College, degrees, and jobs, oh my!

[Joods]

Clearly, it's not helping either.

Um. That's just stupid.

You heard of some people that can't get jobs after getting college degrees. This absolutely happens. The reason? There are plenty of them, but chief among them are that people get BAs in Art History and English Literature and enter a saturated job market full of intellectuals that work until they die.

I got a BS in Computer Science last year and got three job offers before I even had the diploma in hand. No diploma? No job.

Yes, but you need to realize that you are employed in a field that's in high demand. So instead of lumping every single job category out there into one thing, understand that there are some fields where, even with a degree, it's difficult to get work. 

I went to school, graduated and obtained my state licensure to do what I do. Guess what... I haven't been able to find decent, meaningful and sustainable work in my area for a year. It's not worth the amount of money I would spend on gas each week, to go outside of my area for what I am trained to do. Unfortunately, the market in my area, is literally saturated with salons and day spas. And at this point, I don't have enough experience to get licensure in another state that's closer to me. So there goes 18 grand down the toilet. It also takes between 1 and 3 years to build up a solid book to the point that you are always busy. Everyone I've talked to around my area already has someone that does their hair, so the only people I would be able to depend on are walk-ins and sadly, in this career, that's not where you make your money.

Hairdressers don't typically work a 40 hour weeks. The vast majority work up to 30 hours a week, which is still considered part-time. Nearly all salons generally do not have to offer any sort of benefits to part time workers. Many stylists only make between 30 - 45% commission on services and about 5-7% on retail sales. 35% commission on $150 is roughly $53.00 for three hours of work or right around $17.00 an hour. The salon gets the rest of the money.

We depend heavily on tips, so when we do a haircolor job and it works out to be $150, we expect a 20% tip, which is the standard. What we get is a measly $10 on that instead of $30. Sometimes we don't get tips at all. How do people not realize that they need to tip their stylist? The last place I worked at only paid you commission if you hit your average hourly service rate of 18.50 per hour. Do you know how impossible that is to achieve when you literally are new to the field and you don't have a following?

What they paid me instead was minimum wage, or $7.25 per hour for 12 - 15 hours a week. I wasn't even getting any commission on my retail sales. At 15 hours per week, I was making $108.75 before they took out taxes. I can't pay my student loans with that, let alone support myself. And that's pretty much how it is for most of the salons in my area. I did a color job, and sold product and the clients total came to $95. I worked on her hair for two hours. I saw ZERO commission from that. Instead, I was paid a measly total of $14.50 for all my hard work and the store got the difference.

When you stop to consider the varied career fields, demographics, geography, earning potential, availability of a certain type of employment in a given area and other factors, the statistics can change drastically. Just because one has a degree doesn't mean work in that given field is going to be found.

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Um. That's just stupid.

You heard of some people that can't get jobs after getting college degrees. This absolutely happens. The reason? There are plenty of them, but chief among them are that people get BAs in Art History and English Literature and enter a saturated job market full of intellectuals that work until they die.

I got a BS in Computer Science last year and got three job offers before I even had the diploma in hand. No diploma? No job.

Same story here. Computer Science degree, got a job before I graduated.

I think debt basically rules out the benefits of a college education.

I'm 30, left university 7 years ago, will have paid off my college debt by next year.

And you can afford to do that. Many people can't. Some couldn't afford to go to college until later, because they were busy trying to pay bills or put food on the table to feed their kids. Or some people didn't have great grades in high school, so they had to get a job right after graduation, which pushes away opportunities for college. Some can't even afford to go at all. And not everyone qualifies for student loans or government assistance or grants. 

I really wish people would understand certain life events dictate how the rest of one's life goes. Life is definitely easier when you don't have to worry about kids or things like paying a mortgage or day care expenses or deal with kids in school who get sick and need a parent to come and pick them up. Parent's generally live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to lose a day's pay because the kid can't be left alone at home. There are so many different factors that people seem to overlook when they aren't in a situation where they have to struggle to make ends meet.