The "New" Young Professional

Graduating from college 50 years ago was about as necessary as getting your teeth cleaned every month .  It didn't hurt your future, but a high school education was generally accepted as "good enough" to live comfortably.  In the United States, manufacturing jobs were easy to find and many people purely climbed the employment ladder by using experience and hard work.  The true "academic" in American society was a minority.  Today, well-educated, intelligent, ambitious youth are facing the once-unthinkable for the educated: unemployment. 

Multinationals have taken shelter in countries like China and India where labor is cheap and expendable.  What are a few possible causes?

- Overpopulation
- Climate Change
- Globalization
- Outsourcing
- Over-educated
- A widening "generation gap"

Four of the five business classes I am taking this semester work to incorporate these issues.  It's the first time we are asked to apply the classes we have taken and analyze the big picture. The ideas I listed above are broad, complex and each worthy of their own graduate degree.

I am interested in the consequences of our actions today.  It is impossible to predict the future, but I can't help but be fascinated by this crisis.  As I said in the beginning, in the last 10 years, our population has become over-educated.  There is a gap forming between the established 50-somethings that have worked hard to get to where they are, both through education and experience, but mostly experience.  They are the ones that take an "old school" approach and believe you must work your way up from the bottom.

Today, there is an increasing sense of entitlement from 20-somethings.  Over-educated, well-to-do young professionals with MBAs and JDs and PhDs find themselves barging into positions, expecting raises and thinking that they deserve everything when, in actuality, they have a $150,000 piece of paper.  That's not to say that education is worthless, nor is it to say that smart people don't deserve high salaries.

The problem is there is an inordinate amount of these people with expensive pieces of paper all shooting for the same jobs and, in some cases, have expensive pieces of paper financed with loans that are starting to come due.  Interest is piling up and unemployed young lawyers, fresh out of law school with degrees from the finest institutions in America, are unable to put food on their table for one.  This last part was pulled from an article I recently read in the New York Times entitled: "Is Law School a Losing Game?"


This perspective is merely one part of the issue. Law school is one example, in one part of the country, affecting a relatively small number of people.  It gets worse.  In China, "Slumdog Millionaire-type" slums are forming with college graduates that have blown their life's savings, with that of their parents on degrees that promised a better life.  The only thing is EVERYONE thought that might be a good idea.  Now there are millions of young Chinese standing around with no jobs, no money and a pile of debt for life.


Solution? I've been taking an interest to this craziness because of the future.  The future of America and my great-grand children.  I hope to try and wrap my mind around what is becoming a larger global crisis that will affect generations to come and hopefully help to remedy the issue.