Studentsarriving at the "Ivies" this fall are encountering a surprising phenomenon. Women's studies courses outnumber economics classes, often by as much as two to one. Princeton remains the lone exception, but not by much: 25 women's studies courses compared with 32 in economics.
This phenomenon has something to do with the fact that over 50 percent of those who graduated from college in May still cannot find jobs appropriate for their degrees. But that's only half the picture; the following anecdote completes it.
New Republic editor and outspoken liberal Michael Kinsley wrote this of his attempt to hire a recent college graduate as his research assistant: "[T]he government makes it comically difficult for the honest citizen to hire a single employee." Comical to some, but not to the new graduate. Kinsley said government regulation "plunges you into an entirely new dimension of complexity as an employer" with "a minimum of 37 different forms and 50 separate checks to hire a single employee for a year." As a result of government regulation, Kinsley's young assistant ended up right back where he found her: in the unemployment line.
Two simple reasons explain why half of today's college graduates cannot find jobs befitting their degree. First, colleges are not preparing students adequately and employers know it. They are focusing on fads such as women's studies rather than spending limited resources on core academic subjects. And second, burgeoning government regulation is having a pernicious, and often underestimated, impact on the job market.
Thanks to a dramatic shift in the direction of college curricula, a degree no longer indicates proficiency in the basic skills. The New York Times reported that employers, "express a lack of confidence in the ability of schools and colleges to prepare young people for the workplace." According to a major report by the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce, employers, well aware of grade inflation, "pay little attention to measurements of school performance." Nevzer Stacey of the Department of Education went one step further: "Employers have given up on the schools."
What are our colleges and universities doing wrong? While skill requirements for employment are increasing (57 percent of employers say skill requirements have increased), the quality and substance of our educational institutions are eroding. Except at a few select schools which have maintained their commitment to quality instruction, multicultural and politically correct courses supplant classes that have practical value for future employment.
What courses are now preparing our students for the work force? At Columbia University this fall: "Race, Gender and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll" and "The Invisible Women in Literature: The Lesbian Literary Tradition." At Penn: "Search for Extraterrestrial Life" and "(Im)possible Animals." At Brown: "Unnatural Acts and Split Britches, Circumcision: Male and Female, Jewish and Gentile" and "Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Tropes." And Harvard, not to give students the idea that the free market might be a good thing, offers, "Alternative Economies: The Case Against Capitalism, 1648-1848" in addition to activist oriented "Status of Environmental Justice as a Public Policy Issue" and "AIDS, Health and Human Rights." Other courses influencing students' outlook on the free market include Cornell's "The Selfish Individual and the Modern World," Princeton's "Income Distribution" and Yale's "Gender and the Politics of Resistance: Feminism, Capitalism and the Third World."
According to a recent survey in The Chronicle of Higher Education, finding a good job is the number one reason students attend college. Yet schools are so caught up in hot political issues that they have lost sight of a critical aspect of their mission: training students for the workforce. As Wendy Bounds of the Wall Street Journal said, "After an outlay of thousands of dollars, college graduates discover that a bachelor's degree doesn't buy what it did 10 years ago."
Hand in hand with higher education's own responsibility for the attrition of opportunities for college graduates is another culprit: government regulation. While President Bill Clinton panders to the twenty-something crowd with his expensive Americorps and student loan programs, his administration's regulatory policies are having a baleful effect. Businesses are forced to spend vast resources on compliance with regulations rather than on expansions and hiring. Take the paper industry for example. Over the past four years, one of the largest book paper suppliers in North America, P.H. Glatfelter, spent $180 million to satisfy regulatory requirements. That is $180 million that will not be spent developing the business or hiring new workers.
The numbers are staggering. There are four times more federal regulations today than in 1965 and 14 times more than in 1950, totaling over 200 volumes and 132,000 pages. Estimates show regulations costing the U.S. economy over $500 billion annually. Employment quotas, for instance set businesses back between $5 and $8 billion annually on direct compliance (government paper work, mandated advertising in minority newspapers, etc.). Many billions more, however, are lost in indirect costs due to the diversion of management time, resources and energy. And according to author Thomas Sowell, minorities have not benefited from this loss. He says the relative economic position of minorities has actually fallen since the United states implemented quotas.
As a result of new and existing regulations, the jobs students have counted on are just not there. Rather than pay the price of expansion, businesses are either stagnant or cutting back. During July and August 1995, manufacturing jobs declined by an average of 38,000 per month. Yet in August alone, government increased its payroll by 73,000 jobs. That is 73,000 new bureaucrats to write, revise and enforce regulations which are largely responsible for factories losing 120,000 jobs overall in 1995.
While universities educate students in "The Drama of Homosexuality" (Harvard) and "Spirit Possession, Shamanism, Curing and Witchcraft" (Cornell), the Clinton administration is doing little to plan for the employment needs of future graduates. For instance there are one million cosmetology grads who cannot find jobs in their field. Yet this year, there will be 200,000 new cosmetology students, many of whom will seek and receive assistance from federal loan programs. While the Clinton administration demands increases in student loan program funding, those funds are not granted to students according to any reasonable estimate of what the market can sustain. Rather, this administration is more concerned about building demand for federal student loan programs than in planning for employment needs. Consequently, higher education continues to send graduates into ridiculously glutted markets, or no markets at all.
Is it any wonder that over 50 percent of May's graduates are still looking for the jobs they hoped their degrees would lead them to? If we continue to ignore the obvious impact of an increasingly politically correct curriculum, staggering new and existing regulations, and poor investment planning with taxpayer dollars on the part of the Clinton administration, recent college graduates, once our brightest hope for the future, will be increasingly unwanted in the workforce.
