Yes, that’s career advice courtesy of New York’s Michael Bloomberg: the Big Apple’s media mogul-turned-billionaire mayor who recently led an unsuccessful campaign to ban oversized sugary drinks in his city. Now after making a name for himself as the nanny of Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg is apparently already considering another career change — this time as guidance counselor.During his weekly radio show on Friday, Bloomberg shared some words with listeners looking for career advice. It’s no secret that jobs are hard to come by nowadays, and the amount of debt brought on by unpaid college loans now surpasses what Americans owe on their credit cards. Mayor Bloomberg offered his input on the issue during last week’s show, and said students who aren’t destined for the top of the class should consider another option that’s not so costly.“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” Bloomberg said. “Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College – being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal.”“You don’t spend … four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income,” the mayor added.Later, Bloomberg explained that some vocational jobs — like plumbing — won’t ever been outsourced overseas or replaced by machines.“It’s hard to farm that out … and it’s hard to automate that,” he said.One day later, the mayor had similar words for the graduating class of Ohio’s Kenyon College. According to Fox News, Bloomberg told graduates on Saturday that “I know that today’s job market is not easy,” and acknowledged, “…today, if I interview a recent college grad who tells me he or she spent the summer curing cancer, bringing peace to the Middle East, and writing the Great American Novel – I’m impressed.Again, however, the mayor said dreams of being successful shouldn’t be dashed just because college isn’t in the cards. “I’m more likely to hire the person who spent his or her summer working days, nights, and weekends for an auto-body shop or a construction company in order to pay tuition or help with family bills,” Bloomberg told the crowd.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for a manual worker like a plumber in 2010 was roughly $47,000, a good $15,000 a year annually more than other occupational workers pull in. And as MSN pointed out, recent college grads aren’t guaranteed much more than hefty student loans: for 2011 graduates, the average debt went up 5.3 percent from the year before. Bloomberg, on the other hand, was estimated to be worth $27 billion as of this year. … Read More
UK hires PIs to track down $50mn in non-resident grad debts
Officials warned they are ready to take the graduates to court if they do not repay the loans.”With British students paying more in tuition than ever before, many people will not understand how it is possible that foreign students from the EU are able to turn up to the UK, run up taxpayer-backed debts and then leave. Many of these students will never contribute a penny in income tax to the UK and will be incredibly expensive to track down,” Tory MP Andrew Percy told the Independent.UK graduates owe a staggering £28 million in college loan debt. In the past five years, the SLC has paid out over £117 million to the EU students. However, the figures revealed that by last year, repayments on £52 million of those loans were either cut short or had never even started.The total owed by non-paying foreign borrowers stands at £41.3 million; those believed to be in arrears owe £9.1 million; those thought to be overseas and ‘fallen into arrears’ have borrowed £1.6 million.According to the figures, students from Cyprus were the most in the red, having borrowed £24 million and paying back only £15.5 million. Graduates from France, Germany and Poland racked up debts totaling over £10 million. Irish graduates owe the SLC £3.7 million, and Greek ones owe £4.3 million.According to some MPs, strict controls should have been placed on the students to avoid this situation.Labour MP Frank Field recently promised to order the National Audit Office to further investigate how overseas students are being monitored after leaving UK universities and the country.“The situation has turned into a grants system for many EU students,” Field told the newspaper.Despite official warnings that up to one in four will never repay a penny, the SLC has been challenged with tracking down EU graduates and get them repay their debts.The SLC, set up 24 years ago to provide loans and grants to students studying in the UK, has recently introduced a new system aimed at tightening controls on repayment rates. Now, as soon as the organization is informed that an EU student will be leaving the UK, graduates are required to complete an overseas assessment form. Those who fail to respond within two weeks are issued a fixed loan repayment schedule. If they do not stick to it, they fall into the category of being in arrears, and become subject to “collections processes.” … Read More
Student debt, job market creating ‘generation of wage slavery’
Poll results released last week reveal that 41 per cent of US college graduates from the past two years are working in positions that do not require a degree, according to a survey of 1,005 former students from consulting firm Accenture. Another 11 per cent of respondents said they are unemployed, seven per cent of which have not had a job since graduation. Almost two-thirds of those polled said they expected to need additional training before entering a career, while nearly fifty per cent believed their studies did not equip them for the working world. National unemployment remains stagnant at 7.6 per cent and graduates of 2011 and 2012 will soon be forced to compete with the graduating class of 2013 in the job hunt. Of those polled, 42 per cent expected to enroll in graduate school. Only 18 per cent of the class of 2013 thought finishing graduate school would be necessary. While useless school curricula and scarce job opportunities are the most obvious targets of blame for society’s disenfranchised youth, the cost of education and its corollary, student debt, have crippled an entire generation. Americans now owe more money on student loans than on credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as quoted by USA Today.Recent research has showed that students are borrowing twice as much as they did ten years ago (after adjusting for inflation). Lawmakers in Congress have given lenders, including the government, unprecedented collection power far more powerful than mortgage brokers and credit card companies. And student debt is one of the only kinds that can’t be unloaded in bankruptcy. “Students who borrow too much end up delaying life-cycle events such as buying a car, buying a home, getting married, and having children,” Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, told USA Today. That assessment, echoed by other experts, has financial forecasters wondering if the US economy’s slow recovery might only be temporary. Nick Pardini, an investor and financial blogger, told the paper the current climate is “going to create a generation of wage slavery.” Two-thirds of 2011’s college graduates completed their higher education owing money, with debt ranging up to an average $26,600 per person – a five per cent increase from the year before, according to the Associated Press.Still, college grads are in far superior shape than those without a degree, as 19.1 per cent of people with only a high school diploma were unemployed in 2011. “In these tough times, a college degree is still your best bet for getting a job and decent pay,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success. “But, as debt levels rise, fear of loans can prevent students from getting the education they need to succeed.” Despite the gloomy outlook for young people there is cause for hope overall. The US economy added 165,000 jobs in April, a boost from the monthly average of 138,000 over the six months prior. The growth could indicate that the slashed federal budget “does not mean recession,” John Silvia, a chief economist at Wells Fargo, told the Associated Press. … Read More
College Grads: It’s a Different Economy
Categories: Economy and Finance, Editor’s ChoiceThe economy has changed in structural ways; preparing for the old economy is a sure path to disappointment.(Read more…) … Read More
Data Science Careers Take Off
In the last few years, dozens of programs under a variety of names have sprung up in response to the excitement about Big Data, not to mention the six-figure salaries for some recent graduates. … Read More
Americans Who Say Immigrants Benefit the Economy Are More Likely To Support Reform
According to the latest ;Reason-Rupe
poll, a majority of Americans (55 percent) support offering
legal residency and an eventual path to citizenship to unauthorized
immigrants currently living in the United States if they meet
certain requirements. This number is far higher if one says
immigrants help the economy: 73 percent favor residency and path to
citizenship. Americans who perceive immigration’s economic benefits
also support raising visa caps for high skilled and low skilled
future immigrants (52 percent). Overall, 40 percent of Americans
support raising visa caps for high skilled and low skilled future
immigrants.
In contrast 27 percent of Americans support deportation of
unauthorized immigrants. Among those who say immigrants hurt the
economy, a plurality (45 percent) support deportation, while 34
percent favor residency and a citizenship pathway. Americans
skeptical of immigration’s benefits are also 20 points less likely
to favor raising the visa cap for high-skilled and low-skilled
workers with only about 30 percent in support.
Overall, Americans are evenly divided over whether immigrants
grow (40 percent) or hurt (40 percent) the US economy; few (15
percent) believe it has no impact. A majority (52 percent) worries
immigrant take jobs away from native-born Americans, 42 percent do
not share this concern. These economic worries are highly
predictive of support for reform but may also be indicative of
individuals’ underlying feelings toward newcomers.
The Young and More Educated Perceive Immigration Benefits
Younger Americans and those
with more education are more likely to perceive benefits from
immigration.
A majority of college graduates (53 percent) and those with post
graduate degrees (68 percent) share optimism of immigration’s
economic benefits, but a little more than a quarter of those with
high school diplomas share this view. Those with postgraduate
degrees are 17 points more likely to favor a path to citizenship
than high school graduates.
Majorities of millennials believe immigrants grow the economy,
but only about 35 percent of those aged 35 and older agree. Less
surprisingly, millennials are more likely to favor residency and
path to citizenship than those over thirty (60 percent to 53
percent).
White Americans are more skeptical of the economic benefits of
immigration. Forty-six percent of Caucasians think immigrants hurt
the economy and 60 percent say immigration takes jobs away from
native-born Americans. Latinos disagree: 56 percent say immigration
helps the economy and 59 percent say immigrants do not take away
jobs. African-Americans are in the middle: a plurality (47 percent)
say immigrants bolster the economy but 52 percent say they also
take jobs away from native-born Americans.
There are also regional disparities over whether immigrants
strengthen the economy. Americans in the Northeast and West are far
less concerned about the effects of immigration than are
Midwesterners and Southerners. Pluralities in the Northeast (48
percent) and West (43 percent) say immigrants bolster the economy
and are evenly divided over whether immigrants take away jobs.
However 57 percent of Midwesterners and 60 percent of Southerners
say immigrants take away jobs. A plurality of those in the Midwest
(45 percent) worry immigrants harm the economy, while the South is
evenly divided. ;
Read the full report here: ;Reason-Rupe Feb
2013 Full Immigration Findings
Nationwide telephone poll conducted February 21-25 2013
interviewed 1002 adults on both mobile (502) and landline (500)
phones, with a margin of error +/- 3.8%. Columns may not add up to
100% due to rounding. ;Full poll results found ;here. ;Full
methodology can be found ;here. ;A
full analysis of the poll’s immigration results can be
found ;here. ; … Read More
Hundreds of thousands of college graduates work minimum wage jobs
College-educated Americans are being thrust into poverty while increasingly finding that their degrees have no value in the work force. About 280,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees and 37,000 with advanced degrees were working minimum-wage jobs in 2012, the Labor Department reports. The number of college-educated Americans working such jobs has risen 70 percent in the past 10 years. It is also double the number who worked minimum-wage jobs before the Great Recession.In 2002, college graduates made up 13 percent of all hourly workers. In 2012, they made up 17.8 percent.Overall, college grads typically earn more than their non-educated counterparts, but this gap is growing smaller as more Americans are finding themselves financially insecure. Nearly 50 percent of college graduates from the class of 2010 are now working jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, while 38 percent of these graduates are working jobs that don’t even require a high school diploma, according to the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.Research conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the economy’s decline has largely pushed low-skilled labor workers out of the job market completely, while providing highly educated Americans with minimum wage jobs.“After two decades of growth in the demand for occupations high in cognitive tasks, the US economy reversed and experienced a decline in the demand for such skills,” the paper says. “The demand for cognitive tasks was to a large extent the motor of the US labor market prior to 2000. Once this motor reversed, the employment rate in the US economy started to contract.”Meanwhile, debt from student loans continues to rise, plaguing graduates with consistent payments that they struggle to make with their meager hourly wages. The Pew Research Center found that in 2010, 22.4 million American households, or 19 percent, were dealing with college debt. Higher tuition costs and rising college enrollment have increased this number by 15 percent since 2007, while the value of a degree continues to decline.Earlier this month, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association reported that the student debt crisis may become a dangerous ‘new normal’.“In the ‘new normal,’ retirement and health care costs simultaneously drive up the cost of higher education, and compete with education for limited public resources,” the report states. “The ‘new normal’ no longer expects to see a recovery of state support for higher education such as occurred repeatedly in the last half of the 20th century. The ‘new normal’ expects students and their families to continue to make increasingly greater financial sacrifices in order to complete a postsecondary education. The ‘new normal’ expects schools and colleges to find ways of increasing productivity and absorb ever-larger budget cuts, while increasing degree production without, we hope, compromising quality.”And when the Obama administration boasts of job growth, it’s usually low-wage jobs that are added to the economy: the National Employment Law Project reports that low-wage occupations accounted for about 25 percent of job losses during the recession, but made up 58 percent of jobs added since the recession came to an end. Mid-wage jobs, on the other hand, made up 60 percent of jobs lost during the recession and only 22 percent of those that have since been added.In order to acquire jobs that pay as low as minimum wage, Americans are continuously being forced to shovel out tens of thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – to fund a college education, despite its shrinking value. … Read More
