What I can’t figure out here is whether this is from real data. Only PhD comics know–and they aren’t telling.
What do you think? Is there truth to this chart?
College (Un)Employment: Grad School an Option?
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The chart rings true to me. I remember seeing this news story a while back (you can find many more like it). What stands out is the point they make that Utah’s public colleges and universities experience the largest increase in enrollments since 2002—another year recessionary year.
However, you also have thoughts like this opinion piece from UNLV’s paper suggesting that by having lots of people go back to school it can further increases supply of potential candidates which can deflate the pay for the position.
This notion is all over the news: as recession looms, grad school enrollment goes up. But this graph has some problems.
For starters, it’s hard to believe that wall street MBA’s are going back to get Ph.D’s in engineering or astrophysics, as the graph suggests. Maybe law school, or masters programs. But they’re not swarming engineering and science schools in large numbers.
More importantly, this graph doesn’t tell us that former employees are going back to school - just that enrollment is increasing at or around the same time as unemployment increases. This likely means that current students are opting to go straight to grad school rather than the work world. Why enter now when you can enter 3 yrs from now when the economy is up again. Have you ever tried to go to grad school? The process alone takes 18-24 months before you take your first class.
But, more interesting to me, you’ve all surely heard talk from recent administrations that we need more scientists and engineers. If this chart holds true, then it seems the first place to start is to jack up the unemployment rates every few years. That’s how we’ll get our bridge-builders and inventors!