What jobs are available for college dropouts?

COLLEGE BUBBLE: 1 of 2 students unemployed or under-employed. is college bubble about to burst? 1/2 jobless?

• COLLEGE BUBBLE: 1 of 2 students unemployed or under-employed. is college bubble about to burst? 1/2 jobless? 50.50 1 of 2 are jobless. 80% are monving back with their parents. 8 of 10 college grads are moving back with their parents. Is this a college bubble. Is the college bubble about to burst in 2012 Half. Half. of college graduates are jobless or in jobs that only require a High School Diploma????? Facts are all over the internet/web. Half of colleges are either jobless or in jobs that require a high school diploma. Is the college-bubble about to burst in 2012 ????? ADA, Ohio New York Times 2012. WWW.NYTIMES.COM — Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter. Degrees of Debt A Nation of Student Borrowers Articles and multimedia in this series examine the implications of soaring college costs and the indebtedness of students and their families. Multimedia Graduating Into Debt Interactive Graphic Student Debt at Colleges and Universities Across the Nation Multimedia Feature Student Portraits: College Loans Contribute to Our Reporting We would like to speak with more people about their experience with college loans. Comment Answer Brief Questions » Slide Show: Drowning in Debt Enlarge This Image Ruth Fremson/The New York Times WORKING 3 JOBS Chelsea Grove dropped out of Bowling Green State University and owes $70,000. “I’ll be paying this forever,” she said. More Photos » Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Read All Comments (11) » “If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith. Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price. “As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” said Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.” With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts from for-profit colleges or graduate students who owe on many years of education, some of the overextended debtors in years past. Now nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor’s degree is borrowing. As prices soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment, but it often comes with an unprecedented financial burden. Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education — up from 45 percent in 1993, according to an analysis by The New York Times of the latest data from the Department of Education. This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives. For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports. Average debt for bachelor degree graduates who took out loans ranges from under $10,000 at elite schools like Princeton and Williams College, which have plenty of wealthy students and enormous endowments, to nearly $50,000 at some private colleges with less affluent students and less financial aid. Here at Ohio Northern, recent graduates with bachelor’s degrees are among the most indebted of any college in the country, and statewide, graduates of Ohio’s more than 200 colleges and universities carry some of the highest average debt in the country, according to data reported by the colleges and compiled by an educational advocacy group. The current balance of federal student loans nationwide is $902 billion, with an additional $140 billion or so in private student loans. “If one is not thinking about where this is headed over the next two or three years, you are just completely missing the warning signs,” said Rajeev V. Date, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal watchdog created after the financial crisis.

• Answer:

  No. It's not a bubble. It's a recession. The unemployment rate for 18-19-year-olds who want to work (i.e people not going to college) is more than 20%, worse for minorities (almost 40% for blacks). Not going to college isn't really a better option. It's a symptom of the poor economy, not a separate problem. Since most student loans are backed by the government, an increase in default rates won't cause a market crash like when the subprime mortgage crisis hit, unless the default rate suddenly jumps up to something like 50% overnight. A lot of the solutions are really simple, they just take politicians that have some semblance of a spine to implement them: 1. More funding for public universities. Or at least stop cutting funding so they can do their job of providing a low-cost education for residents. Politicians need to stop blaming schools for tuition increases as a result of funding cuts. 2. A real crackdown on the for-profit college industry. Stop giving Pell grants and subsidized loans to colleges that leave students with tons of debt and a third-rate education. This will free up more money for students at real colleges. 3. More emphasis at the high school level on alternative options. You can't fix stupid though. There will always be idiots who take out $100k in loans for a degree