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Post-college dissonance and disguised unemployment

Post-college dissonance and disguised unemployment

PARALLAX VIEW

4 min read . 27 Nov 2022

Sandipan Deb

Photol iStock
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What’s being studied seems woefully out of whack with what the real job market demands

About a fortnight ago, the American job site Ziprecuiter.com published the findings of
its latest survey of college graduates who intend to look for a new job in the next six
months (bit.ly/3UYNilm). A key question in the study probed whether respondents
regretted the specializations they had chosen in college.

Journalism, sociology, liberal arts and general studies, and communications topped the
list of the most regretted college majors. As much as 87% of those who had got a degree
in journalism said that if they could go back in space and time, they would choose a
different stream. The figures for unhappy students of sociology, liberal arts and general
studies, and communications were 72%, 72% and 64% respectively.

Graduates most satisfied with what they had studied in college were those who had done
computer and information sciences (72%), criminology (72%), engineering (71%) and
nursing (69%). This is, of course, an American poll, but the findings could be relevant to
India too. The conclusions clearly indicate some universal economic realities. The men
and women happiest with their degrees are the ones whose jobs pay the most. The top
10 list of least-regretted college majors is completed by health, business management,
finance, psychology, construction trades and human resource management. In contrast,
the most-regretted list is heavily skewed towards the humanities: education, political
science, English literature and so on.
Computer scientists, engineers and MBAs have far better job and earning prospects
compared with journalism, sociology or English majors, notwithstanding the latest
round of layoffs in Big Tech companies like Meta, Amazon and Google. Most humanities
graduates, unless they choose to pursue a career in academia, possibly end up in
professions that do not have a very strong connection with their degrees. After all, how
much does a grounding in philosophy help you in an advertising or banking job?

There is also the matter of return on investment. In the last few decades, India has seen
the emergence of quite a few private universities focusing on the liberal arts. They are
also highly expensive—academic fees and hostel expenses could go up to ₹15 lakh a
year. Yet, it is unlikely that a humanities graduate from these schools would start her
career with a salary of more than ₹5 lakh per annum. This is not a great investment
from a financial point of view.

Most of these students come from well-off families. Many of their parents may also have
been subject
HOME LATEST to the generalPREMIUM
MARKETS Indian middle class tendency of being pushed intoe-paper
FOR YOU becoming
engineers or chartered accountants by parental pressure. I know dozens of alumni of the
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other elite engineering institutes who want
their children to be free from such stress and in fact encourage them to study the
humanities. It is a common refrain among these people that one of the flaws in their
education was that they were not exposed adequately to the liberal arts.
But a liberal arts degree on its own may not pay well. And the young people in this
family income bracket have been largely cushioned from any economic stress. Many of
them do not feel the pressure that earlier generations felt at their age to succeed
financially. It is not uncommon to hear affluent parents of Gen Z-ers complaining that
their progeny do not seem to be interested in a “regular career" with a stable income. As
they try to find their groove in life—vlogger, stand-up comedian, bakery owner—they
stay financially supported by their parents, some of whom suffer from a vague guilt that
they did not give enough time and attention to their children when they needed it. The
result: while expensively educated kids have a lot of free time, the parents are very busy
trying to earn money.

Lower down the family wealth scale, we OPEN

see an explosion in the number of PhD
IN APP

admissions in universities across the country. According to the Indian ministry of

education’s latest All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE), PhD enrolments
increased more than 60% between 2015-16 and 2019-20, from 126,315 to 202,449
(bit.ly/3VkknYJ). Of these, about 42,000 researchers were working in fields of liberal
arts, from philosophy and religious studies to various foreign languages and music.

SIMILAR STORIES
But how many of these doctoral candidates are pursuing true and useful scholarship?
How many are in it because they could not secure a job and find the monthly PhD
stipend a comfortable means of sustenance while they look for real employment or
prepare for the civil service examinations? According to the salary research website
Ambitionbox.com, the annual PhD wage in India ranges between ₹0.3 lakh and ₹10.7
lakh, with an average of ₹4.1 lakh.

Do we need 825 people pursuing doctorates in the fine arts, as reported by the AISHE?
How many of the 2,378 people enrolled for a doctorate in political science can our
colleges and think-tanks accommodate? And what is the quality of research being
carried out? Is this a case of what economists call “disguised unemployment"?

The unavoidable truth is that the world sees more economic value in yet another mobile
phone game than some pathbreaking work of historical analysis. And it is sad to see so
many college graduates confused or unsure about their future and regretting what they
chose to study and devoted three years or more of their lives to.

Sandipan Deb is a former editor of ‘Financial Express’, and founder-editor of ‘Open’ and
‘Swarajya’ magazines
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