I think the everyone-must-go-to-college mania is a symptom of a larger problem, which the loss of good jobs for skilled people not holding degrees.
On the same, cheerful note:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/07/us-data-show-2008-graduates-hit-hard-recessionRecession Hit 2008 Grads Hard
Inside Higher Education
March 7, 2014
By Andrea Watson
Americans who received bachelor's degrees in 2008 were roughly twice as likely to be unemployed after a year than were their peers who graduated in 1993 and 2000, the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics said in a report Thursday. Mostly to blame, the researchers said: the recession.
...
When it comes to how much the graduates made annually one year out of college, the median annual salaries were much lower in 2009 than in 2001. For example, those in the humanities made $30,000 vs. $35,900.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...ow-wage-jobs-displace-less-educated.htmlCollege Grads Taking Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated
By Katherine Peralta
Bloomberg Personal Finance
Mar 6, 2014 12:00 PM ET
Recent college graduates are ending up in more low-wage and part-time positions as it’s become harder to find education-level appropriate jobs, according to a January study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The share of Americans ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree in jobs that don’t require that level of education was 44 percent in 2012, up from 34 percent in 2001, the study found.
The recent rise in underemployment for college graduates represents a return to the levels of the early 1990s, according to the New York Fed study. The rate rose to 46 percent during the 1990-1991 recession, then declined during the economic expansion that followed as employers hired new graduates to keep pace with technological advances.
