[PEN-L:29441] Re: RE: underemployment?

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

"Devine, James" wrote:

 

 We have to watch this. One fuel for Al Quaida, I believe, was the existence of a bunch of underemployed college grads in Egypt and Saudi Arabia... Jim

Are we watching this for Ashcroft?  What's that 800 number again?

What do you mean by "watching this"?  When Reagan was governor of California he was worried about this problem, and education took a hit.  Do you propose the same?  Don't educate and we'll be safe?

What about the severe shortage of educated labor I've read about for the past ten years?  Employers couldn't fill jobs with qualified people, or so they (always) claim.

    I remember reading when I was a kid about the frightening threat to the USA that the shortage of machinists posed.

Gene Coyle

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Murray
To: pen-l
Sent: 8/13/2002 8:00 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:29425] underemployment?

Down the brain drain

Too many graduates are chasing too few high-skill jobs. Is the
government's plan to increase
the number of university places sensible?

Simon Parker
Wednesday August 14, 2002
The Guardian

Remember the one about the three students? The science graduate asks,
"Why does it work?" The
engineer asks, "How does it work?" And the student with a 2:1 in English
literature asks, "Do
you want fries with that?"

That joke is wearing thinner than ever. New research suggests that
England might reach a point
where its universities and colleges will be pumping out more highly
skilled workers than the
country's economy knows what to do with, leading to underemployment and
economic exclusion for
some.

Findings from Local Futures, an independent thinktank, show that the
proportion of the
workforce with degrees and other high-level qualifications is growing
far faster than the
number of jobs being created in the so-called "knowledge economy".
Expanding this group of
graduate-intensive industries, including cultural, business and
financial services, education
and science-based businesses, is one of the holy grails of government
policy.

Ministers want to see more people going to university and coming out
with qualifications that
suit the demands of the knowledge economy. By 2010 Margaret Hodge, the
higher education
minister, wants 50% of under-30s to take a degree - seven times the
proportion in the 1960s.

But the Local Futures research questions whether we need so many
graduates. The thinktank
analysed the skills profiles of the nine English regions and found that
even in Greater London,
the hub of these much-hyped, knowledge-driven industries, the number of
high-skilled jobs is
failing to keep pace with rising qualifications.

Between 1994-2000, a period of healthier economic growth, the proportion
of workers in the
capital who had a degree or equivalent rose by over 22%. The number of
jobs in the most
graduate-intensive industries - those whose workforce contains at least
40% high-skilled
workers - rose at little more than a fifth of that rate. The number of
jobs in sectors that
employ an "above average" number of graduates (25%-40%), including
nurses, actually fell by
more than 10%.

The mismatch is repeated around the country. As a whole, the British
graduate labour pool grew
by 23% between 94-00, while knowledge intensive industries raised their
share of national
employment from 48% to 50%, an increase of less than 5%.

In the north-east, an area with a relatively poorly developed knowledge
economy, the proportion
of the workforce with graduate-level qualifications rose by 17.5%
between 94-00. In the same
period, the number of jobs in the most graduate-intensive industries
rose by only 1.6%.

Mike Collier, the chief executive of the area's regional development
agency, admits: "It's been
a persistent issue in the region. For many years we've created more
graduates than can be
absorbed in our own economy."

The brain drain from the regions to London and its surrounding counties
has accelerated. This
is happening to the extent that the government wants to build at least
43,000 houses in the
south-east every year until 2016.

This migration contributes to London's well-publicised house price
inflation and pushes key
public sector workers, who often have intermediate skills levels, out of
the market.

But London faces more serious social problems than that. The capital's
workforce has become
polarised between the skills haves and have-nots. In 2000, when roughly
a third of the
capital's resident workforce had degree-level qualifications, another
third struggled to secure
a C grade GCSE pass.

Fortunately, the long-term trends show that skills poverty is
decreasing, but this still leaves
a huge group being excluded from the affluent and expensive London being
created by their
well-educated counterparts.

Mark Hepworth, the director of Local Futures, highlights a "Dickensian"
gap between the
relatively highly skilled white workers of south London, with an
employment rate of around 80%,
and the poorly skilled Pakistanis and Banglandeshis of the East End, who
have an employment
rate of under half that figure.

Older workers could also be excluded. Across Great Britain, those aged
between 45-64 are
employed in significantly fewer knowledge-intensive industries than
those aged 25-44. This at a
time when a looming pensions crisis means the elderly might have to
compete with their younger
counterparts long after traditional retirement age.

Does the government's target of 50% make any sense in economic terms?
Many think not. In a
recent report, the Institute of Directors described the plans as
"ludicrous". They want to turn
the clock back to the 1970s, with 15-20% of people going to university
and many of the others
going into "tough vocational apprenticeships".

The IoD's Ruth Lea said: "The current obsession with sending as many
young people as possible
into higher education undermines vocational training by making it appear
a second best. This
helps no one, least of all the many students who study inappropriate
higher education courses."

These trends are already changing the kind of jobs graduates go in to.
Only a certain number of
people will ever become lawyers, civil servants and investment bankers,
so as more graduates
enter the market, the benefits associated with a degree will be
progressively diluted. This is
reflected in the fact that professions that once recruited at A-level,
like the police and
accountancy firms, now take people from university instead.

Adds Mark Hepworth: "Aren't we devaluing degrees? What do we do about
underemployment?"

· Simon Parker is local government reporter for SocietyGuardian.co.uk