Millions of Gen Z are jobless – are useless university degrees to blame?

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Generation Z, typically defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 (give or take), is a group struggling to find jobs. Statistics show that over 4 million people in this demographic are not in school, training, or work in the US. And while many blame laziness or selectiveness, some experts say the fault lies with universities that offer worthless degrees.

It's estimated that more than 4.3 million young people in the US are classified as NEETs – not in employment, education, or training. The UK is facing a similar situation, where 100,000 more Gen Zs found themselves in this category last year alone.

Worldwide, about a fifth of people aged between 15 and 24 in 2023 are currently NEETs.

In the UK, political commentator, broadcaster, and author Peter Hitchens said much of the blame should be placed on universities offering worthless degrees.

Hitchens said that Gen Z would have been better off becoming apprentices to plumbers or electricians than doing these types of courses.

To find which degrees are less likely to lead to good jobs, or any employment, Georgetown University analyzed wages for 137 college majors. It found that at the entry level, health majors earn $41,000 annually. At the other end of the scale, humanities and liberal arts majors earn $29,000 annually.

Health-related degrees seem like an even better choice these days. Because of generative AI, computing and coding degrees aren't the guarantee of a lucrative career that they used to be, and it's expected that over a million new jobs will be created among home health aides, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners across the next decade. Nurse practitioner is the third-fastest-growing job in the US, with a median annual pay of over $126,260 in 2023.

Some of the degrees less likely to lead to a well-paid job include Ethnic and Gender Studies, Music/Performance Arts, Art History, Fashion Design, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Photography, Sociology, English Literature, Communications, History, Anthropology, Liberal Arts, and Culinary Arts.

It's not just degrees with less obvious career paths that are having an impact on Gen Z's job prospects. AI is having a big effect, and the rising costs of everyday goods are pricing some young people out of work, leaving them unable to afford transport, commuting, or other essentials.

There's the other argument, of course. Some claim many Gen Zers refuse to take jobs that they consider beneath them, or expect to walk straight into a well-paid position rather than working their way up from the bottom.

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Millions of Gen Z are jobless – are useless university degrees to blame?

 

[RudyBob]

Why yes. And many companies won't hire you if you have a degree from _______ because the grades are inflated. 80% A's ? If you really want to know how bad it is find a few Victor Davis Hanson videos. Stanford has as many administrators as students.

 

[lonetac]

Several reasons.

1. Companies want a master degree in what it specializes in and want to pay someone min wage to work that job. it cost the college kid 100s of 1000s of dollars in predatory loans to make others rich and it doesnt lead to a paying job even if its a good degree.
2. College is too expensive. Folks are realizing that college doesnt gaurantee wealth or success because wages are not going up and companies dont want to pay.

College cost has gone up 100x in the past 30 years and wages have remained stagnant. Degrees are only a way to secure a lifetime of debt now instead of a lifetime of wealth they used to offer.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Worthless degrees have always been worthless.

A big issue nowadays is there aren't really as many "entry level" jobs where a company will put effort in to train you up themselves.

Basically anything that isn't flipping burgers is going to ask for not just a bachelor's but 5 years of related work experience as well.

 

[lonetac]

Worthless degrees have always been worthless.

A big issue nowadays is there aren't really as many "entry level" jobs where a company will put effort in to train you up themselves.

Basically anything that isn't flipping burgers is going to ask for not just a bachelor's but 5 years of related work experience as well.

and they will pay you slightly above min wage for that degree and 5 years experience.

 

[Beerfloat]

Why yes. And many companies won't hire you if you have a degree from _______ because the grades are inflated. 80% A's ? If you really want to know how bad it is find a few Victor Davis Hanson videos. Stanford has as many administrators as students.

No thanks, VDH is a loathsome whiner. Still, he seems to have gained notoriety with some types of people, despite his Humanities degree. ell oh ell

 

[wiyosaya]

Why yes. And many companies won't hire you if you have a degree from _______ because the grades are inflated. 80% A's ?

Nothing new, Rudy, as that's been going on for at least 40-years. It's called "Grading on a scale" and works by taking the averages of scores on tests and homework across all students taking a particular course. Top-notch universities utilize this method. I know of one, for sure, however, I'm not going to name it. Let's just say that it was, at one time, among the top-20 universities in the US. (I don't know its current ranking.)

The real gravity of it is that if the highest score on an exam is 10%, and you get 10%, you got an "A" even though you only got one-in-ten questions correct.

 

[The Talking Tech]

And to make matters worse with Trump cutting jobs by the hundreds of thousands don't expect this situation to get any better.

 

[wiyosaya]

and they will pay you slightly above min wage for that degree and 5 years experience.

In some places, people can make more from the tips for delivering Pizza.

 

[sagbobbit]

My take as a current engineering student at a state school -

1. Yeah, there's LOTS of humanities students, and I think they're mostly aware they're not about to make any money off their degree. The ones I know with a plan mostly plan on becoming teachers. The others are pretty sure they'll "figure it out." Too many people don't understand the concept of debt and are already loading up multiple credit cards, not to mention student debt.

2. IDRK about grade inflation; at least for my program companies are far more interested in your skills/activities/accomplishments, and look at grades to make sure you have a pulse.

3. College is for sure too expensive. That being said, I feel like part of the blame lies with students who choose expensive, faraway schools (like students who choose humanities) just because they're selective, when there are plenty of state schools with solid programs and 90%+ acceptance rates. Everyone I know has at least one scholarship, and I know multiple people on nearly a full ride, either due to need or academic performance. But saying that a degree is useless is ridiculous; while it may not be a "guarantee of wealth" it is certainly the only way to many if not most high-paying careers, and whole industries are not about to blow away and never hire again just because we're in an almost-recession and not hiring as strongly.

Tldr it's the millenials' fault because they invented choosing stupid degrees at stupid schools /s

 

[mgwerner]

While universities are much to blame with offering garbage degrees, those universities' employable degree programs have to deal with the product of the public education system and poor parenting. Education is the only sector of the economy I know of that does not allow the refusal of defective raw materials. Whiny kids with helicopter parents, none of whom can critically think, the students believing they should be paid upper management salaries with no experience and a grade-inflated degree, make employers shy away from recent graduates.

 

[SRB]

Nothing new, Rudy, as that's been going on for at least 40-years. It's called "Grading on a scale" and works by taking the averages of scores on tests and homework across all students taking a particular course. Top-notch universities utilize this method. I know of one, for sure, however, I'm not going to name it. Let's just say that it was, at one time, among the top-20 universities in the US. (I don't know its current ranking.)

The real gravity of it is that if the highest score on an exam is 10%, and you get 10%, you got an "A" even though you only got one-in-ten questions correct.

Actually, that's not how it used to work. The term back then was grading on a curve, not a scale, specifically, a bell curve. While the curve did shift up and down the scale, it didn't result it everyone getting 90% or better. The vast majority scored in the middle, with the higher and lower scores tapering down to very few students.

This also would not mitigate the current trend of "dumbing down the test" so that a turnip can score an A.

 

[SRB]

And to make matters worse with Trump cutting jobs by the hundreds of thousands don't expect this situation to get any better.

Perhaps, but is the idea of employing people who do not work or produce just so they can have a job any kind of solution?

 

[psycros]

And to make matters worse with Trump cutting jobs by the hundreds of thousands don't expect this situation to get any better.

This is a tech site. Please take your political nonsense elsewhere.

 

[BogdanR]

As a part time pro photographer I used to tell this joke:
Q: what is the difference between a pro photographer and a medium pizza?
A: the pizza can feed a family of 4.

 

[psyte]

This is a tech site. Please take your political nonsense elsewhere.

FYI this post is about unemployment, not tech.

 

[human7]

The real gravity of it is that if the highest score on an exam is 10%, and you get 10%, you got an "A" even though you only got one-in-ten questions correct.

Happened in a class I took, well almost. The score was 50%, not 10%, and that counted as an A on the final exam. But it was the professor's first semester teaching (they were a freshly minted PhD), and more importantly, the test (and class) was entirely on math proofs and reasoning, so quite hard to begin with. I thought it was a fair adjustment, not because "only getting half the proofs right is good", but because it's difficult to calibrate the difficulty of that kind of test, where "how you got to the answer" and judging how well a student can reason, as well as giving credit to sound reasoning in later steps of a proof even if a student made a mistake early on, isn't easy (I'm sure the professor has gotten a lot better at it with experience).

Anyways, it does depend on context. I'm not sure how often it happens where grades are truly inflated though.

 

[jbc029]

Tldr it's the millenials' fault because they invented choosing stupid degrees at stupid schools /s

Hey now. We Gen X absolutely had this, too. But we were ok with calling out the underwater basket-weaving degrees as stupid and worthless and recognized that, if folks got upset at that, it was *their* problem for not realizing it. It wasn't up to the rest of the world to find value in their bad choices.

 

[Dimitriid]

Some people are already closer to the actual answers: Yes some careers choices have been worthless for long enough than millennials and gen xers were caught in dead end ones so that's not new. The loans are far more predatory now but that's more of a long term issue to finding a job post graduation so that's not entirely to blame either.

However somebody already mention how your average graduate can still expect to make more delivering Pizzas than doing entry level positions for next-to-no money in what essentially boils down to internships that pay a token minimum wage job but require fairly specialized degrees.

The answer it's simple yet complicated: Gen Zers are not supposed to be looking for steady income, they're supposed to just be hired guns not just doing menial delivery jobs but doing work as freelancers or at best temp positions instead. Everybody is supposed to join a gig instead of expecting steady, long term employment and that's why most can be counted as 'unemployed' simply because gig-economy jobs are supposed to be sporadic and sparse, and yes you're supposed to be an uber driver in between say, coding freelance gigs or whatever your career might actually be.

The sooner the older generations like Millennials and Gen Xers realize this, the sooner they'll find out they have just about zero chance to actually retire and will be thrown into the same gig economy once they little by little find the permanent positions they now have to be basically gone. If you haven't figured this out and already have substantial savings, own property or are close to done paying that up, etc. Guess what? It's already too late for you and this 'There's just no jobs for Gen Zer' will catch up with you in the next 10-15 years tops.

 

[wiyosaya]

Perhaps, but is the idea of employing people who do not work or produce just so they can have a job any kind of solution?

So are you implying that those being laid off in the current round of government layoffs don't work?

If so, do you have proof other than because "they" said so?

 

[redgarl]

Beside degrees in law, engineering and medicine, most of those degrees are indeed useless and are a scam.

 

[pnntmp]

The unemployable Gen Z's are victims of wokism.

The woke destroyed education as a whole, not only the universities.
The 'no child left behind' policies, the drastic lowering of standards, participation trophies, the destruction of AP classes because they're 'racist' and the treating of failures as victims of something other than themselves ... all that, along with dozens of other idiocies created a generation where too many kids are entitled whiny brats incapable of doing something useful or even taking care of themselves.
Unfortunately, part of the horrible damage done to so many young people is irreversible.

 

[EvilRebar]

1. Americans still believe that "doing what you love" with a matching degree is a good game plan. But many things that people love are really, really hard to live off of, and inflated college costs make a weak degree an anchor.

We need to be telling more kids that things like voice acting, photography, and commenting on ethnic and gender developments are perfectly good hobbies and minors to pair with something that pays the bills.

2. Much of the low-level grunt work that I did right out of school has been offshored and automated, with the remainder targeted by AI applications. We've gained efficiency but have reduced the entry level foothold for anyone beyond the cream of the crop invited on a development track.

3. Technology has made knowledge work more geographically fungible and broken up the local monopolies domestic graduates had on roles. You're now competing against billions of ambitious people in places like China and India with a lower cost of living.

Parents and others should be very rational and very direct about the odds of success in various paths. Just because you were your school play's lead doesn't mean that you have a chance on Hollywood, as one example. My only hope is that the current 30 and 40-something parents are cognizant of the landscape when deciding how hard to push education and which areas make sense.

 

[EvilRebar]

The real gravity of it is that if the highest score on an exam is 10%, and you get 10%, you got an "A" even though you only got one-in-ten questions correct.

Engineering exams were generally on a curve, and the engineers I went to school with aren't designing things that fall apart. A curve can help compensate for your research professor YOLOing the exam content for undergrads. I got an A on some exams with a 60%, because that was the best.

School tests your capacity to learn and utilize tools; it's less about walking out the door remembering the details of every course.

 

[EvilRebar]

Beside degrees in law, engineering and medicine, most of those degrees are indeed useless and are a scam.

Law is a scam if you don't graduate from a good school with decent grades. A lot of entry-level work like scraping documents for discovery is now software, and firms are managing expense more than before 2008.

Basically the expense is fixed but the return is highly variable. Law as a fall-back for someone who didn't find a job after their bachelors is not recommended.