Education’s Effect on Getting Jobs

I am a strong advocate of people getting college degrees.  I have three of them myself and each higher degree has increased both my opportunities and my happiness in life.  I love learning new things and increasing my understanding of those things I think I already know.  I think that is part of the reason I love being in the IT industry.  Few things change as rapidly as computer related technologies.  Very few days go by when I do not learn something new about my chosen profession.

I work with manufacturers throughout the state that are trying to hire workers.  They report to me that only one in five people in Mississippi have enough education to be hired at an entry level position.  That does not mean that only 20% or Mississippians are educated, but that only 20% of those applying for these positions are qualified.  Most of them are not considered by the Human Resources department because they did not graduate high school.

So, what are the real numbers on high school graduates?  Before I became involved with the Center for Manufacturing Excellence, I thought that the numbers provided by the department of education were accurate.  These numbers fluctuate every year but show a consistent dropout rate of less than 15% and a graduation rate above 85%.  In my opinion, these numbers are horrible and our dropout rate should be closer to 2% with a great amount of assistance for those 2% to get them trained for the workforce.

Unfortunately the situation is worse than it appears.  The numbers above are horribly inflated and the state of Mississippi as well as many other states, keep two sets of books.  The official number is calculated as the number of high school seniors that finish their senior year and graduate.  The unofficial and more accurate number should be the number of freshmen that finish their senior year and graduate.  See the subtle difference?  Many students drop out in the three years before becoming a senior and if you look at these numbers, Mississippi’s graduation rate is closer to 65%.

This number meshes much closer with what industry people are reporting to us.  They tell me that about 30% of the people in the state do not have high school educations.  With few exceptions, the state’s manufacturers will not hire someone that did not finish high school and many will not hire someone that does not have at least some higher education.  My heart goes out to these people without educations because their ability to find work in the future will only get tougher.

At the other end of the education scale, I am friends with two people that have doctorate degrees that cannot find work.  One person has a PhD in Mathematics and the other person has a PhD in Computational Biology.  Both of these people have been to my office in the past month looking for advice on how to get work in the software industry.  For both of these people, the industry has basically told them that they are over qualified.
Human resource departments are hesitant to hire someone with too much education into an entry level position.  The thinking is that the person will be constantly looking for another job and HR will have to look for another person to fill that same position in the near future.  In fact, the cost of training an over educated person can be more expensive than training and under educated person.  The under educated person will often fail out early from the training but the other will finish the training and even work in the position for a while.

It is only when the over educated person finds a better job that he leaves.  The educated person thinks of these low level positions as stepping stones while the uneducated person thinks of this as a career opportunity.  This is why most businesses list very specific education and skill sets for their positions.  Not only do they need someone that is capable of doing the job, but they also need someone that is going to stay in that position for an extended period of time.

If you are looking for some sort of suggestion at this point, I am sorry, I do not really have one.  I will suggest however, that it is always better to be the over educated individual than the under educated person.  It is far easier to dumb down your skill set than it is to claim skills you do not have.