Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Monday, February 27, 2017
Employment for College Grads after the Recovery
Employment for College Grads after the Recovery
According to an Inside Higher Ed article on a new government report, “Four of five students who graduated college in 2008 were able to find some sort of employment in the four years after their graduation, despite entering the work force during the worst of the economic recession, a federal report shows.” This very positive reading of the report has to be put in context. First of all, the study is only looking at people who graduated from four-year institutions, not community colleges or for-profit schools. Second of all, out of the 82% who have jobs, 84% have full-time jobs, so that means that 31% of all of these recent grads with degrees from four-year institutions were either unemployed or worked half time or less. Moreover, 10% of the employed were actually back in school.
One important issue that the report fails to examine is whether these students with bachelor degrees are working at jobs that traditionally require these degrees. We know from general labor trends that over 25% of the people working now who have earned college degrees are working at jobs that used to only require a high school degree or less. The government web site does tells us that 22% of the sample were in jobs not related to their college major, 40% were in jobs closely related to their major, and 31% had employment in jobs somewhat related to their majors.
A major problem with the study is that it relies mostly on self-reporting and a 17,00 person sample that skews white and female. 73% of the respondents were white and 58 were female. Moreover, 73% had graduated before the age of 24. Also, 32% graduated from private universities, and so this sample does not look like most students who are now enrolled in higher education.
Within this rather selective group of graduates (remember less than 60% of the students at these institutions ever graduate), after four years, the median salary for a full-time worker was $46,000 and the median salary for a part-time employee was $20,000. So half of the 69% (34%) of the recent college grads with full-time jobs with bachelor degrees from this selective sample were making less than $46,000 a year, and another 16% were making less than $20,000.
The report also tells us that in four years after graduation, 39% had one job, 34% were on second job, and 28% have had three or more jobs. In other words, there is a high level of job movement, which resulted in the finding that the average student in this sample spent 10 months out of the labor force in four years. We are thus a far way from the opening claim that four out of five recent graduates had jobs. Like so much reporting on employment, general claims have to be analyzed at a much deeper level in order to get the real story. A more accurate summary of this report would say that out of the select group of students who graduated in 2007-8 from four-year institutions, 61% presently had full-time jobs with a median salary of $46,000, while the rest of these graduates were making a median salary of $20,000 or less. Of course, these stats do not include the vast majority of students who are either at community colleges or who will never graduate.
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Friday, February 24, 2017
End College Athletic Scholarships
End College Athletic Scholarships
Good ol Ralph Nader has come up with a really interesting idea in relationship college athletic scholarships. When I was in college I thought student athletes should just get paid, just like any other student working a part time job. I still rather like the idea but it has some problems. It doesn’t adequately deal with college size and the amount of time a sport requires of students. But we do know that scandal after scandal takes place in the present scholarship and athletic student perks. [Major school athletes can put in 50 work weeks in practice.]
Ralph Nader has a simpler idea. He says, just get rid of all athletic scholarships. Wow! He says this would “de-professionalize” college athletes. Hmmm.
Of course, we are all more aware of this by the recent news of wanting to create unions for college athletes as college employees. This has certainly perked public debate.
Nader believes this would help reduce the “win-at-all-costs” mentality in high schools and universities. He thinks it would lessen player playing hurt under pressure to perform.
Nader has support from the Drake Group, an athletic watchdog organization. Even former head of the NCAA agrees that college athletes should be paid.
College athletics is big business. It is even big business in some high school and even grade schools in the country. Have you ever looked at the football stadiums for high schools in Texas?
Allen, TX
Admittedly I am not the greatest sports fan. But I like the idea of sports and games. We play them for fun and the development of skills and some for teamwork. I learned to count playing Parcheesi. But all too often we see coaches railing at the athletes unnecessarily. Even little league has its wacko parents promoting winning over just having fun. We often coddle our good athletes making them seem more important and valuable than other mere students. We push kids too soon and too often risking the health and long term wellbeing.
I wonder where he learned that?
Something needs to be done. Perhaps Nader has a point. I doubt that today’s sports activities and school pride is any better than when we just chose sides and played and had school spirit with unpaid athletes.
Something to ponder.
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