Burning Glass and Strada Institute for the Future of Work (formerly USA Funds, one of the nation’s largest student loan guarantors), recently published The Permanent Detour - Underemployment’s Long-Term Effects on the Careers of College Grads.
The report found that a high percentage of college graduates (43%) were underemployed – initially taking jobs that did not require a college degree – a condition that’s likely to persist.
Although there are some serious methodology errors with those conclusions, The Permanent Detour also segregated college majors by their rates of underemployment. The report found that those who graduated with majors in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) were the least likely to experience underemployment.
“STEM majors are the least likely to face this problem. Only 30% of engineering and computer science majors are underemployed in their first job after graduation...” the report said. STEM fields such as engineering and computer sciences had the lowest rates of initial underemployment – 30% and 29% respectively.
Those findings mirror a national consensus that STEM jobs are in-demand and the best path to good, post-college careers – a narrative echoed by Burning Glass. Generally, there’s no reason to disagree with the premise or the findings that STEM graduates do well at finding appropriate jobs.
And it’s easy to become distracted by the share of underemployed graduates Burning Glass ascribed to each major. That, for example, of the 21 majors reported, “Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, Firefighting and Related Protective Services” had an abysmal 65% underemployment rate. Or that “Parks, Recreation, Leisure, and Fitness Studies” posted a cringe-worthy 63%.
But what’s more interesting is not the percentages of underemployed graduates in these fields of study. The raw numbers of students impacted tell a different story.
The Permanent Detour report conveniently lists the number of degrees awarded in 2016, along with their reported underemployment rates, in each of the 21 majors it tracks. So, even though the “Parks, Recreation” majors fared quite poorly as a percentage, even after five years those academic tracks still marooned just 28,474 graduates on the shores of underemployment because only 60,583 of those degrees were awarded in 2016. The total number of underemployed Parks and Rec graduates places it not among the worst majors, but just mediocre, at 11th of 21.
When you do the math on the supposed underemployment number against the number of degrees awarded by major, “Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services” left far more people high and dry on job success.
With a five-year 31% underemployment rate according to Burning Glass, and a massive 601,092 degrees passed out in 2016, business and related majors produced a staggering 186,339 people with a degree and no corresponding college-level job. Counting the initial underemployment rate for business and related majors of 47%, a whopping 282,513 were underemployed in 2016.
The “Health Professions” data is head-scratching since we know that in 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted, “Healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioners and technical occupations are projected to be the two fastest-growing occupational groups, adding a combined 2.3 million jobs, about 1 in 4 new jobs” by 2024. But according to the report, “Health Professions and Related Programs” majors were second worst, leaving 154,915 with degrees but without good jobs after five years. Education and Psychology were third and fourth with 99,597 and 61,647 graduates without good jobs respectively.
If you believe the Burning Glass data, those four majors alone – business, health professionals, education, and psychology – put more than half a million people in the underemployed camp. And given that the 21 selected majors in the Burning Glass report totaled 904,000 underemployed graduates after five years, just those four majors accounted for more than half (56%) of the underemployed in the study.
It’s also interesting that although it’s a popular target of those who insist that a college education should connect to a good job, majors in “Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities” left a scant 18,824 underemployed grads after five years. “English Language and Literature/Letters” had just 16,422 similarly underemployed. And the major with the fewest underemployed graduates, according to the report, was “Foreign Languages, Literature, and Linguistics.”
In other words, for every cliché of a barista or bartender with a liberal arts degree, there were ten with a degree in business.
It may be true that if you’re chasing a nice college-level job, studying STEM subjects is among the safest bets. But from a policy perspective, considering the actual and subsidized costs of college, colleges that churn out degrees in business and health professions may be a serious problem – pumping hundreds of thousands of underemployed graduates into the economy every year.
