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One fixable issue is that people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going.
But I agree the cost of living is too high which is directly due to government policies and control of the monetary system.
My parents convinced 17 year old me that I would be stuck flipping burgers if I didn't go to college and get good grades. I went to college and got good grades. Now I can't get any job.
The employment market is super tight right now. A year ago I was freshly graduated after returning to college and landed multiple interviews as well as fending off headhunters on about a weekly basis. I applied to 9 openings and got 6 calls to interview, and made it to the final round of interviews for 3 roles in a 1 month timeframe. Now I'm fighting just to get an interview for the purposes of interview experience and potentially jumping ship if the offer is right, and I'm getting ghosted by the couple of recruiters who have reached out in the last few months. A friend's boyfriend is job hunting after getting laid off from his last job and hasn't been able to land a job in months, and another friend landed a job with an insane commute after her position was suddenly no longer needed. Even my old boss who I see at community events regularly and has been begging me to come back and throwing comparatively generous offers out there hasn't brought it up in a few months. Shit's rough yo
I was never able to find a stable job, and I graduated in 2019. Went back for a master's degree, which I just finished in March. There's nothing. I'm about to run out of money. I don't know what to do, but I can't survive in this economy with no help.
people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going
Setting aside the idea of going to college for personal enrichment and social development (really fucking important life skills that have long term but difficult to explicitly calculate monetary benefits), its very difficult to say whether a particular college degree in 2024 will pay dividends by 2044.
I've seen more than a few people poo-poo English degrees, but when a college degree is functionally mandatory for any kind of corporate employment that's obviously not true. I've seen people laud STEM degrees, then go off and work in the Fivr mines for years earning less than they'd get in a mediocre Sales & Marketing gig (which you can score easily with any kind of BA). I've seen people talk up vocational training, but so much of that hinges on your employer and the state of the industry at any given moment (roofers and plumbers doing great in Houston right now, but that's because home owners' insurance hasn't completely abandoned the state yet).
I initially tried the "no degree" route and quickly observed the very low ceiling to what I could earn without a degree while working the white collar jobs that I'm good at, as well as how difficult climbing the ladder beyond that is. The pay bump and quality of work benefit from just a 2 year degree has been incredible
It is a risk to some extent, but much of what college is is a way to figure out who can do what job. A STEM degree is good in that people will know that you have some level of technical skill. I think the main thing is that unless you have a direct way to monetize a degree, its not worth spending years of your life and going into debt on a risk. I personally have an engineering and a science degree that I used for a while, but now I have a construction company and would have been better suited starting in construction.