become more devalued.

Specialized degrees are a bit more secure, but even they are under stress, because "cut cut cut" is the modern business mantra. It takes people 4 years or longer to even GET a degree, and by the time they graduate (saddled with crushing debt), the field they hope to enter has been moving along to the next new thing, and often when they graduate, they are already behind.