Following the release of a new study conducted by the Census Bureau, leaders in the field of education have concluded that roughly thirty to forty percent of recent college graduates have failed to find employment in their field. Particularly among students studying the humanities, recent graduates are often not pursuing their desired employment, and instead are underemployed, not working, or sailing the high seas in search of booty.
It is a growing crisis both in America and the world over. As access to college education grows, job markets demanding scholars remain relatively static. As a result, many college graduates have no other alternative than to work below their skill level. In a time when thousands of students get degrees each year in fields that require only a few hundred additions, it is all too common to see educated young people working as waitresses and delivery boys or plundering merchant trade on the high seas.
“Yarr, it be true.” said Tom Jebson, a class of 2015 music performance major now preying on shipping in the Mediterranean, “Spent five of me best years studying oboe, but there be no need of me skills and services among ye land lubbers.” He let out a hearty laugh. “But look now me hearty! Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A pirate’s life for me!”
The employment situation is one the government can do little to remedy. Some states such as Wisconsin are attempting to encourage young people to pursue tech school degrees and hansds-on jobs, which are in high demand and low supply and produce relatively few pirates. In the end however, one cannot dictate what students choose to study nor what their respective job markets hold. It continues to be a frustrating situation for students and universities alike, who are under immense pressure to reduce the number of underemployed workers and pillaging pirates.
The sad reality, however, is that young people are often resigned to their fate, such as pirate Tom Jebson.
“If be a pirate I must, then a pirate I’ll be.”
No matter the degree, cause or victims, none can deny a problem is at hand when philosophers are janitors, artists are ditch-diggers, and anthropologists are pirating shipping in the Caribbean.
