Graduates who end up as dishwashers

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 21

Graduates who end up as dishwashers

From

JOYCE EGGINGTON,

in New York

American universities are producing more graduates than ever before, and a higher percentage of them are facing a bleak future. Of the 965,000 who, about five months ago, graduated from colleges across the nation, at least a quarter of that number are reckoned still to be unemployed, and tens of thousands are doing jobs for which they are over-qualified. College placement experts predict that this situation will continue well into the 1980 s, with an annual overload of between 20,000 and 30,000 graduates trying to find work in a hard-pressed job market which does not need their skills. ;

Among this year’s graduates, the largest number in America’s history, stories of newly qualified chemical engineers reduced to working as dishwashers are common. Theirs is one of many professions which looked good four years ago but which, in the meantime, have become depressed and overcrowded.

Arts and journalism graduates are even worse off. Many of them are being told by college placement officers to take whatever work they can get, which for many means going into blue collar jobs which did not require a college education at all.

Tales of disappointed graduates

are legion — such as the Detroit engineering graduate forced to take a job as a bouncer in a sleazy bar, and a girl with an English honours degree coupled with business qualifications now working as a waitress in a third-rate South Carolina restaurant.

These young people are at a disadvantage to those who never went to college. The huge increases in college fees, coupled with President Reagan’s cuts in college aid, are forcing most students to borrow heavily in order to get through

college. As soon as they graduate, many students have to face up to paying back a debt of up to $lO,OOO — the maximum federal loan — over the next 10 years. Those who go on to post-graduate work are likely to have borrowed $30,000 to qualify themselves for a profession which, in the current labour market, may no longer be open to them.

The enormous cost of a university education — at least $13,000 a year at the nation’s most prestigious universities — is also creat-

ing a crisis in some of the lowerpaid professions. There is a nationwide shortage of mathematics and science teachers to tran> the next generation of young people for the new technology. Men and women with qualifications in these fields and debts to pay back can still earn more in industry, although even those prospects are diminishing.

In this society, where a college education has long been regarded as essential to any white-collar job with prospects, a third of the 18-year-olds enter college. Many of them are now finding that the degree courses they choose have lost their relevance.

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics the greatest demand for workers in the 1980 s will be as secretaries, hospital orderlies, nurses, shop assistants, lorry drivers, waiters and waitresses, and cashiers. Opportunities for computer specialists and systems analysts come much lower down the list.

In a frail attempt to counter the trend, some colleges are Offering courses to graduating students on how to dress for the business world. Tips on hairstyles, clothes, and even on the use of deodorants are offered. But these courses have not been well attended.—Copyright, London Observer Service.