Olivia Nyhammer
Professor Young
September 28, 2014
English 110
Issues in Community
Mike Bowe once said, “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist.” The education system here in America is broken due to the scarcity well-paying jobs for college graduates who spend four years dedicated to studying, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars towards a bachelor’s degree. Little do they know the Bachelors Degree is becoming the minimum requirement for jobs that do not require college skill level. This is a rising issue that began when our country first started to struggle economically because there were higher rates of unemployment and fewer jobs. In Valerie Kinloch’s essay, “Harlem, Art, and Literacy and Documenting ‘“Harlem Is Art”’/ ‘“Harlem As Art’” you are taken on a walk through of Harlem’s progressive gentrification. Gentrification is positively influencing our broken education system by providing more professional, and up-scale job opportunities for college graduates. Colleges can resolve this issue by giving more realistic expectations of jobs needed in today’s society pertaining to one’s major, having stricter criteria for acceptance into college, and bank lenders can also contribute by giving more realistic quotes on loans.
Because of more demand for jobs, companies are sorting through 800 applications at a time causing them to treat a bachelor’s degree as an equivalent to a high school diploma. For example, a law firm in Atlanta, which has become a more college-educated population, only will higher applicants with at least a bachelor’s degree for office jobs. Even the office “runner”, who makes only ten dollars an hour, is required to have a degree. Companies validate the sense in their selection because obviously they are going to take the best that they can receive even if that skill set is not required because it shows the students dedication to their work. Adam Slipakoof, the firm’s managing partner explains, “College students are just more career-oriented.” Colleges give us so much assurance that we will have a place in the work field after graduation, but the unemployment rate of people with just a high school diploma is only two times that of students with a bachelor’s degree when one would expect it to be five times higher considering all of the work and money that goes into that certification. We do not end up being paid for the quality of work we are capable of producing. Though through gentrification, we can flourish run down business’s and provide more appropriate job opportunities for graduates with specific skill sets.
Here at Fairleigh Dickenson University, the campus of Florham, tuition for the four years that is required to obtain a bachelor’s degree is $220,000. Most students will be paying their loans back until it’s time for their kids to go to college, and 20% of graduates, which is one in five, end up working a job that is unrelated to their major. Megan Parker, a graduate from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a bachelor’s in Fashion and Retail Management, by 2012 settled for a job as a receptionist which is completely unrelated to her major, making only $37,000 because it was all she could find and is still $100,000 in debt from student loans. Parker admits, “I will probably never see the end of that bill...” Her college should have given her more realistic job opportunities that were based off her major, and the bank lender should have devised a plan that could have prevented her from being in a life time of debt for a certification she didn’t need.
If colleges had stricter criteria for acceptance, less of the population would have degrees and those who did would be more valuable to the work force. Due to society’s lack of jobs, colleges should review their standards for acceptance and raise them. Colleges are failing to realize that they are putting so many “average” students in the work force with degrees they shouldn’t of paid for because only the students who graduated with all A’s are actually receiving the jobs that require college skill level, leaving the others to settle for jobs a high school graduate used to be able to fulfill. By raising their criteria for acceptance, colleges are avoiding making “average” graduates get degrees just to not use them.
Now that gentrification occurred, Harlem today is a flourishing community filled with an abundance of job opportunities. Kinloch quotes Khaleeq, “Yeah, like the way the old Apollo was before the glitzy lights and expensive tickets. You think we [Black people] can afford to go there now?” (Kinloch 152) By remodeling the old businesses, they can inflate their prices giving them more money to pay their shareholders and workers.The more affluent a business is, the more competitive the salary. The more companies that come into the community, the more jobs that become available resulting in less debt and more opportunities for college graduates.
This is a very relevant problem in my community considering I am a college student myself. We as a community on this campus are all stakeholders in this problem. We are all paying for our education; working towards degrees we pray society will still have demand for when it’s our time to enter the work force. A lack of jobs for college graduates is a problem in my world and in my community. Will your son/daughter end up struggling with college debt? Will there be demand for work in his/her major? Will this problem still one day affect our grandchildren? What if the economy just gets worse? These are all valid questions hopefully colleges and bank lenders will start to ask themselves so we can finally put this problem to rest and gentrification can help create opportunities for graduates.
