So many college graduates are working in fields that are not what they graduated in. I am not talking about non-Stem degrees, but even people with STEM-related degrees not getting jobs in their fields.
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Because most jobs want experience and they don’t have any yet. So they take what they can get while they work on getting into their field.
Supply and demand
There are only so many positions available
And some fields have way way more graduates than there are such positions.
So like everything it becomes a competition
The reason many employers want experience is that so many people graduate with decent grade points without having actually mastered what is needed to successfully perform in their chosen field. Grade inflation is out of control and many programs have become so easy that almost anyone could get through them. This causes devaluation of degrees
Lots of reasons… one is because schools/ parents push “do what you love” “find your passion” “study something that interests you” etc. when that is not (now or ever) what college is for. So when they graduate with a degree in ‘X’ humanities or ‘Y’ obscure historic art history major and try and get a job they realize making $25k/yr sucks and go outside their field for work.
experience requirement is one part – a lot of jobs will advertise and add in “2+ years experience” kind of tag on it. College kids aren’t going to have the experience they’re looking for – they want candidates that have done the job before and familiar enough in the field without having to train or teach them basics.
oversaturation is another part – computer science and programming is really common these days, mixed with people who have been doing it for 20+ years and people graduating fresh out of school for it. Lets say there’s 185,000 programmer jobs available – if there’s around 18,500,000 people with the skills, experience, and education to do it, there’s only 1 job available for 100 people. (these are rough figures from google, but paint the idea that just because one career might be lucrative or make a lot of money, if there’s not enough jobs available, there’s going to be a lot of people taking jobs not in their field).
demand is another part – relating to the above; programmers are relatively high in demand, but what 1 or a small team of people can do still isn’t enough to offer work to them all. This isn’t the same for something like a surgeon, or health care worker, where demand is pretty much going to remain high, especially as average age increases and people live longer, we’re going to need someone to replace hips or handle a bedpan. These would be the opposite of oversaturation; there’s almost always openings in health care of *some* kind, just not nearly enough people choosing health care as a career that matches their education.
overeducation is a small part, but still there – someone with a masters degree will likely be declined work from lower level work; McDonalds isn’t going to hire them if they can avoid it, because that person will likely ask for a higher wage or salary. The kid still in highschool they might have a hassle of scheduling, but they can pay them minimum wage and no one bats an eye. Perhaps not entirely relevant to “getting a job in your field”, but still relevant to *getting a job, period.*
;;
As an anecdote of the above…
My aunt got a masters and later doctorate in psychology, social sciences, with a minor in native american anthropology. She wanted to be a family counselor, ideally, but she would have settled for therapist, social work, a CPS case worker, that kind of thing – anything that involved helping people mentally.
Except where she lived, and was unwilling to move for openings, no one had space for a fresh out of college therapist, everyone running a family counselling business wasn’t hiring, she was overeducated to work as a government social worker or with CPS because she would have asked a higher wage and they denied her several times.
It isn’t that psychology, social sciences, and anthropology aren’t valuable; they just weren’t applicable – she had no experience to take out a business loan and open her own practice. She was trying to enter a job market where jobs were already filled and not in demand. For her “not ideal but still in field” jobs, she was overeducated and even the government didn’t want to pay her fair compensation to match her degree of education when they could instead hire someone else they could pay less for the same job.
She ended up becoming a groundskeeper at the same college she got her degree at, to make ends meet, and despite repeated attempts to find work that used her major, didn’t find too much success – eventually just giving up entirely and finding a simple kind of happiness as a groundskeeper. She later found some work using her minor more than her major, being a curator of sorts for the native american heritage museum, though that work was a glorified tour guide of a few exhibits & sell gifts and nick-knacks (it was a small museum you’d expect to find as a tourist attraction in a reservation).
There are many possible reasons, a few common ones among people I know:
– there are no open jobs in the area for their field or their experience level
– they later realize it’s not what they want to do after all
– they get an offer in another field that’s better than what they’d get in their own field
I am a STEM professor. There’s no one answer to this question but here’s a few different scenarios I notice.
A lot of students choose stem early and it is a hard and strenuous degree (no shade on other degrees, every degree is hard in its own way). Many students take a break and don’t apply for jobs right away and then stray from stem.
We lose a lot of females, somewhat probably to being stay at home parents. STEM jobs have the reputation of having a large work:life time ratio and that scares off a lot of moms. In reality there are quite a few options that have 9 to 5 schedules or the equivalent.
STEM is hard (again no shade to other degrees every field is hard in its own way) and has a reputation for being hard. It is exhausting and a lot of people realize that after their degree and decide to choose alternative careers.
A lot of STEM careers require advanced degrees, masters phds. Many undergrads do not want to attend grad school after 4 years of a STEM bachelor’s. This narrows the job pool.
STEM professors unfortunately are not the most…supportive or encouraging group of faculty. I’ve been told I’m stupid, I’d never make it, no would hire me as faculty because I am a woman in a very male dominated field of STEM, been told I’d never make it through grad school. I’ve experienced sexism rampantly. I’ve seen racism and homophobia and was told to ignore it bc the faculty who were the antagonists were prestigious and would ruin my career. This stuff doesn’t exactly make the field appealing to many. STEM is a long tough road and requires a lot of passion for the field to stick with it.
Another thing is job applicants are either undergrads with zero real idea the majority of the time what types of jobs they qualify for or graduate students who have an idea but lack any confidence pretty much after 5 years of graduate school. Job postings are confusing, intimidating, and often have odd requirements that were suggested by staff to HR and then butchered by HR. I CANNOT OFFER ANY GREATER PIECE OF ADVICE TO PEOPLE APPLYING TO STEM POSITIONS. APPLY FOR EVERYTHING. Asking for 5 years experience? Say your grad degree of 5 years counts towards experience because xyz. Asking for a chemical engineer and you’re a chemist? Apply and explain the overlap. A biologist applying for a position requiring a degree in mathematics? Biologists in grad school and undergrad do a ton of stats. Read the job description and if you think you know enough to be effectively trained to do the job then give it a shot. Worst thing is you get weeded out and never called. Lots of places will hire people that do not even close to fit the description. Hard part sometimes is landing an interview but a lot of luck goes into that whether you fit the description or not. So GO FOR IT.
Ok in true professor fashion I am rambling like a maniac to a wall so I’ll end it here
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