Stephens: To the Class of 2012 Attention graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds.

I completely agree about your last point too. I find it exceptionally ironic that politicians in the UK and US keep talking about the STEM economy - how people should study engineering, maths and the sciences rather than arts subjects, because it will drive our economies forward and give employment to those leaving university. I find that logic almost laughable - you only have to look at the number of STEM students graduating into jobs that use none of their STEM skills to see how wrong their reasoning is.

This is what Brown and Hesketh argued in their 2004 book, The Mismanagement of Talent (review here). But there's even more going on than Brown and Hesketh indicate: I prefer to see the talk of employment patterns embedded in a more panoramic meta-narrative of the future direction of Western societies. In my meta-narrative, real economic growth is a thing of the past and economic stagnation is the present reality, with either a slow descent or collapse in the future (depending on whether one is an optimist or pessimist). In brief, the jobs ain't comin' back and any politico who says this is lying through his teeth.
 
The worst thing, which I think this article alludes to, is the arrogance with which people who graduate university have these days. They literally think the world owes them a job, and that they're the smartest, most employable people on the planet. When really they know jack shit.

I still remember when I stopped going to lectures, and my class-mates asked me why I would pay £x per year only to not receive the "product" I was buying. I told them the product I was buying was a certificate not an education, which they didn't really get, unfortunately.

I completely agree about your last point too. I find it exceptionally ironic that politicians in the UK and US keep talking about the STEM economy - how people should study engineering, maths and the sciences rather than arts subjects, because it will drive our economies forward and give employment to those leaving university. I find that logic almost laughable - you only have to look at the number of STEM students graduating into jobs that use none of their STEM skills to see how wrong their reasoning is.

You are completely correct about purchasing a certificate, since so many classes are just gen-ed and prereqs on top of prereqs for specialized courses whose content is forgotten after months of disuse. However, the idea of being "owed" or "entitled" to a job I think is a case of you missing a critical point:

I think you're painting my generation with too broad a brush to think that we all believe we know everything and are the most employable. If we really *were* know-it-alls, we'd be starting the next facebook. Heck, even Mark Zuckerberg didn't know everything. But that's beside the point--we're applying for jobs because we realize we don't know everything. However, if we don't even have the right to believe that for effectively taking out a mortgage we can't discharge in bankruptcy that we can't even get a foothold on the lowest rung of the ladder, what are we all supposed to do?

Are we all supposed to just queue up for barista positions at Starbucks until the economy turns or something? See, here's the thing--if we don't get good jobs that can service our debt burden, we don't have discretionary income. If we don't have discretionary income, we don't pay for other goods and services (you know, that big C that drives 70% of GDP?), and if we don't buy goods and services, then the people that create those goods and services are dead weight also. And if they're dead weight, they lose their jobs, and down and down we go. On top of that, we're not going to buy homes, we're not going to feel we have enough money to start families, and generally, nothing good can come of this.

It's very much in the best interests of the politicos to make sure that my generation gets jobs, because if we don't get jobs, other people lose jobs as well. The government loses tax revenue. Rather than talking down to us, it's in the best interests of everybody if their neighbor has a job.
 
Umm. Firstly, I am your generation. Secondly, none of what you've said is relevant exclusively to university graduates. It's just how the economy works.
 
Umm. Firstly, I am your generation. Secondly, none of what you've said is relevant exclusively to university graduates. It's just how the economy works.
Actually I disagree. The economy prior to now wasn't a case of "either get a nosebleed GPA from a top school and know 5 different programming languages like a god or go work at Starbucks".
 
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