- Even scientists are jobless as the higher education bubble comes closer to bursting
- Posted By:
- Kathy H
- Posted On:
- 10-Jul-2012
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According to a recent Washington Post article, even Stanford educated PhDs, especially in the field of chemistry cannot find lucrative jobs and forced to make do with low salaried office temp jobs. Laboratory scientist jobs are very few today and there are too many applicants. There is no guarantee that youth who opt for PhD will be able to find employment soon.
In petroleum engineering, computer engineering and other high-tech areas, plenty of jobs are available, lab bound scientists find themselves at a loss in the tight market. These are the scientists seeking to discover in the fields of medicine, chemistry and biology.
The number of citizens graduating from colleges does not determine the success of a country. Robert Samuelson is an economic columnist in the Washington Post. He notes that workforces in certain countries have a much smaller college degree-holder share as compared to our country and their economies are robust too. Some countries have high rate of college degree attainment and lag behind our country economically.
Job market for liberal arts majors are much worse than for science grads. At least science grads have the opportunity to get into jobs in other fields as employers give them preference for the rigorous education they have completed. Other majors such as gender studies which are politicized offer much lesser opportunities for students to find a well-paying job. This is because such fields offer easier grading and show nothing about the critical thinking skills and work ethics of students.
Ideologies of students are usually shared by professors in politicized majors. It is but natural for them to give their students high marks for carrying on their ideological propaganda in the campus through mindless parroting.
Recently a lot of students with master’s degree were hired by the Wall Street investment firm. Most of them were from streams such as finance, business and computer science. A few of them were science graduates and no one from the liberal arts majors was hired.
In recent years, many Americans who attend college do so carrying a great burden of student loans. Most of them have ended up with jobs that require no skills. This means, they can perform competently in the job even with a school diploma.
In our country, more than five thousand janitors have advanced degrees. President Obama’s policies only help add numbers to the already 17 million Americans who are stuck with useless college degrees.
Recently, rules have been passed by the Education Department that forces a hike in tuition fee in the for-profit, low-cost colleges. Our President has initiated a few changes recently that have been responsible for default by thousands of borrowers, led to screw-ups in paperwork for those saddled with loans. Since December, the number of defaulters has doubled.
The administration is also making efforts to cut back on vocational education. This is a bad decision as vocational education leads to high demand skilled blue-collar jobs that pay well. There are many vacancies in this sector that require thousands of employees.