Capella PhD on welfare

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/business/economy/working-but-needing-public-assistance-anyway.html

Even some of the nation’s best-educated workers have turned to taxpayers for support; a quarter of the families of part-time college faculty members are on public assistance, the Berkeley researchers found.

“I’m very proud of my doctorate, it was well-earned, but in terms of the work force, it’s a penalty,” said Wanda Brewer, who lives in Mayfield, a Chicago suburb, and teaches at DeVry and Concordia colleges. She is paid $2,700 for each 15-week course she teaches. She and her 4-year-old daughter are both on Medicaid; they also receive $390 a month in food stamps and a child care subsidy.

She has applied for other jobs at chains like Walmart, Home Depot and Menard’s, but says she can’t even get a call back because such employers consider her overqualified.

“When I apply for anything outside education, they laugh at me,” Ms. Brewer said. “The term professor immediately commands respect. The assumption is you’re making a fair wage, a living wage, but that is not necessarily so.”

 

According to the LinkedIn profile of Dr. Evans:

1. English BA (Humanities)

2. 2 Master's Degrees (one in Education, one in Psychology)

3. Doctorate in Eduction

No surprise - but it's a tough market for humanities and psychology PhDs

Humanities Ph.D. employment: The long-standing horror of the job market, in one chart.

The new academic job market

 

Maybe she should consider leaving the PhD off her resume when applying for non-academic jobs.

 

I think she would have to leave a whole lot more off of her resume than her doctorate.

My sister divorced her husband at the age of 38. She had two kids in school (sole custody) and she had last worked around age 25. She has a degree (B.A. in Psychology) but so do a lot of people looking for work. When she applied for fast food and retail jobs she had the same runaround. People told her to leave her degree off of her resume/applications. So, she did. Still no jobs (because then she was applying as someone with no degree AND no recent experience).

These jobs require, above almost everything else, reliability. I can understand why an employer would be skeptical about a middle aged person with no self-reported work history who is applying for a job at McDonalds. Did they just leave prison? Have they been fired from literally every other employer? You just don't know. McDonalds doesn't do background/reference checks (at least, they didn't when I worked there in high school) so it is a crap shoot. If you hire throngs of high school students at least you have volume to make up for the uncertainty.

In another thread we discussed the utility of a second MBA where the first one doesn't help you get a decent job. There I said one might consider focusing on certifications and technical training so that you are actually learning how to "do" something that a degree wouldn't teach. I think this is an example of someone having a lot of education but no marketable skill. That's fine if you land yourself a tenure track position. Otherwise this is what happens.

I empathize with her. But I also recognize that clever resume writing might not be the answer to her problems. Even if she leaves the degrees off her resume she'll have, what, a job at a fast food restaurant or a call center? Then she'll be in the same boat as the McDonald's cashier featured in the paragraph above her who is earning a wage and can't afford to live on it. She needs a path to a living wage and fast food is probably not the clearest path there.

 

It also doesn't help that she doesn't have an APA-accredited PhD in psychology. Education is not a humanity or psychology, but it's one of the most popular graduate programs. There is probably an overabundance of people with graduate degrees in education. She used to be a Spanish, ESL, and special education teacher. There is a shortage of teachers in those three areas, but she might have to move.

 

From the NY Times article:

"Even some of the nation’s best-educated workers have turned to taxpayers for support; a quarter of the families of part-time college faculty members are on public assistance, the Berkeley researchers found."

Yep, it's a tough market for academics in many fields.

I've stated this many times, but in academia, if you want to work, you need to be willing to move to get your foot in the door.

Shawn

 

I believe that if you cannot find work, you can create your own job. Her education can lead to many self employment opportunities such as tutoring, counselling, training, etc.

I survived as a self employed person for many years, not because I couldn't find work but because I wanted to try this path.

Self employment is tough but it is better than waiting at home for a phone call.

 

We discussed this a while ago, the availability of online PhDs from for profit schools that enroll people in the order of hundreds was going to lead to the saturation of academic jobs at low tier institutions. I always believed that a PhD from a low tier online school pretty much leads to adjunct positions at another low tier institutions or if lucky a full time job at another low tier that pays little money. If this is the path some people like to take, this is fine, but you cannot come back crying saying that now you are a victim of the economy.

If you search profiles in linked in, you will find that the vast majority of people with online for profit PhDs work as adjuncts or some work as professionals in fields where the doctorate is not required. There is also the trend of people doing second doctorates when the first doctorate is not working for them.

 

I agree. Academics, in my opinion, are used to providing extensive CV content. They might do better sticking to the "1-page resume" rule of thumb and keeping it relevant. Irrelevant is still irrelevant, and I think not being able to see the difference automatically distinguishes you as not-too-savvy...the opposite of what you're going for.

 

I love that advice RFValve!

 

I would have expected more part-time faculty to be on public assistance. Working part-time while being the breadwinner for a family and qualifying for public assistance is almost a given. I think it is more important to know how many people in academia wanting a full-time position are stuck with part-time positions. Overall, those with PhDs are much less likely to be on public assistance than the general public. The media has sensationalized the fact that the number of PhDs on public assistance has tripled, but the percentage of PhDs on public assistance is still very low. In 2012, only 1.1% of those with a PhD were on public assistance. That is the lowest percentage of people on public assistance of any educational group. Overall, 13.4% of Americans were receiving public aid. This is the research everyone was citing back in 2012, but they were hiding the fact that PhDs on public assistance is still very rare.
http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/412576-Receipt-of-Assistance-by-Education.PDF

In the first year of my PhD program, the doctoral student coordinator told us that we will absolutely not get a job at a higher-ranked school in criminology. That isn't really a problem for us because there aren't very many schools ranked in criminology, and there is a shortage of PhDs in this field. However, I was curious to see if what he was saying was true. Only focusing on the faculty with PhDs in Criminal Justice or Criminology (there are a lot of criminology professors with sociology degrees), I took a look at several of the top-ranked schools in the field. What he said is generally true. The only school that regularly hires faculty from lower-ranked schools is the #1 school. They hire faculty from the #2 and #3 schools. I don't know if this is the case for other academic fields, but it is something aspiring academics should look into.

 

It applies to most fields. Bottom line is that when you attend a top ranked school, you bring not just knowledge but bring all your networks with you that can help the hiring school to raise its own profile.

Tier 3 schools will try to hire tier 2 school graduates and tier 2 will try to hire tier 1. The problem is if you graduate from a school at the bottom of the scale, then you would need to use other strengths to sell your self (e.g. excellent course evaluation, working experience, excellent personality, etc).

I agree that a PhD is better than no PhD at all, but if one is going to take the non name school path because of convenience (e.g. online program), then the person should compensate this option with professional certifications, good experience, publications, etc.

I am sure that the Capella PhD in question would have no problems getting work if she gets a teaching license, counsellor certification or other in demand certification that might compensate the low tier PhD.

 

In a related story,

The big lie about families on welfare: they don't work - Vox

 

This has been in the works for many years, due to several factors:

1. Many jobs have been outsourced overseas where labor costs are significantly lower.

2. Many jobs have been replaced with automation (in factories) or computers (in other industries).

3. College degrees used to be a rarity, but now they are becoming commonplace and they are no longer a guarantee of securing employment. An exception are technical degrees (and many of those are at the Associate level).

4. Secure industrial and blue collar jobs continue to disappear, while service-oriented jobs continue to expand, such as in fast food and lower-end jobs in the health care industry.

Today there were three applicants applying for a secretarial job with a starting salary of 28k annually. All three applicants were in their 20s and, surprisingly, all three have JDs. Having a PhD or a JD is no guarantee of high-end employment. The JD situation may be even worse than the PhD glut.

The biggest employment need of the future will be in the service industry (food and lower-end healthcare), but those jobs are low paying and generally do not offer pensions. The next 30 years is going to be an economic wake-up call, especially for a generation of people who are used to entitlements or being handed things on a silver platter. That era will stop, albeit the decent is not sudden.

Keep your eye on the canary in the cave.

 

Wow. Were the JDs from decent schools on the ABA list or are we talking about Concord Law School or something like that?

 

I am employed in a state forensic lab. The chemist positions are BS/MS level positions, but our most recent hire has a PhD in chemistry from a state school. Not Ivy League but not a bad school either, a decent state university. We also have an intern with a PhD (different school but similar level) simply because she can't get a job without experience. Apparently she's basically homeless, staying with friends and such.

From my limited personal observation, some of the reason is the person, some is the situation. Some people really get dealt some hard blows in life that not everyone is aware of, myself included.

 

The applicants were from ABA approved JD schools. Schools are producing more JDs than what the market needs, which is why we see an inordinate amount of JDs doing other things. The marketplace does not need so many PhDs and/or JDs, but schools are selling dreams and are profitable in doing so. Most people should stop at the Bachelors.

 

Part of the problem is that "decent" doesn't always equal jobs in the legal world.

Consider, for a moment, that if you want to be a law librarian (at a law school or at some large firms) you need a Master of Library Science AND and a JD. That's a whole lot of schooling for a relatively low ROI (the jobs I've seen posted are paying $60-75k).

Public defenders can make as little as $30k, work grueling hours and get to defend the indefensible for a living.

The people in those two classes likely (but not necessarily) graduated from law schools that people would think of as "decent" years ago. For decades there was no real shame in graduating from a second tier law school. Temple University, Yeshiva University and a slew of state law schools are considered "Second Tier." But with fewer jobs, the firms that focus on top tier law schools aren't even going to consider anyone from a "lesser" school.

We have a person with a JD who works as a purchasing manager at my company. She practiced law for exactly one year post-law school and then got a job as a purchasing agent. At present, she likely makes more than she ever would have made had she remained in the legal field (started her own practice right out of law school and was barely scraping by). She went to a perfectly fine second tier law school. She's a member of the NY, NJ and PA Bar.

There just aren't as many jobs as there once were.

Coupled with the fact that some people seem to think that if you hang out a shingle as a solo practitioner clients will flock to you and you'll make your way to a BMW your first year. Not how it works.

My mother eventually became a lawyer after working as a paralegal for many years (I was the only kid graduating from HS who shared his graduation party with his mom because she graduated with her B.A. at the same time!). She made only slightly more as an attorney. It was a great personal achievement but the fees are set by the WC board (and you get paid whether you win or lose).

 

Or the good high-paying jobs are drying up. However, there are actually more jobs today than what there used to be, but the majority of jobs that are being created are lower paying service-oriented jobs that do not offer pensions or 401k plans.

 

It's a quantity versus quality situation.

My grandfather worked as a "clerk" at an insurance company for decades. He never graduated from high school. As a "clerk" he did a little bit of accounting, a little bit of underwriting, a little bit of claims service, a little bit of agent relations and a little bit of whatever else needed doing at that time. He was the sole earner in the family. He owned a house in Northern NJ. He bought two cars. He retired with a defined benefit (as opposed to defined contribution, like a 401(k) ) pension. His job doesn't exist today. It has been replaced by a half dozen other functions. Many of those functions require a college degree and pay $25k to start.

So, like you said, there are more jobs but they are lower paying. A large insurance company could never do business on a global scale with its system of "clerks" like they had in the 50s.

But I'm talking specifically about legal jobs. Because a fair amount of open positions, where a JD and bar admission was required, have dried up. Firms have consolidated. Firms have folded. Certain areas of legal practice have bottomed out because of changes in technology. I was just reading this article on how a series of changes basically obliterated the market for estate planning lawyers.

There is certainly the element of companies like LegalZoom and consumers doing a lot more themselves but I think corporations have drastically changed the way they handle lawyers as well (and the corporate changes likely had the most significant impact). When I look through old company records I see that we once had 11 corporate attorneys in our New York office. We now have three. We essentially had our own in-house law firm. They handled everything. Now, we have three lawyers who coordinate legal matters with the firms we've retained to deal with those matters for us. That's a big shift. And other companies made similar shifts.