Accenture recently surveyed college grads from the classes of 2013 and 2014. Some interesting results: 49% say they’re “underemployed,” 41% of those who have jobs are earnings less than $25,000, and 64% think their education “prepared them well for the workforce.” Inside Higher Ed has the story.
I suppose that the cheerleaders for ever-expanding college “attainment” (Lumina and others) will find a way to interpret this as evidence that college is doing a great job and we need to get lots more young people through. What I see is more proof that we have oversold higher education.
Especially interesting here is the datum that within a year or two of graduation, more than a third of the young people don’t think that college gave them good workforce preparation. Is that because they are working at mundane jobs that high school kids could do, or because they’re run into situations at work where they were called out for their inability to do something the employer thought a college grad should know how to do? Some of both, probably.