Education and Jobs
Today all over the world, there are high number of unemployed college graduates. This is a devastating situation for million young and full of hope college graduates. Some of them blame the global economy while others insist that the financial crisis is the cause but according to the industry report, the main cause is the inefficiency of the current education systems that could not change fast enough to meet the needs of the job market. Unemployed college graduates are often told: "You are not qualified.”; “You do not have the skills”; “You do not have the experience.” and even “You are over qualified.” In the past, companies used to train college graduates and help them learn the skills they needed on the job, but today most companies stop provide training because it is an expense and after training, many often left for better jobs in another company.
The job market is always dictated by the law of supply and demand. Today not only supply has exceed demand but also the quality of training is being questioned. Many companies complain that current graduates do not have the skills that they need. A company owner told newspapers: “We cannot hire new graduates, they may learn a lot of theories but do not have any practical abilities. The current supply and demand are completely “out of synch” in this competitive market. Colleges should change their education models and focus on few areas that are practical than offer many fields that are useless. Students must understand the unemployment issues when enter college and select the right schools with the right trainings and the right field of study; else they will be unemployed for a long time.”
The situation is getting worst when college graduates have to compete with more experienced workers for a few positions. Millions of people lost their jobs during the past recession and they are aggressively looking for jobs. A bank executive told the newspapers: “It takes several months or even years to gain enough experience to work in finance and loans. For every job opening in these areas, we receive hundred applications from people with many years of experience so there is no reason to hire college graduates in business, finance or banking since we have to train them. It probably takes five to seven more years before we would hiring graduates since there are many experienced candidates available.” Currently college graduates are forced to accept positions that paid much less than their qualification. Many people with college degrees are working on jobs that do not require a college education at all; if the situation does not change they will get stuck to those jobs for the rest of their lives because each year there will be new college graduates with better skills and knowledge. If the employment market is bad for college graduates, less educated people will face much more difficulty in finding employment.
According to several studies, most college students do not receive proper guidance in choosing their field of study. Most schools stay neutral and allow students to make decision on their own. A school counselor explained: “As college students, they should know what they want; we cannot tell them what to do.” Others provide guidance but often lead students toward their direction rather than helping students to be informed. A counselor admitted: “We cannot advise them to focus on a few “hot fields of study” then what are we going to do with other fields? If every student wants to study computer science than we do not have enough classroom and teachers to teach and what are we going to do with professors who teach literature or history? We have to balance everything to fill our classrooms.” Even with good advices, many college students often ignore them as they want to enjoy their lives in college first. Many believe that they are adults and can do anything that they want. Only when they get to the third or fourth year then they begin to think about their future but it is too late.
Currently governments are trying to solve this unemployment problem by develop plans that give graduates some trainings to gain work experience. They convince companies to provide “special internship” positions for graduates for about six months. During that time, the government will pay a small salary every month so graduates can learn the needed skills. After the internship ends, the company may offer jobs to outstanding interns. This plan is very popular in Germany, Denmark, Japan, S. Korea, and China. About 45% of graduates do have jobs after the internship and companies also benefit from having skilled workers as the training is paid for by government. However, this plan only work for graduates who study in the fields that company need as they get exposure to real works and gain experience. It does not work with students who study certain fields that cannot be applied in the industry.
To solve the bigger unemployment problem, some governments are actively restricting universities from offering certain fields of study that they deemed inappropriate for employment. For example state universities cannot have more than 50 students in certain field of study each year. This plan works well in countries like China, Japan but faces difficulty in Europe as many schools are independent and do not want government to interfere. The fact that some graduates in certain fields of study do not have problem of finding jobs as many countries are facing skills shortages in certain technology areas so skills development has been proposed as an important solution to solve unemployment. Today Germany and Denmark are noted as two countries that adequately solve this problem by having plans to retrain college graduates in certain technical skills and help keep unemployment down while its European neighbors like France, Italy have no such plan in place and suffer higher rates of college unemployment.
A German executive explained: “The unemployment problem among college graduates requires effort between educators, businesses, and government to correct. It is essential for our country's economy and we cannot let it go to waste. Our solution is to retrain many college graduates in the areas that are needed such as computing technology and medical fields. If college graduates cannot find good job related to their field of study, they must go back to school at learn another skills. They may need twelve to sixteen months of training for a second degree in science, technology but they will have jobs. Every student should be given proper career instruction and guidance as well as the opportunity to develop new skills before they even graduate from high school. Companies should increasingly partner with high schools, vocational schools, and universities to recruit, train, and hire them. There should be a national effort to emphasize industries with labor shortages and actively developing the human capital needed to fill these positions. If students are more aware of which industries have labor shortages, which fields of study are no longer needed, the number of students graduating in certain field of study might “self-correct”. Government can aid in this process by offering incentives to train these people through tax breaks and similar training programs. The current unemployment situation among college students is the inefficiency and ineffectively of a “loose” employment market and poor human capital development. In order to solve this problem, action must now be taken to put young people to work and prepare future generations for competition in the global market.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
