STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 26 December 2012

[Demeter]

3. 70% of Jobs “Created” Don’t Require a College Education

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/70-of-jobs-created-dont-require-a-college-education.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

No wonder the collision of the higher education bubble and the job market is proving to be so painful.

This Real News Network interview with Jeannette Wicks-Lim shreds the idea that getting a college education is a way to get a well-paid job. While there is still an upper tier of positions that require a college education and in many cases, advanced degrees, the bulk of employment growth in this economy is in badly paid service jobs. Despite the fact that the pundit class keeps wailing how America isn’t growing enough high skilled workers to compete in the world economy, the evidence is otherwise. For instance, Gene Sperling will regularly contend that America needs more engineers. Yet engineering jobs don’t pay enough to reward the cost of getting that degree. I’ve had engineers regularly say in comments that the only way to do well with an engineering degree is to then get a law degree and become a patent/intellectual property attorney. If the US really does need more engineers for competitiveness reasons, then it needs to get the cost of their education down, much the way it subsidizes the cost of educating elite mathematicians and physicists.

The proof of the notion that a college education is a bad investment for many. From the inteview:

So if you look at these $10 an hour or less workers, you see that between—you know, over the last three decades, there was 25 percent of these workers who had some college experience, and now you’ve got 40 percent of these workers with some college experience.

Read more at LINK