Quick Links – Weaker teachers assigned to struggling students; all jobs are temporary; average students should skip college

Study finds that “high-achieving students tend to get the most experienced teachers”.

From an analysis of ’teacher assignments in the nation’s fourth-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools’

Even within the same school, lower-achieving students often are taught by less-experienced teachers, as well as by teachers who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges, according to a new study by researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank. The study, using data from one of the nation’s largest school districts, also shows that student class assignments vary within schools by a teacher’s gender and race….

Previous research indicates that high-quality teachers can significantly improve education outcomes for students.  However, not all students have equal access to the best teachers.

The assignment of teachers to students is the result of a complex process, involving school leaders, teachers and parents. While principals are constrained by teachers’ qualifications – not all high school teachers, for instance, can teach physics – they also may use their authority to reward certain teachers with the more desirable assignments or to appease teachers who are instrumental to school operations.

Teachers with more power, due to experience or other factors, may be able to choose their preferred classes. Parents, particularly those with more resources, also may try to intervene in the process to ensure that their children are taught by certain teachers….

… certain teachers – those with less experience, those from less-competitive colleges, female teachers, and black and Hispanic teachers – are more likely to work with lower-achieving students than are other teachers in the same school.

Do AP teachers need to be the most knowledgeable?

 … Teachers from more competitive colleges may have deeper subject knowledge than their colleagues from less-competitive colleges, leading principals to assign them to more advanced courses, the researchers said.

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‘There is no longer such a thing as a linear career path.’

Bloomberg Businessweek gives us the The New Rules for the Modern Workplace.  New college graduates probably understand these new rules better than older workers do.

The current state of our economy has transformed the workplace and how we manage our careers. There is no longer such a thing as a linear career path. A college degree doesn’t magically turn into a job and an MBA doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a promotion. Even if you get a job, it’s not stable and you won’t be staying with the same employer for life….

Rule No. 1: Your job is temporary. Where you start isn’t where you’ll end up. Your job, company, and profession may completely change because of mergers and acquisitions, layoffs, outsourcing, automation, and various other factors that are outside your control. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American will have about nine jobs from the age of 18 to 32. The job you’re in now is just a stepping stone along your path.

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New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg says average students should skip college.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has some advice for high-school students who are mediocre students: skip college and become plumbers. Bloomberg said on Friday that teenagers who aren’t in the upper echelon should learn how to be plumbers rather that envision a career starting at a prestigious university and obtaining a college degree:

“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class. Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal. You don’t spend … four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income.”

Mark Kantrowitz disagrees, believing that most students should attend college and pointing out that many colleges cost less than $50,000.

Career and money advice for new college graduates

If you’re a millennial, do these things, or else risk remaining unemployed for a long time.

1. Wake up early. Job seeking is a full-time job.
2. Don’t pass on everything. No entry-level job is ideal.
3. Stop relying on mom and dad.

Career advice from Aol Jobs, summarized by FINS Morning Coffee

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With two out of three college graduates averaging more than $24,000 in student loans, Fox Business steps in with this financial advice.

Step 1: Create a Budget

Even if grads don’t have a concrete post-grad plan just yet, creating a budget of projected expenses such as bills, rent and discretionary spending can help them better understand their cash flow situation, suggests John Bucsek, managing director with MetLife Solutions Group. …

Making a budget doesn’t have to be an overwhelming prospect—grads can easily keep up with their expenses using sites like Mint.com or creating a simple spreadsheet….

Step 2: Figure Out Student Loan Terms

Grads typically only have a six-month grace period before having to start repaying student loans, making it essential to secure a job and stay on top of other expenses.

Unemployed or financially-strapped grads should consult with their lender to determine repayment options available to them such as deferment, forbearance, and Income Based Repayment plans should they have issues making payments on time….

Step 3: Get High Interest Debt in Check

Whether grads are an authorized or co-signed user on a parent’s card or have their own account, they should  focus on getting the debt with the highest interest rate paid down first.

Understanding how debt impacts future goals and how credit score plays into every major purchase can help them stay on top of making steady payments and monitoring credit history health, says Bucsek.

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A variation on the expert’s advice

Since the percentage of young adults living with their parents has risen to 22% today, from 11% in 1980, it appears the recommendation to “stop relying on mom and dad” is being ignored by many.  Here’s my variation on the preceding advice.

1. Get up early every day to find a job, or to hone your skills to make yourself more employable.
2. Even if you can’t find a job in your field, work somewhere, even if it’s part-time.  Earn some money.
3. If you’re living at home, use the opportunity to save aggressively and/or pay down student loans.

 Related:  Parents have lower expectations for kids becoming financially independent (Cost of College)

Are these college presidents clueless?

Only 65% of College Presidents Say It’s ‘Very Important’ That Grads Get Good Jobs
And just wait until you see what they say about tuition.

That percentage comes from a Gallup poll released this month.  The poll also showed that only 58% of college presidents  believe the percentage of students who graduate is “very important”, prompting Jordan Weissmann to ask:

If those aren’t tops on your priority list right now, what the hell is?

Apparently the cost of college is also not a priority, given that only 39% responded that the price of a degree is “very important”

Weissmann considers that perhaps he is being hypercritical.

… Perhaps the 37 percent who think graduation rates are only “somewhat” important when determining whether a college is any good are trying to take the sort of painfully nuanced view their fellow denizens of academia would expect.

I don’t know about their “nuanced” views, but I’m with Weissmann in believing that jobs, graduation rates, and cost of attending should be at the top of the list of what college presidents consider very important.

Related:  Families paying for college tuition have been hardest hit by inflation (Cost of College)

Quick Links – Best and worst areas for job growth; women have a duty to keep working; Cooper Union will charge tuition

Best and worst metropolitan areas for 2012 job growth

The South seems to be enjoying better job growth.

Top five metro areas for job growth, showing number of jobs:

Bottom five:

Check out the complete list.

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‘Female Ivy League graduates have a duty to stay in the workforce‘

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a full-time mother, but you don’t need an elite degree to do it

I am not someone who believes that every woman should be made to feel as though they must choose between being committed to their children or committed to the sisterhood of women’s advancement. But I do consider any Harvard Law School degree obtained by a woman who then chooses not to use it in any sort of professional capacity throughout most of her life a wasted opportunity. That degree could have gone to a woman who does want to spend her entire life using it to advance the cause of women – or others in need of advancement – not simply advancing the lives of her own family at home, which is a noble cause, but not one requiring an elite degree….

… There’s nothing wrong with someone saying that her dream is to become a full-time mother by 30. That is an admirable goal. What is not admirable is for her to take a slot at Yale Law School that could have gone to a young woman whose dream is to be in the Senate by age 40 and in the White House by age 50.

The author of this commentary is Keli Goff, a 33-year-old political commentator and former Democratic strategist.

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‘Cooper Union to Start Charging Tuition in Fall 2014‘

Cooper Union only admits 7% of applicants, but that low admission rate may rise after it starts charging tuition.

Cooper Union said Tuesday it could no longer afford to foot the tuition bills for its entire student body, closing a wrenching year-and-a-half-long debate about how to balance economic woes against the school’s core mission to provide a top-notch higher education to talented students, no matter the cost.

The entering class of 2014 will be offered half scholarships to enroll in its prestigious program, putting the price of attendance at just under $20,000 a year….

Cooper Union — named after founder and industrialist Peter Cooper — was established in 1859 as a school for low-income students, offering access to the higher education necessary to participate in shaping public life. Since then, the promise of free education has been as central to the school’s identity as its rigorous programs in architecture, engineering, and the arts, as well as its motley collection of academic buildings — architectural marvels suggestive of the talent of the students inside.

But, like colleges and universities across the country, the college has hit hard financial times in recent years. While the school has relied largely on rent income from land beneath the Chrysler Building to fund its scholarships, that source has not kept pace with inflation rates, Epstein said in his statement.

The problem with a liberal arts degree is that ‘rigor has weakened’

In theory, a college liberal arts degree is a valuable commodity in the job market.  In reality, the way colleges have diluted the curriculum means a liberal arts degree offers little added value in qualifying workers for today’s job market.

‘Liberal arts skills are profitable for college graduates‘

It turns out that employers are looking for the skills that liberal-arts studies instill — critical thinking, logical reasoning, clear writing.  College graduates who tested best at liberal-arts skills were “far more likely to be better off financially than those who scored lowest.

The problem is employers have found liberal arts graduates ‘didn’t learn much in school’.

… Many liberal-arts graduates, even from the best schools, aren’t getting jobs in large part because they didn’t learn much in school. They can’t write or speak well or intelligently analyze what they read.

The National Association of Educational Progress indicates that literary proficiency among adults with “some” college is declining. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of the 2011 book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” found that 36% of college students made no discernible progress in the ability to think and analyze critically after four years in school.

You can minor in ”Social and Economic Justice” without ever studying economics.

For many students, college is a smorgasbord of easy courses chosen for their lack of academic rigor. There is no serious “core curriculum.” Students spend limited time studying. Faculty and administrators make matters worse by allowing students to fill up their time with courses like UNC-Chapel Hill’s “Dogs and People: From Prehistory to the Urbanized Future” and “Music in Motion: American Popular Music and Dance.” When students can get a minor in “Social and Economic Justice” without ever taking a course in the economics department, it’s hardly surprising that businesses aren’t lining up to hire them.

In contrast to liberal arts studies, many STEM and similar vocational majors that focus on teaching specific content have not watered down their curriculum.

Related:

•  The value of a liberal arts major depends on the student and the school (Cost of College)
• Career Prep and the Liberal Arts (Huff Post)

For 2013 graduates, ‘college hiring to remain relatively flat’

Consistent with a jobless recovery, 2013 college graduates see only a modest uptick in new jobs despite last year’s rosy predictions.

The economy might be improving, but few employers are hiring more new college graduates.

In fact, the hiring situation for new graduates looks about the same as last year, which is to say not very good, according to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Broadly, projections for hiring plummeted in 2009 but have ticked upward since then. Yet, there is only supposed to be a 2.1 percent increase in hiring graduates from the class of 2013. That’s the smallest increase in five years.

It’s nowhere near last year’s survey estimate that indicated a 13 percent increase in the hiring of recent graduates.

Demand is higher for jobs related to technology, healthcare, education, and business, and lower for graduates in the humanities and social sciences.

In light of  reports about curtailed school funding increases and an oversupply of teachers, it would be prudent for students to look into the details about exactly what types of jobs are included in the “educational services” category.

Salary increases vary substantially.

The college Class of 2013 commands an overall starting salary of $44,928—up 5.3 percent over the average starting salary their Class of 2012 counterparts realized ($42,666).

Figure 1: Average Salaries by Discipline*

Category	2013 Average Salary	2012 Average Salary	Percent Change
Business	$54,234	$50,633	7.1%
Communications	$43,145	$41,550	3.8%
Computer Science	$59,977	$57,529	4.3%
Education	$40,480	$38,524	5.1%
Engineering	$62,535	$60,151	4.0%
Health Sciences	$49,713	$45,442	9.4%
Humanities & Social Sciences	$37,058	$36,371	1.9%
Math & Sciences	$42,724	$41,430	3.1%
Overall	$44,928	$42,666	5.3%

*Source: April 2013 Salary Survey, National Association of Colleges and Employers

Related:  Don’t pick a college major based on today’s hot jobs (Cost of College)

Is this the ‘definitive guide’ to the college grad job market?

Jordan Weissmann wants to set us straight about the job market for college graduates.  He thinks the press has been overly pessimistic about the value of a college degree, and he offers a “definitive guide” summarized in five points.

(1) They’re Better Off Than High School Grads … 

(2) … But They’re Still Hurting

(3) Underemployment Has Grown…

(4) … But by Less Than You Think

(5) Don’t Worry About College; Worry About the Economy

Conflicting data
The supporting details can be read in the linked article, with dueling data sometimes making the case for valid arguments on either side of the optimistic/pessimistic divide. Weissmann refers to several data sources, and all have their limitations and are subject to interpretation.  (For example, the unemployment rates for recent college graduates vary significantly depending on source and method of measuring.)

Very importantly, career prospects vary according to individual circumstances because the college premium depends on factors like college major, ability bias, and reputation of college.  And Weissmann’s last point may be the most instrumental in affecting the college graduate job market.  A booming economy makes every college degree more valuable.  Prosperity covers all sorts of sins, and helps win elections.  Remember this?

It’s the economy, stupid.

The rise of serial interns – ‘long hours and low pay’

“Permatern” is the new label for a college graduate who spends years in her 20s working for a minimal stipend or for free.  This pattern seems to have become more common for some liberal arts college graduates seeking jobs in media, the arts, and other fields, particularly in the metro areas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.

Kate, with a degree in political science from an Ivy League school, was recently profiled in The Week.

She had one internship at a political organization and another at a media company and is now an unpaid intern at a lobbying firm. To make ends meet, she works as a hostess three or four nights a week, which means she often clocks 15-hour days.

Lacking a steady paycheck and benefits

… After all, who wants to still be an intern at an age when you should have a 401(k) and a modicum of job security, or at least be earning more than you did at your summer job during high school? …

When I ask Kate how many jobs she’s applied for, she says, “Like a million.”

Permaterns are sometimes counted in the growing numbers of underemployed college graduates.

Desperate as she is, the Department of Labor doesn’t consider her to be unemployed, because she has two jobs. Instead, Kate, who often works more than 60 hours a week, is in a class of workers who don’t show up in government reports. She’s one of the ”permaterns” — those perpetual interns, mostly in their 20s — who have been battered by the recession and are holding out hope that the conventional career wisdom that an internship leads to a job isn’t folklore from a bygone era.

A ‘skills gap’

The serial intern isn’t unique to D.C. You can find young people languishing at film studios in Los Angeles and magazine empires in New York City. The permatern phenomenon points toward wider trends in the economy — namely the cutthroat competition for knowledge-economy jobs, the lack of investment in this generation, and the skills gap between what a generation weaned on a liberal-arts education is trained for and what the in-demand skills and professions are right now (i.e., not another poli-sci or English major). The result? For many in Washington, the American dream starts with a highbrow internship that pays $4.35 an hour — then another, and maybe another.

STEM majors usually avoid serial internships.

Not everyone in the generation meets such a fate. Jessica’s brother, who is 28 and a mechanical aerospace engineer, has been gainfully employed since the day he graduated from college, Jessica says. So here’s another chasm in the 20-something cohort: the one between the liberal-arts kids and the engineering and science majors. “Engineering is an in-demand skill,” Jessica says. “International relations/policy kids are a dime a dozen, so the intern pay difference makes sense in that regard.”

A sense of entitlement

The expectation that one’s career should be fulfilling is another reason why the mid-20s, or even early-30s, intern has become a familiar sight in Washington offices. “People in this generation, despite the recession, are looking for what they really want to do, so they take a hit in the form of an internship to land one of those coveted jobs that pays the bills and is fun,” says Ryan Healy of career-advice site BrazenCareerist.com.

Living at home and logging long hours

… long hours and low pay go hand in hand in the creative class. The recession has been no friend to entry-level positions, where hundreds of applicants vie for unpaid internships at which they are expected to be on call with iPhone in hand, tweeting for and representing their company at all hours.

“We need to hire a 22-22-22,” one new-media manager was overheard saying recently, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year….

Required to be available all the time and expected to work ’65+ hours per week’.

A recent posting by Dalkey Archive Press, an avant-garde publisher in Champaign, Ill., for unpaid interns in its London office encapsulated the outlandish demands on young workers. The stern catalog of grounds for “immediate dismissal” included “coming in late or leaving early without prior permission,” “being unavailable at night or on the weekends” and “failing to respond to e-mails in a timely way.” And “The Steve Wilkos Show” on NBCUniversal recently advertised on Craigslist for a freelance booking production assistant who would work “65+ hours per week” (the listing was later removed after drawing outraged comments when it was linked on jimromenesko.com).

Sometimes it works out.

Sometimes the grueling internships lead to steady jobs, often with equally grueling hours.  That is considered a success.  Other times workers give up on their dream career after years of serial internships, and get a practical job to pay the bills.  That is simply considered reality.  I recently heard a story about an aspiring teacher who interned at a Washington D.C. area women’s advocacy group for about a year, and then was finally able to get an administrative job for a lobbying firm.  One of her main goals was staying in DC, so things have worked out all right for now.

Related:  Unpaid internships – the good, the bad, and the ugly (Cost of College)

Women who graduated from highly selective colleges more likely to drop out of workforce

Which women are more likely to drop out of the workforce?

… women who attended highly selective schools are more likely to opt out of the workforce than are their counterparts from less selective schools.

A university professor who was “absolutely infuriated” to see so many highly educated women leave the workforce decided to study this topic.

Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, analyzed data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates and crossed the information with the Carnegie Foundation’s classifications of schools and selectivity measures from Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. She found that women who attended highly selective schools are more likely to opt out of the workforce than are their counterparts from less selective schools.

Why?  For one thing, these women tend to marry high-achieving men.

Such a divide might have its seeds in the college admissions office. …  students who attend the most selective schools tend to come from wealthier backgrounds than those who opt for less selective schools. They don’t take out as many student loans. They have a better shot at getting accepted to an elite graduate school. And they will be surrounded by (and therefore more likely to marry) men with similarly successful backgrounds and strong earnings potential, making their financial contribution less critical. (Maybe this is what Susan Patton was trying to say?) 

Such women can actually afford to step back from the workforce, a luxury that women without spousal safety nets or hefty bank accounts just don’t have, Hersch says.

This helps explain the low numbers of women in higher management positions.

There are major consequences to this opt-out trend among graduates from selective programs, Hersch says: Elite companies hire from elite schools, but women from elite schools don’t stick around for long, limiting the talent pipeline for leadership positions.

Doctors and teachers are more likely to continue working, perhaps because they can often avoid the long hours required in other professions that women choose.

A lot depends on the kind of degree that a married woman with children has obtained. If she is a physician, has a PhD, or has an MA in education (i.e., is probably a K-12 teacher), she is as likely to be employed as graduates from lower-tier schools. But those degrees involve only 24% of mothers who graduated from tier 1 schools. Those with law degrees are 9 percentage points less likely to be employed than graduates from lower-tier schools; those with MBAs are 16 percentage points less likely to be employed, and the largest single group, those with just a BA, are 13 percentage points less likely to be employed.

Charles Murray points out how these women may be helping to sharpen the edges of our nation’s class divisions.

So Professor Hersch has established that the next generation of children who have everything from genes to family structure to money going for them are also more likely to have a stay-at-home mom — and not just any mom, but one who has been sifted through the micron-fine mesh of the admissions process at elite schools and been judged to have both the IQ and other sterling qualities that gained her entrance, and who is devoting that package of exceptional abilities to the upbringing of her children. Lucky kids. And a new upper class polished to an ever-shinier gloss.

Here’s the paper:  Opting Out among Women with Elite Education

Related:

• How would you advise your daughter? (Cost of College)
• Non-marital births by education level as part of the growing class divide (Cost of College)

Deconstructing the college premium – it depends on major and ability bias

The college premium is derived from several elements.

The college premium of better pay and job prospects should be considered as a composite of several elements, not all directly resulting from actual college attendance.  The premium can be affected by the amount of genuine learning (influenced by major and institution), ability bias, signaling capacity, and other factors.  A hard-working computer science MIT graduate with a 130 IQ will likely enjoy a higher college premium  than a lackadaisical ethnic studies major with a 100 IQ who graduated from a directional state college.  Even if neither attended college, the MIT-wannabee would still probably out-earn the second individual.  [Edited to add that these comments refer to actual dollar amounts.  In terms of percentages, I can see how the slacker kid could have a higher college premium.]

Bryan Caplan has written extensively on this topic, including a recent post about how ‘stronger students typically choose harder – and more lucrative – majors’.

Economists usually talk about the college premium, but the college premium heavily depends on your major.  At the same time, though, stronger students typically choose harder – and more lucrative – majors.  Thus, the college premium is doubly infected by ability bias: People who would have made more money anyway are more likely to go to college, and college graduates who would have made more money anyway are more likely to select demanding majors.

Incorporating this information, Caplan calculated the premium for various majors.  Here are the top five, broken down by gender.
…

EARNINGS COMPARED TO H.S. GRADS

Major	Males	Females
Electrical engineering	+63%	+72%
Computer Science	+61%	+63%
Mechanical engineering	+61%	+72%
Finance	+61%	+55%
Economics	+60%	+59%

…
While Caplan admits these figures “lack the precision of Planck’s constant”, he considers them better than much of the information typically available to high school seniors.  Although as I look at this table, I’m not exactly sure how I would use the data in advising a particular student.  He also notes the relatively high rank of economics,  confirming his belief that ”Economics is the highest-paid of all the easy majors.”