The Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
The Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/business/college-workers-starbucks-amazon-unions.html
12 comments
The article focuses mostly on money and promotions but most of complaints I've seen at companies pressured to unionize have been around working conditions and policies. No doubt everyone would welcome more money but not all issues can simply be papered over with a bit more cash.
How exactly does someone with a masters degree in education not have a job in education?
Sure, a masters in opera performance is probably a bad plan, if you were going to make it as an opera singer you would be doing that instead of getting a masters, but they should also be able to get a teaching job.
And I’m saying this as someone who got a degree with zero perspective job market fully knowing that I was just pissing away (mostly the government’s) money. At some point you have to make the choice between studying what you want or preparing for the job market because a lot of the time this is the choice you’re making.
Sure, a masters in opera performance is probably a bad plan, if you were going to make it as an opera singer you would be doing that instead of getting a masters, but they should also be able to get a teaching job.
And I’m saying this as someone who got a degree with zero perspective job market fully knowing that I was just pissing away (mostly the government’s) money. At some point you have to make the choice between studying what you want or preparing for the job market because a lot of the time this is the choice you’re making.
I think a lot of people just don’t really know what they want their career to be when they go into university. Or they think they do but are incorrect. That was certainly the case with me.
I started in General Studies, then decided I wanted to be a doctor and was in Computer Science for undergrad then flunked out and went into Nursing then flunked out and ended up ten years later with a General Studies degree with a minor in history. Now I do systems integration and love it.
When you think about it, how many people can say with certainty that the plans they had as a teenager were what they ended up doing? Not many, I’d suspect.
I think that’s how people end up with degrees that don’t relate to their employment.
I started in General Studies, then decided I wanted to be a doctor and was in Computer Science for undergrad then flunked out and went into Nursing then flunked out and ended up ten years later with a General Studies degree with a minor in history. Now I do systems integration and love it.
When you think about it, how many people can say with certainty that the plans they had as a teenager were what they ended up doing? Not many, I’d suspect.
I think that’s how people end up with degrees that don’t relate to their employment.
> When you think about it, how many people can say with certainty that the plans they had as a teenager were what they ended up doing?
Sure, not many.
But at some point they have to realize a degree in French Romantic Literature is going to lead to zero job prospects and maybe doubling down with a masters is a really bad decision.
Like me, all I knew when I got out of the army at 20 was I didn’t want to live in a hole in the ground getting woken by arty and chemical alarms with the occasional trips to go out hunting fellow humans. Not that I was super successful at that goal as I went back to Iraq two more times during Gulf War II because I got bored and joined the army reserve pre-9/11 but I spent my college years working on not having to do that ever again.
I’m sure if that one fateful day when I calculated out the classes I’d have to take to switch my major to fisheries and realize it would be three years instead of three semesters (which turned into four because I failed a class on purpose to stay an extra semester since financial aid was already set up) and the GI Bill would be up by then. So I stayed the course and received a degree no job in the world cared about instead of training for a job I probably would have been good at — or at least not gotten fired like I have a couple times in my current career because I kind of hate the work.
There’s probably a point in there between the rambling along the lines of “follow your dreams all the way to a shit job so you can be the poster boy for whatever TFA is selling”.
Sure, not many.
But at some point they have to realize a degree in French Romantic Literature is going to lead to zero job prospects and maybe doubling down with a masters is a really bad decision.
Like me, all I knew when I got out of the army at 20 was I didn’t want to live in a hole in the ground getting woken by arty and chemical alarms with the occasional trips to go out hunting fellow humans. Not that I was super successful at that goal as I went back to Iraq two more times during Gulf War II because I got bored and joined the army reserve pre-9/11 but I spent my college years working on not having to do that ever again.
I’m sure if that one fateful day when I calculated out the classes I’d have to take to switch my major to fisheries and realize it would be three years instead of three semesters (which turned into four because I failed a class on purpose to stay an extra semester since financial aid was already set up) and the GI Bill would be up by then. So I stayed the course and received a degree no job in the world cared about instead of training for a job I probably would have been good at — or at least not gotten fired like I have a couple times in my current career because I kind of hate the work.
There’s probably a point in there between the rambling along the lines of “follow your dreams all the way to a shit job so you can be the poster boy for whatever TFA is selling”.
There's also sunk cost fallacy at work.
People get into something like Education, then spend a semester in a teaching practicum or something and hate it. But they've invested years into it so they forge ahead.
Not sure how that would translate into a Master's degree though. Maybe post-secondary inertia. You get the Bachelor's, then still don't know what you want to do so you just forge ahead with more school.
People get into something like Education, then spend a semester in a teaching practicum or something and hate it. But they've invested years into it so they forge ahead.
Not sure how that would translate into a Master's degree though. Maybe post-secondary inertia. You get the Bachelor's, then still don't know what you want to do so you just forge ahead with more school.
There's also "degree inflation" to take into account. There are so many people in the labor force with university degrees that it stops being a differentiator in the marketplace so job descriptions update to a new differentiator and start requiring post-grad degrees. Soon after entire school districts require a Masters degree to even start the interview process. Then that becomes enough of a norm that Universities pick up on that and make it a part of their positioning/marketing/"good advice" to students: you need at least a Masters if you want a job, so you should plan for a Masters. Targeted schools start to appear such as 5-year Masters programs designed to build so much inertia (taking Masters courses alongside junior/senior undergrad courses) and indeed sunk cost that the Masters seems like the natural outcome rather than the optional "next step".
(Disclaimer: my own graduate degree was probably an expensive mistake that sometimes I regret and sometimes I'm quite proud of even if the job market doesn't care. My experience is not entirely related to the Masters of Education snowball described above, but I can see that snowball having happened from the outside a bit easier knowing what my own experience was.)
(Disclaimer: my own graduate degree was probably an expensive mistake that sometimes I regret and sometimes I'm quite proud of even if the job market doesn't care. My experience is not entirely related to the Masters of Education snowball described above, but I can see that snowball having happened from the outside a bit easier knowing what my own experience was.)
The $23/hr that guy makes at a retailer is more than the starting salary of a public school teacher where I live, even with a masters.
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Why use "working class" to mean "blue collar jobs"? Working class is the class of all the people that work for money, and for whom the money earned from said work constitutes all or a large part of their overall wealth. I'm one such person. The vast majority of the people in the US are like that. There are very few people for whom work is optional. All the others are the "working class".
> And they complain of being trapped in jobs that don’t make good use of their skills. Liz Alanna, who holds a bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in opera performance, began working at Starbucks while auditioning for music productions in the early 2010s.
The function of our economy is distributed decision making. Society is collectively saying we value coffee more than opera.
The function of our economy is distributed decision making. Society is collectively saying we value coffee more than opera.