America's Waiters and Cashiers Are Over-Educated

Calabrio

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America's Waiters and Cashiers Are Over-Educated
Katherine Mangu-Ward | December 10, 2010
http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/10/americas-waiters-and-cashiers

More people are going to college than ever before, but those extra years of education aren't translating into the fancy-pants jobs that most people expect after snagging a sheepskin. Sixty percent of the increase in the number of college grads between 1992 and 2008 are doing low-skilled jobs that used to be done by people with high school diplomas or less. Ohio University economist Richard Vedder does the math:

In 1992 the BLS reports that total college graduate employment was 28.9 million, of whom 5.1 million were in occupations which the BLS classified as “noncollege level jobs” while in 2008 the BLS data indicate that total college graduate employment was 49.35 million, with 17.4 million in occupations classified as requiring less than a bachelor’s degree.

An example or two from specific occupations is useful. In 1992 119,000 waiters and waitresses were college degree holders. By 2008, this number had more than doubled to 318,000. While the total number of waiters and waitresses grew by about 1 million during this period, 20% of all new jobs in this occupation were filled by college graduates. Take cashiers as well. While 132,000 cashiers possessed college degrees in 1992, by 2008, 365,000 cashiers were college graduates. As with waiters and waitresses, 20% of new cashiers since 1992 are college graduates. (The sources for all of these data are Table 1 of the Summer 1994 Occupational Outlook Quarterly and the Employment Projection Program “Occupations” tables on the BLS Web site)
These numbers are big enough that we're not seeing a clsuter of arty comp lit major-novelist-waiters picking up some cash while living their dream in a garret. The stats show people who probably wouldn't have gone to college in another era, responded to incentives like cheap loans and went to college in the '90s or '00s, graduated at 22- or 23-years-old, and then got the same gigs they would have been qualified for at 18.
YouTube - The Case Against College Entitlements : Why We Don't Need More Public Funding For Higher Education
 
Anyone who thinks that education is NOT a good thing most likely has an IQ of about 65.

KS
 
My IQ is considerably higher than 65 and I think that the college system and the societal pressure associated with it as it currently exists are very BAD things.
Education, knowledge, and college are not the same things.
 
This is pretty much where I am at. Graduated in May and the only job I can find is one that hires lowest common denominator. At least it's full time and has benefits, which in this economy is not something to overlook.
 
Knowledge, Education, and the College Experience

My IQ is considerably higher than 65 and I think that the college system and the societal pressure associated with it as it currently exists are very BAD things.
Education, knowledge, and college are not the same things.

Cal, you'll note that I didn't say 'college', I said education. But as someone who has both education from a wide variety of sources, and two ABs and a PhD to my name, I can assure you that several years of immersion in an academic setting will 'fast-track' an education that would take many times as long without that guidance. And after the immersion, one must acquire the practical experience to properly make use of the academics.

Interestingly, by three years into 'life after college', I was no longer making any use of either AB. But I've never regretted the class time or the knowledge that came with it.

I went back and got the PhD after enough actual experience that the acquisition was a 'walk-in-the-park'.

I like me, and I am what I am due to my combination of academics and experience. There IS something to be said for knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

'The college system' is too generic a notion to be properly debated. If you mean the current Liberal/Progressive, 'I cant DO it, but I can teach', tenure-to-protect-incompetence/mediocrity' sort of situation, of course I agree with you. But I'm always in favor of knowledge/education. And college is the fastest way to begin.

As has also been said of the venerable 1911, 'It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it'!!

KS
 
For lack of more to elaborate, I'll just summarize like this-
the current system doesn't work. And the social pressures in place that reinforce the status quo are failing us.

Accepting the public system as it has been established in the 20th century is a mistake. And the emphasis on "education" and not knowledge is where the problem begins to lie.

I think knowledge, training, and enrichment are hugely important things in a persons life. I have a pretty diverse background and it includes a formal education as well. Personally, I brought more to the classrooms I sat in that was offered me.... despite the massive opportunity cost associated with spend all of that time in the room and the tuition and other associated costs (that take place in a state supported vacuum free from the pressure of the invisible hand of the markets)

Frankly, with issue, like so many other concepts that were created during the 20th century that we've come to just take for granted, we all need to honestly examine them and be willing to defy convention. An honest look.

Because, most often, the arguments I hear to defend the current system are like so many progressive argument. We need to expand the current system in response to the unintended consequences the system initially created. We need to expand a failed system to compensate for the damage cause the by the very system in the first place.

This is a similar argument that another member here often makes- for example, because of the expansion of the welfare state, the charitable behavior of the American people have changed in result. Because of this response, it is now argued that we can never change our welfare policies because our charitable behavior has changed.

And because you need a college degree to get even basic, unskilled work, we must continue to support the college system in place. That makes no sense.
 
I value my College education but I learned at least as much by questioning my professors as anything else. While I can't speak so much for the hard sciences, in many of the social sciences, it is as much about indoctrination as it is about education.

If you go in with the attitude that what a professor says is not gospel (a healthy dose of skepticism) but that doesn't mean you cannot learn from them in a myriad of diverse (and unexpected) ways, you will gain a lot from a college education (at least in the soft sciences) on a personal and intellectual level, IMO.

However, as a means to the end of a more lucrative career, a college degree is HIGHLY suspect (except in specific fields). Under that standard of judgment, my own college degree was a waste of both money and time, IMO.
 
Anyone who thinks that education is NOT a good thing most likely has an IQ of about 65.
Education is vital; a college education is not necessarily so. F'rinstance, take the engineer who signs off on the design of a bridge and the tech at the dealership doing the warranty work on my car; neither would be worth a damn at his job without education, but only one of them needs a college education.
 
This is pretty much where I am at. Graduated in May and the only job I can find is one that hires lowest common denominator. At least it's full time and has benefits, which in this economy is not something to overlook.

You should find your niche and look for an opportunity and try to make your own job.
You'll never get rich working for someone else.
 
I can't decide if I went for the right reasons or I fell into the trap. While I was there, I was doing Chemistry and decided I hated it and had a long introspection and decided that with my skill-set and how I am, I'd like being a lawyer. I took a few classes in business law and court proceedings and really really enjoyed them so I switched to a Lib Arts degree in pursuit of Law School. I graduated from Temple with a BA in History and just took the LSAT's yesterday, which I'm completely depressed about because of how generally hard the test was in comparison. My highest practice test was a 170 and I feel like I didn't do nearly as well.

I think these times make us all wonder what it is that we're actually doing. I'd still like to be a lawyer regardless of the awful job market etc., and I'd feel like a failure if I just gave up on what I had worked so much for. Of course, alternatively, I could just say that I'm potentially drawing out digging my own grave. It's a very hard conversation to have with yourself. I think a lot of negatively is coming from that test yesterday.
 
Don't see much opportunity for that in this economy...

Took me 20 years to achieve real success.
I don't mean go out right away but for later after you've worked a few years
and an opportunity presents itself.
 
Took me 20 years to achieve real success.
I don't mean go out right away but for later after you've worked a few years
and an opportunity presents itself.
Hopefully an opportunity will present itself. However, my skill set and interests don't seem to be in areas that make for many opportunities.

Was gonna work toward a second major in programming this fall semester but that fell through due to financial concerns. Will hopefully get my A+ certification this winter and at least start developing trade skills on the hardware side of things that are marketable.
 
Another interesting perspective on this subject...
The Crisis of the Middle
by Rich Lowry

The unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher is 5 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1990s again.

But college graduates are only 30 percent of the country. For the rest of the population, the jobs picture is grimmer. For people without a high-school degree, the unemployment rate is more than 15 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1930s again.

The unemployment rates are part of a growing divergence between the fortunes of the college educated and the rest of the country, including proverbial Middle America. In his new study, “When Marriage Disappears,” University of Virginia scholar Brad Wilcox details how the college-educated have embraced traditional mores and habits — especially the formation of stable families — while they erode among everyone else.

Our elites, broadly defined as the top third of our society, aren’t nearly as decadent as advertised. According to Wilcox’s data, the highly educated (with a college diploma or higher) are less likely to divorce, less likely to have children out of wedlock, and less likely to commit adultery than the moderately educated (high-school degree or some college) and the least-educated (no high-school diploma).

The moderately educated might be called the lower-middle class or upper-working class. Wilcox refers to them as the “solid middle”: “They are not upscale, but they are not poor. They don’t occupy any of the margins, yet they are often overlooked, even though they make up the largest share of the American middle class.” He documents an equally disturbing separation between the top and the rest, and a convergence between the middle and the bottom.​
Read the rest at this link
 
I graduated from Temple with a BA in History and just took the LSAT's yesterday, which I'm completely depressed about because of how generally hard the test was in comparison. My highest practice test was a 170 and I feel like I didn't do nearly as well.

Good luck on the LSAT score.
 
Good luck on the LSAT score.

Thank you sir. It's gonna be a hell of a month waiting for the score but at least for the time being I have part of my life back. This version of the test was a mindf*** for quite a few people.
 
Thank you sir. It's gonna be a hell of a month waiting for the score but at least for the time being I have part of my life back. This version of the test was a mindf*** for quite a few people.

so, were the practice tests anything like the actual test?
 
so, were the practice tests anything like the actual test?

In a sense yes. Generally the LSATs change ever so slightly from year to year, so there will be some degree of change but this was absurd to me. I'm not sure if it was mostly anxiety but a few Logic Games, where you need to draw diagrams, offered little to no room. Some people think this was a cheap way for LSAC to make the test more difficult. Getting back on topic, practice tests are released original LSATs, so they are not hypothetical but actual previous tests. To give you an idea, I always practice sections within the timed limits to simulate the real thing, and my logic games sections usually go about -2 to -5 per section, about 25 questions per section. This section on the Dec 2010, I had no idea what was going on for most of it. I think I made some good inferences but in general I couldn't believe how much it shook me up, which probably affected my testing too. It also distracted me from gauging how I did on the other sections because that LG section was all I could think about walking out of the test. I'm glad it's over yet a bit disappointed, although I don't know my score yet.
 
As someone who is wrapping up his his second degree from Miami University I must say that I am not happy with my current earning potential, or my wife's for that matter (who has her Master's already). But there are other factors involved like location (Ohio) and the fields we chose to study. I can't blame the education itself.

That being said, I would hate to think of where we would be if we had no education at all. It would pretty much be minimum wage around me, and that's if you could even get 40 hours a week...

Bottom line, putting yourself through school while working full-time (which my wife and I both have done) is hard. I do feel that after spending tens of thousands of dollars and the years of our lives that we did to get that piece of paper it should count for something. In the next couple of years I will see if it was all a waste of time and money, or a wise choice that will make the lives of our children better than our childhoods were. That was the ultimate goal.
 
In the next couple of years I will see if it was all a waste of time and money, or a wise choice that will make the lives of our children better than our childhoods were.

So far, I would say it is the former and not the latter, as least when it comes to the issue of earning potential.
 
It all depends on doing something that is useful or adds value.

To find that something is the hard part formal education notwithstanding.

A real world education beats booklearning hands down.

Now your real education begins.
 
Here is my background:
I have a two-year degree in truck repair (issued 2007), ASE Master Certified with previous hands-on experience. I have also completed a one-year diploma in Business Administration at the same school.

This is my issue:
The last job I was on, my supervisor was intimidated because of my education and he was recruited from within. He acted like I did not know how to do anything, and I do not need a babysitter on any job unless it is specific to one industry that I have not been exposed to.

Now I am looking at working at Fast Food or washing dishes just like I did before I went back to school to further my education. One of the places I applied at asked me "How cheap will you work?" I was not interested in the "Hillbilly Salvage job" he had in mind.

I have no desire to provide $30,000 of my tools and earn $400 a week, McDonalds will pay at least $250 to be a zombie.

Employers want the cheapest, best educated people they can get and some of them even have a Master Degree because there is limited opportunities in some areas of study.

With the economy in the toilet, I have been unable to secure employment doing anything. I can't even find a job shoveling poop!
 
Again, there's nothing wrong with getting a college education.
It's great, especially if you take the opportunity to challenge yourself. If you're there for the sake of learning and not simply getting your diploma with the perceived promise that it'll open up the world to it.

I'm highly critical of the social atmosphere that compels all kids and adults to do so. They put too great an emphasis on college when we would all be better to focus more on Quality high school education (you'll find that most college students are taking remedial math and English courses), and we should be more interested in trade schools and apprenticeships.
 

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