Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Dispossessed


1 in 2 New Graduates Are Jobless or UnderemployedBy Hope Yen, Associated Press 24 April 12 http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/315-19/11110-1-in-2-new-graduates-are-jobless-or-underemployed

[Excerpt] "...An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees....

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position - teachers, college professors and accountants..."
[end excerpt]

Majia here: I believe in the educational value of a college degree, but am truly dismayed that tuition has become so unaffordable and that so many students must transform themselves into debt peons in order to earn a college degree.

The $1 trillion dollars outstanding in student loan debt is an unfair burden that past generations of college students were not shackled with: Imagine being a debt-burdened college student facing such a bleak job market.

When I started San Diego State University in the early 1980s, college tuition cost $265 dollars a semester. I would not have gone to college if it had cost $4,000. a semester because I simply did not have the money. 

I benefited from the state of California's societal investment in the future.

Today our state, federal, and local governments are dis-investing in the population. Our state and local governments are broken and bankrupt.

http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/neofeudalism-book-prospectus.html

Our national government's priorities increasingly reflect the agenda of transnational corporations and the military-policing-surveillance complex that preys upon and subverts public purpose.

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