For Many, a Grad-School Stint Doesn't Pay Off in Job Market

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575342751927334436.html

by cwan • 16 years ago

32 28 16 years ago

online.wsj.com

cageface3• 16 years ago

Even MIT grads are having trouble? That surprises me. There seems to be a lot of work for web coding monkeys. Are people just being stupidly pedantic about requiring X+ years of experience in random trivial technology Y?

qq662• 16 years ago

For the MIT graduates, it's not as much "finding a job" as "finding a job that they will take." Their standards are pretty high and in some markets, the downward expectations-adjustment process takes some time.

Also, as an MIT graduate myself, I can say that there are people who have Master's in Engineering in Computer Science and can't even be a code monkey.

cageface3• 16 years ago

Way to shatter my illusions! I thought you were all lisp gurus that could code an NLP processor in 10 lines of code.

I suppose I'd have pretty high job expectations with a master's from MIT too but I'd still rather be working than unemployed.

nickpinkston2• 16 years ago

While not extremely glaring, this is just another hint of the education bubble waiting to burst in years to come.

http://chronicle.com/article/Will-Higher-Education-Be-the/44...

enjo3• 16 years ago

Is it? The argument around an 'education bubble' seems to be more around two things:

1) Students racking up enormous debt in esoteric disciplines that don't directly translate to jobs. 2) An absolute deluge of students in certain fields (like 'marketing') from thousands of universities that effectively drag everyone down to the mean. Since a degree is so common it ceases to be a unique differentiator...making it worthless. The 'bubble' here is in the perception of utility for degrees meaning kids will abandon college for other paths.

Here we have a MIT grad in a hugely in-demand field that can't (or won't) find a job. My hunch is that she actually can find a job, she just lacks the qualifications that she thinks she has. She probably needs to take a lower-responsibility job and actually build those skills... that doesn't mean her degree isn't a great investment (it probably is), it just means she's approaching this from a very unrealistic perspective.

nickpinkston2• 16 years ago

I agree that a lot of this is her being unrealistic / overachieving / etc., but I think we're going to see a lot more of this to come.

More telling though is the fact that they framed it in education bubble terms, not as much recession terms, which perhaps shows the media's ethos to be friendly to the concept - at least the WSJ.

gaius• 16 years ago

Yes the key quote is

She landed a good job with a consulting firm, but decided to go to the London School of Economics in 2008 to learn more about climate change

How is turning down a good job then complaining about being out of work reasonable behavior? Is there any demand for graduates with a MA in Climate Change? Did she even research that?

fleitz2• 16 years ago

The nice part about Canada is we have federally sponsored jobs programs in the IT sector exclusively for those with degrees so they don't face competition from those with out higher education.

enjo3• 16 years ago

How is that a nice thing? Why shouldn't you have to compete on fair and level ground with folks just because you have a piece of paper?

*note: I don't have a degree.

ronnier• 16 years ago

I agree with you, and I have a masters in computer science.

fleitz2• 16 years ago

It was meant to be sarcastic. I don't have a degree either. It's especially ridiculous when you consider the public resources that go into providing higher education.

sdfghj• 16 years ago

But to make up for it, you have Engineer-In-Training in charge of PhD physicists because physics isn't a 'profession'

aduric• 16 years ago

Not everything is about how much extra x% wage you can pull by going to grad school. I'll admit that that was my thinking when I initially decided to do a masters but in my second year now, I realise the incredible amount of knowledge and experience I gained. After undergrad I thought I could take on the world. I was actually surprised that I couldn't get a job at the all the cool high-tech companies. Only now do I realise how dumb I was. Only now can I safely say that I can do the job that is required.

duckpunch• 16 years ago

> After undergrad I thought I could take on the world … Only now can I safely say that I can do the job that is required.

Given that history, would it not be wise to complete a PhD to make sure you're not having the same mistaken thought once more?

ww520• 16 years ago

Somehow I read the title as Grade-School Stint.

known2• 16 years ago

Education system should ideally create employers and not employees.

crpatino• 16 years ago

Why is that? Would you like to run a company that employed mostly uneducated people? More over, would you like to be part of an economy where most available goods/services were the product of unskilled labor? What about shopping around amongst an appalling number of undifferentiated providers?

The "we educate entrepreneurs" is an abdication of the higher education establishment's mission. It profits by producing a bunch of graduates without regards for the needs of society. This includes not only the contents of the curriculum, but the yearly amount of graduates as well. It is a bubble in the making, or so it seems.

known2• 16 years ago

Wondering why Govt is not offering software development services for small businesses?

dmd• 16 years ago

Data point: In 1999, I was making $60k doing entry-level sysadmin work at a major pharma. Now it's 2010, and I have a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in cognitive neuroscience, and I'm making ... $60k again. (I like my job a whole lot better though.)

robryan• 16 years ago

The more I read about grad school the more I can see that it's not something you want to do in the hope of landing a better paying job when you get out.

As people have mentioned to the sense of entitlement of a masters graduate from a top uni are probably keeping them out of the job market to. Unless the narrow field you researched is exactly what your applying to do at a company experience is probably going to look better.

For Many, a Grad-School Stint Doesn't Pay Off in Job Market

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