Students and their families who may have had resources to postpone entry to job markets in 2000 — and choose a grad degree with its presumed higher job security — no longer have that option. It’s out of reach (as is a bachelor’s or even associate’s or specialized continuing training for many Americans). The shift to more grad enrollments (and professional certifications, for that matter) happens because near grads learn that the job markets have sagged, but they believe it’s probably very temporary — 1-5 years at most — and they have the resources to stay in the academic nest a little longer. The marginal value of more education is perceived to be less than the expected benefits, and the resources are available. That’s not the case this time.

The job markets have been sagging for a long time. The sag in STEM job markets goes back nearly 40 years, now, to the end of the “space race” to some extent. Evidence of problems back to 1990 is clear, with the lay-offs of STEM workers from defense industries (enough for articles in the late 1990s to note that many remained unemployed for the duration) and the near-simultaneous advent of the H-1B program, which has since been expanded several times (explicitly, and by addition of “exemptions”, and by de facto loosening of regulations, rolling over unused allotments to the next year and such). We now have significant numbers of capable US STEM workers who have been underemployed and others completely unemployed for 7-8 years.

Foreign enrollments continue to rise into the several hundreds of thousands, as the desire for cheap labor grows in academia just as in the real world, post-docs stretch on while contingent employment of all kinds has expanded (post-docs, adjuncts, OPS). At the same time, total compensation to executives in academe and the real world soar far beyond the pay of the production worker pay of students and most of their parents, along with increases in tuition and the increases and multiplication of mandatory and “optional” fees.

Most endowments have taken a hit this time around, though the headline that caught my eye when I was still half-asleep this morning was that Harvard’s was doing very well. In the previous round endowments were essentially unfazed.

Corporate America is taking disastrous management decisions and crony human resources decisions. They are private concerns, they have to right to have whoever they want (the incompetent nephew, if they choose to) take the most imbecil management decisions. That is a right of private entreprise that used to match the responsibility of share-holders: In america, as elsewhere, you used to be free to choose your nephew for CEO and you used to be responsible for the losses he might incurr too. It used to be your money to loose.

No longer in the brave new world of W’s crony capitalism. Share-holders are still free not to choose the most competent people for the job, they are still free to dismiss grad school as a curiosity, and they are still free to attribute more importance to «who you know» than to «what you know». And they are very free to so because someone else is picking up the tab.
Logically, they don’t care about corporate performance anymore.. as their neck is safe.. so why hire post-grads?

For «some of the time» corporate america fooled «some of the people» into heavy debt to get MBAs, masters’ and PhDs, but as it became evident that no job someone can possibly be hired on its competencies alone can ever pay for the heavy debt that results from a post-graduate degree, prospective students are holding back.

We, the 20s and 30s generation are slow to learn, but we have finnally understood that if ‘family relationships’ and golf club ‘references’ are the key to better jobs and better paying jobs, then there is no point in post-graduation.. is there?

But, there is more…
Every year, maybe for 10 years, over 100,000 visas are offered to foreign Hi-Tech scientists and engineers, and the entire quota is taken in one or two days by the Hi-Tech companies that need them and sponsor them after selecting them.
These are very well qualified people that work hard and make good citizens and have a good work ethic but…
1. It seems as if American Hi-Tech companies have given up on American graduates that are not as well qualified, don’t have a good work ethic, change jobs too often and expect higher salaries.
Instead of pushing state universities to improve the technical standards and teaching quality, they have given up altogether.
2. In the last 10 years these people took over a million of the top jobs in High Tech companies, are there REALLY a million top jobs in High Tech companies?
3. Admission to the top univesities in India require a set of tests. Those below some number are not allowed to go to school there but they are readily accepted by MIT and other Hi-Tech Universities. If that does not prove our Tech edcuation is second rate, what will it take?
Many of the rejects that are accepted here are given scholarships, sorry, I have no numbers on that.
Do look into it, the problem is more serious anyone could imagine.
For example, a few years ago The University of California refused to list all the staff paid over $100,000 and had to be sued to make the list public.
The number was well over 100 and the maximum was over $200,000. More than the Governor is paid.

The U. of Calif., keeps a work station in Tahiti where many are rewarded with an assignment there for a couple of weeks or so.

They also, this is incredible, hired a recently retired Chief of Police with a bonus of over $2 Million and then was given a new high position security job. What they did was not only outrageous, it was forbidden and illegal by the existing school rules. The President said something like “I didn’t know!” And they a prestigious Law School.

Best if you cut some salaries before expanding the grad schools that may be partial playgrounds.
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One would expect U OF Calif., would be leading the field in the use of the Internet for teaching. Not true, they probably see this a threat to ther cushy jobs.
The University of Phonix has a full curriculum that any qualified student can take and gradute in many fields,
more needs to be done on that.