Once thought of as the key to premium earnings and better job selection for recent graduates, the bachelor’s degree was deemed a valued commodity for entrance into the labor market. However, a study released today indicated that the baccalaureate program might not hold its preliminary value, as the quantity of recent college graduates has grown far faster than the amount of available “bachelor-degreed” jobs.
The report, conducted by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), attributed the large amount of underemployed, recent college graduates to the economical premise of a lacking supply-and-demand flow in education and the workforce.
With a total of 41.7 million employed, recent college grads, 37 percent are working in jobs that require a high school diploma and 11 percent have secured jobs that require only an associate’s degree. Although recent college graduates—in general—experienced a disadvantage entering the labor market, those graduates from more elite, private schools were able to navigate their way into jobs that more appropriately suited their education credentials.
“I think those who are most impacted by this are those from lower-income families,” suggested Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University and director of CCAP.
“They’re the ones who end up going to these second-rate colleges and universities, and they’re the ones who have higher dropout rates and they’re the ones who have to borrow more to finance the wages of their schools. They’re the ones, because they weren’t able to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or even Hopkins, are more liable to get bartending jobs, janitorial jobs and taxi-driving jobs and will, unfortunately, carry the largest burden,” Vedder explained.
Because the college degree is often perceived as screening devices for employers, according to the study, graduates of elite, private universities benefit, as they are “perceived to be a cut above the average college graduate attending a second- or third-tier institution.” As a result, they oftentimes receive the most selective and competitive jobs allotted for recent graduates.
The reality, illustrated by Vedder and the CCAP study, suggested that the majority of available jobs are not demanding of higher education. Thus, jobs that are typically filled by those with lower levels of education attainment such as retail salespersons, cashiers, office clerks, customer service, and maintenance specialists, oftentimes have attracted recent grads that carry less specialized experience. The 24.6 percent of bachelor-degreed individuals working in retail, the 10.2 percent working as cashiers, and the 14.3 percent working as waiters or waitresses better capture the phenomenon of the accessibility and availability of jobs designed for lower levels of education attainment.
