Youth ...umemployment and education

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
A topic that has my interest and attention and goes back many years for me is the aspect of youth being unemployed.

I have always had sympathy for this cause and been an advocate of trying to be creative about how to change the situation but that was very relevant in Africa and especially so when you have the majority of the population not getting an equal education.

However that has since changed and i no longer live exposed to this issue. However through the course of my business career this problem seems to permeat across the whole world not just Africa and with the last 5 years of economic fall out has become a bigger issue in many countries.

But last Friday i got insight into something which had me thinking.

Last Friday i got to tour the University of Toronto. This is one of Canadas top Universities without doubt and compares well in the world not just Canada.

Now due to my sons desire to play football at University we ended up on a private tour with the "chosen few" that are recruit prospects for the next year.

Great one would say except i aint no sport nut and i am one of the parents that have their feet on the ground about my sons sports future.

Well i find out that the time commitment required to be part of the Varsity football team is around 30 to 35 hours per week. :eek: Yeah shock and awe hit me.

Then I get this booklet that has been printed about the team and its goals and achievements etc. All looks fine and dandy so i start looking through the pictures and notice something


There are 46 players in the team 10 rookies to watch so that presents a squad of 56.

So i start looking at the degrees these guys are studying and then it hit me.

Now you gotta know that a 4 year degree in Canada is going to set you back around $ 80K or more give or take unless the person lives at home and commutes to school each day.

So the business man in me is thinking mmmmmmh thats quiet an amount to end up coming out of school with and looking to pay off so one best be looking to study something that is gonna pay well and in demand or at least thought to be going to be in demand in 4 years time. A crap shoot at best if you think about it.


So i think well what are the current team players studying. And this is where my wheels came off.

Here is the list before i stopped bothering

History 10
Political Science 7
Arts and science 5
Physical Education 5
Humanities 3
Urban Studies 3
Human Biology 2
Industrial Engineering 1
Business Management 1
Paramedics 1
Forestry Conservation 1
Classics 1


Now i got to thinking what are these guys going to do when the degree is finished to get a job?

Out of the whole bunch in all the companies i am connected to i think i can see potential for employment for around 4 maybe 5 out of 46 in the squad that i looked at.

I have no idea where all the history and political science guys are gonna get employment on such a scale that they gonna get a payback on the 80K


Seems society is saying go an get an education. But i dont see that any old education is gonna land them a job.


I told my son afterwards if you look at the numbers of your generation that are signing up for a degree and rather go do a trade like a plumber or HVAC guy where the average age in the trade right now is greater than 57 years old seems to me you will be able to do your apprenticeship and start your own contracting company with the 80K and be able to have a way better life and get a return.

He would like to take on Engineering. Frankly i dont see how he does a degree like engineering and spend 35 hours a week playing football. Might have believed it was possible if say there were 5 or 7 wanna be engineers on the team.


Anyhow its not surprising to me these kids are disillusioned and unemployed if this is what they are investing their education money on.

BTW in Canada the scholarships for athletes are regulated so its not as if these are all CFL or wanna be NFL hopefuls that have been "bought" by universities.

Education without demand for it or a field to practice it in is pretty much meaningless unless you part of the rich that can afford to simply be "intellectual".

Then we gripe when China is taking the jobs away. But they got 200 million kids in elementary and high school and who knows how many in Universities and i dont see them all studying history or political science.

Oh and to add to this issue over the holidays we meet a young lady that has just graduated from the University with a Degree in Metalurgy. Now i am thinking wow what a star. So my Mil sits down to talk to her. Mil by the way worked in the gold mining industry for most of her life and was married to a mining engineer that ran some of the biggest gold mines in SA so she knows a thing or two about metalurgy.

She could not get a word of sense out of this young lady who could only complain that she had not been able to find a job and what they were offering she was not prepared to work for.

Seems she wanted to start at a Salary of 80K per year. :eek: No kidding.

After Mil said to me she dont know squat about metalurgy and if she does she aint letting anyone else know that she does.


I cannot help but think some of this sheds light on why there are so many of these young people unemployed. :( Pretty sad in my view.
 
My dad calls them "educated dummies". Our guidance department is so guilty of this. Inflate their numbers to look like 90% of the graduating class is going to college. 25% may graduate. 20% probably had no business going in the first place as they were not prepared mentally. I keep trying to point out to my guidance counselors that trade school is not a bad idea. I keep asking them, who do you call on when your roof leaks, your furnace/ac quits, your car doesn't start, etc. Not their 4 year students. Enough, I will get off of my soapbox.
 
I understand what you are talking about. I have a niece who graduated from a very prestigious university with a degree in religious studies with a load of debt. I never could understand that one. I got my degree in education from a state school with no debt and have worked everyday.

My son is in 5th grade and has never had any inclination of going on to college. Since he has been little he would ask how much school do you have to have to do something. He loves working with his hands and doing mechanical things. At the high school he'll attend they have a very good machine shop program. We go over to the high school a couple times per week during football season and he always wants to look in the shop. We have a technology center near that has several industrial/mechanical programs that are 2 year deals. I'm going to push him to go that route. He'll make way more than I make.
 
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College football is a business that has the same goal all businesses have, to make money. It is not to educate our youth. The University of Washington football team has hired some new football assistants and their salary is in the range of 500K to 700K a year. It is projected that the total amount spent for the UW football coaches salaries will easily exceed 4.5 million dollars. That is only salaries. Can you imagine the cost of infrastructure (stadiums, training rooms, practice fields, etc.)? How can they do this? From the new PAC 12, 12-year, 3 billion dollar TV deal. And how is the TV industry able to do this? Because we watch college football so much that advertisers are willing to pay big bucks to the TV industry.

I enjoy watching football, but part of me realizes that something is wrong here and I am probably part of the problem.
 
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Seems like we have had the same soapbox Jonathan. It's not just the guidance people who need to hear and understand it--how about the elected officials who make the decisions with no experience to draw from?
 
My HS had a good vocational program that started early, like our junior year. Many of the guys I graduated are successful builders and mechanics today. My kids HS didn't even have a shop class, everything was geared towards them going to college. My kids were told "you need to go to college". They listened, felt that is what they needed to do, but never found it a good direction. Each being out on their own have had to struggle and learn some hard lessons, but neither feel that college is still the answer.

Honestly, I'm not a believer that everyone needs to go to college, the "world needs ditch diggers" too as my dad used to say. I think we want more for our kids and try to give them a step up, even me. As parents we do what even goes against our own beliefs to make a better life for them, yet...you can lead a horse to water, but...(well, you know the rest). Again it's that you want more for them than you had.

Like the young lady Rob spoke of, several of their friends that have finished college are not working in any career that they studied for. They either couldn't get in at the level they wanted to start at or refused to start at the bottom, just not willing to be a "ditch digger"

With the baby-boomers heading towards retirement, there's going to be a large void to fill in the trades, and I still don't see a big push to fill those jobs. Mike Rowe has some good information on his site and is pushing for training programs to fill those jobs. However, unless there is the drive and desire to take them, they will go unfilled too.
 
It's sad people don't think these college degrees and associated employment opportunities through BEFORE they go after them. I'd hate to invest 4 years of time, work and monies only to realize after the fact I wasn't employable.
 
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I enjoy watching football, but part of me realizes that something is wrong here

Bill, you're right, something is deeply wrong. In spite of all that money, there are only about ten or twelve schools, nationwide, that turn a profit on their athletics programs. Most of them lose, and lose big. I do have some sympathy for those kids who wouldn't otherwise get to college, but if I had a nickle for every student I taught who thought he didn't need to study because he was going to the NFL or the NBA, I'd have a much bigger shop... ;)

As far as the liberal arts majors go, most of them end up in the business world. They're what the business world actually wants: people who can read, write, communicate, and work in teams smoothly, at a high level. This hasn't changed in decades- it's been this way since well before the G.I. bill changed Universities after WWII.

If jobs ever come back for specialized machinists and the like, Universities will climb all over themselves to offer courses. Every University I've ever seen tries hard to meet market demands. After all, if students don't sign up, courses don't fly, and degree programs don't stay on the books. Universities simply can't afford to keep them.

But I'm afraid we're going to have this difficult athletics model for a while. As long as Alumni demand it (which they do) and officials strive to fund it (which they do), it's just going to keep going...

Thanks,

Bill

(ps. Whoops. There aren't twelve schools that turn a profit. There are 14: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5490686
My apologies for the error. ;)
 
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College football is a business that has the same goal all businesses have, to make money. It is not to educate our youth. The University of Washington football team has hired some new football assistants and their salary is in the range of 500K to 700K a year. It is projected that the total amount spent for the UW football coaches salaries will easily exceed 4.5 million dollars. That is only salaries. Can you imagine the cost of infrastructure (stadiums, training rooms, practice fields, etc.)? How can they do this? From the new PAC 12, 12-year, 3 billion dollar TV deal. And how is the TV industry able to do this? Because we watch college football so much that advertisers are willing to pay big bucks to the TV industry.

I enjoy watching football, but part of me realizes that something is wrong here and I am probably part of the problem.

Here's a link showing the total budgets for the different conferences. It's an eye opener. http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2011/08/22/In-Depth/Budgets.aspx

Bill, those salaries are very common in the SEC. Saban at Alabama made over 6 million last year and I think Mack Brown made over 5 million at Texas. Those are the two highest paid college coaches in the country. Being in UT country, that's Tennessee not Texas:D, UT's budget was over 100 million last year. My nephew just turned 16 in August. He spent all last summer collecting scrap metal to sale so he could get two season tickets for him and his Dad. They cost a little over 600 bucks for the upper deck!

To swerve back on topic for a second.

I completely agree with Johnathan, I think schools try to push way to many kids into thinking college is the only way. I can't speak for everywhere, but we do a very poor job in the voc/ed programs where I'm at IMHO.
 
I get angry when I hear politicians say that "everyone" should have the opportunity to go to college. Well that clearly can't happen since less than 70% even make it through High School to begin with. For those that do go on, about 60% have to take the bonehead classes that HS should have prepped them for. Embarrassing.

When I went to HS (way back then), you had to prove a proficiency of being an 8th grader to graduate and I just kept scratching my head even then as to why you didn't have to prove you were a 12th grader. I can only imagine it has gone down hill from there.

I will say, the best thing that ever happened to me in regards to education is that I worked for two years after high school. Back then, girls were not very encouraged to do much more than be PE majors (of course maybe I'd be a bit thinner now days :rofl:). However it gave me time to get confidence, realize I could become an Engineer and allowed me to save enough money that I graduated without any student loans. My dorm-mate and I were the "oldies" in the group and while we studied, all the other 18 year olds partied and all ended up on probation their first quarter. Oh wait...did I miss out on all the fun? :doh::huh:
 
Along this line, our schools have really dropped the ball in motivating and keeping our kids in school and teaching them... social passing is the worst idea that ever came out of schools. I worked in the international trade for all of my work career. I talked with many of my counterparts in various countries. In Germany, they have an apprentice program... if the student can't or doesn't cut it in school with a certain grade point average, they are more or less assigned an apprentice program, or in the case of my agent in Germany's son, his father assigned him into the transportation industry... the young man spent about 8 months in Houston, working with my company as a clerk.... he was sharp, focused and trying to learn what he could from our way of doing business so he could apply it back home... his father was pretty high up in the management of the company, so he was being groomed to move up and probably take his father's place when he retired.

Our agents in Belgium also had same kind of program. The company that represented us there and handled our Belgium shipments was run by a brother and sister team that was trained by their father from early teen years... today theirs is one of the larger international forwarding companies in Europe.

When I was working with Trinidad, this is a country of about 1Million, it is an oil rich nation and the kids are educated by the state... no cost to go to college. Trinidad has about a 90% literacy rate (The U.S. has about 49%, I think I read somewhere.)... In Trinidad schools, which are pretty rigidly controlled, each school has it own school colors and uniform..so the students can concentrate on school and not on social status.... in the equivalent of the 6th grade, they take a "national exam" which will determine if they get to go to college or will have to enter the trades. When I retired, the young man that took my place as manager and director of my division of the company was about 30, educated in Trinidad and probably was sharper than me... he worked for us about 3 years while I was there, left the company to start his own company, but due to the times and the traffic lane he was working, was struggling some... when I left, the owner of the company went looking for him to replace me.

My son is a computer programmer, as is his sister... she has a 4 year degree from Berkeley in California... he started college in Austin after the army and went one semester, decided college isn't for him and found a job working for a company that was supposed to reprogram all the government computers for the Y2K scare, which never developed.... He's had about 4 jobs since the army, all have paid him handsomely. Until he got fed up, he worked for IBM as one of their program managers. One of his jobs, he was asked if he programmed in a particular language, he said he could, then over the weekend he had to buy a book and teach himself that language... so many of our high school grads can't read, much less read and comprehend enough to have pulled that off.
 
My dad quit school in the 8th grade, eventually bought his own gas station and ran it for 20 years, sold it and semi retired at age 45. I have a college degree plus 40 hours grad studies (didn't pursue a Master's in any one area) and will work until 60 at least. Dad always said you can make it, just have to work harder and smarter. When I have students carry their "drop" papers around to drop out of school, I always ask, "so what are you going to be doing tomorrow morning at 7 am? (I used to ask 6 am)". If they say sleeping, you know what direction they are heading, if they say at work, looking for work, getting ready for work, you know what direction they are heading in.
 
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Young people seem to have no idea what they want to do. Too much energy seems to go to what they think they should do. Outside influences in the should area are not serving them well. Being happy doing what ever you do is considered irrelevant. How sad.

I couldn't afford college when I graduated from high school. I work a couple of years and then went. Lasted 2 semesters. Learned that real world experiences found nothing familiar in a college classroom. Offended my sense of order. Took undergraduate classes over the years as I felt I needed the knowledge. 138 credits worth, but no degree. When ministry became the goal, it took a year to amass the information for a life equivalency designation. Learned the 'game' the professional educators with their life tenure play with students. Graduated from a 4 year master's program [in 4 years, wonder of wonders] complete with two foreign languages.

Why? Because that was the only way I got to do what I wanted to do. Such is life.

Bottom line. There was a lot of want to involved here. See the first statement I made above.
 
I don't hardly know where to start on this one. My dad got fired from a university because of his protests about how they were changing the structure of the curriculum. He did some research into knowledge retention and found that most of the students were not retaining much a year after taking a class. He was told to shut up at a faculty meeting and he and another professor were eventually fired because they kept trying to blow the whistle on the changes being implemented. It seems the university was more interested in running a business rather than educating people. The other professor sued the university and won his case. He was paid back pay and re-instated. However my dad refused to be part of the lawsuit and the problem, and quit teaching and went into private research.

When I worked as an engineer, I earned my way into the field and never got a degree. I was asked to mentor graduate engineers that my company hired. I would have fired 2 out of 3 that we hired into our group because they couldn't do the work. One had graduated near the top of her class in electrical engineering and was a very nice young lady. Personality aside, she had no ability in problem solving and seemed to have no ability to remember basic electrical concepts. I wouldn't trust her to wire a basic light circuit. I worked as an mechanical engineer and my electrical engineer partner got so frustrated with this lass, that one day he told me to go downstairs and hold her hand because if he went down there he would kill her. :D

I'm not sure what the root cause is. I sometimes blame it on what I call the "T.V. generation" So much of our culture is filled with toys and an entertainment mentality. Many of our young people don't know how to work. They lack discipline. I hear over and over from business people about how hard it is to find descent reliable employees.

Over the years I have come across an article or 2 where there someone was talking about the schooling they received during the late 1800's and early 1900's. They talked about classes in logic and critical thinking, manners, morality, and so forth. Seems to me that we have been so focused on experimenting with education techniques that we are forgetting the value of teaching sound basic things that make quality people.

One change that happened for a while, was switching from phonics when teaching reading, to a method called "Look, say". Look-say turned out to be a colossal failure in my opinion. People who learned to read with this method could read the words but could not understand what they were reading that well. It is interesting to note that different languages develop different logic abilities. There is evidence that Germanic languages help make good engineers. Oriental languages make good mathematicians. Of course this is just a generalization. We in America (not excluding our friends to the North) with our melting pot society are known for invention and innovation. Maybe this is because we are so diversified culturally.

Personally, I have chosen to home school my kids and so far it is working far better than I imagined. One of the main complaints directed against home schooling for a time was a falsehood that home schooled kids would be sheltered and not be able to adapt socially. As it turns out from studies, it was found that social skills are primarily learned in the family unit and bad social habits are learned in school. This makes sense when you think about it. When Johnny mouths off to dad or mom he gets an instant response to modify his behavior. In school he moves from class to class and the teachers are charged with trying to deal with 25 to 30 kids at a time. Recently my 19 year old son was given a full ride and room and board for college. He is assistant director of campus ministries at 4 colleges and universities including Rutgers University. He also works for an international teen evangelist as the event scheduler. He is thinking about pursuing a degree in criminal justice with plans to go to law school. He told me he wants to work as a prosecutor focusing on human trafficking. I think he is doing quite well socially.

I could go on and on about this but I think this is enough for now. Maybe we should have a family get together over a few barley pops and have a good long discussion.
 
As usual I always had a different idea about college.

I figure that if parents spend 30k a year on sending a kid to college. Then there better be some benefit to college other than a good party. If the kid lived at home and worked for minimum wage for those 4 years and the parents put the 120,000 in an investment for the kid where would the kids finances be in 40 years? And don't forget the 60,000 the kid could make in 4 years working at minimum wage.

Yes college better pay off......

That said both my children have their masters and I put my wife through college when she was in her 30's...

I played at going to college before and after the Navy, but could never put my shoulder to the collar so I ended up working at what I loved for 40 years or so. Often wondered what if I would have stayed with college but then saw how many of the engineers I worked with were afraid to pull the head off a car. And I also worked with some terrific engineers, but I was amazed at how many came out of college with a engineering degree that were never worth a tinkers dam(and folks that's not a cuss word). So I can't really imagine what some of the lesser degrees knew up on graduating.

As a culture we really need to start appreciating all skill sets again. You see a ton of company's trying to cut pay for new hires but usually only for those that do physical work or clerical work. Top dogs seem to be on a wild upward spiral that shows no signs of slowing down. You ruin one company and another is standing in line to hire you. A look at HP would confirm this at least on a single company basis.

One other thing I'd say is that to some extent I understand the kid of today not being too interested in hard work, Many of them have seen a Dad, Uncle, Mom, Aunt, Grandparent of some one else give their life to a corporation only to be shed like last years style. And be lied too right up till the pink slip. See Scot's post today about Kodak.

Garry
 
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Ok I'll admit I had to look up what a tinkers dam was:eek:....and I graduated from college!:eek: But, now I know what that hunk of rock solid clay with solder on it I found in my grandpa's tool cabinet is, thanks. :thumb:
 
I went to college for one year in the fall of '99 and I really shouldn't have. After that one year as a music performance major (yeah, I know. You wanna be a musician? Go play an instrument till someone pays you for it, don't pay someone to listen to you then tell you you stink) I joined the Navy, learned avionics, and have been in the trades since then. I don't regret not finishing college a bit. And I've got cooler stories about those four years of my life than most do. :)
 
I went to college for one year in the fall of '99 and I really shouldn't have. After that one year as a music performance major (yeah, I know. You wanna be a musician? Go play an instrument till someone pays you for it, don't pay someone to listen to you then tell you you stink) I joined the Navy, learned avionics, and have been in the trades since then. I don't regret not finishing college a bit. And I've got cooler stories about those four years of my life than most do. :)

Not any cooler then the stories I got from my 6 years in the Navy.....:thumb::D
 
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