Record numbers earning college degree

(Moneywatch) A new analysis of U.S. Census data reveals that a record number of Americans are earning a bachelor's degree.

For the first time, a third of the nation's 25- to 29-year-olds have completed at least a bachelor's degree, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. In comparison, just 12 percent of people in that age group earned a bachelor's degree 40 years ago.

And there is more good news: 63 percent of Americans in this group have completed at least some college, also a record. Meanwhile, 90 percent of Americans from ages 25 to 29 have completed high school, versus 78 percent in 1971.

How different groups are faring

College completion, which is up sharply in the past five years, is now at record levels among both men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and both foreign-born and native-born Americans.

Asian-Americans have the highest rate of completing college, with 60 percent obtaining a bachelor's degree. Forty percent of white Americans have earned a bachelor's degree, compared with 23 percent for blacks and 15 percent for Hispanics.

Pew analysts speculated that the bad economy and the widespread understanding that college is increasingly important for financial security are fueling the rise in college attendance and graduation.

Who is graduating from college

Other findings, according to Pew:

 - Educational attainment by young women has grown steadily over the past 40 years and reached their highest levels in 2012, with 37 percent of women completing at least a bachelor's degree

- Young men have made less progress in recent decades, with 30 percent earning bachelor's degrees in 2012, versus 28 percent in 1976

- Among Americans born in the U.S., 35 percent have earned a bachelor's degree

- Among young immigrants to the U.S., 28 percent received a bachelor's degree this year, up slightly from 2 percent three years ago

 - While grad rates have been stagnant for years, 88 percent of males completed high school in 2012, a record percentage

[sjc_1]

We need to good jobs to USE all those college degrees. Ever since business crashed the economy with sub prime greed and took their bailouts, they have been hording. They are going to show everyone who is boss at the expense of the country.

[DF68]

Bingo. As proof of what I've been saying all along for the past 4 years after The Great Recession and prior to it:

Why, With Unemployment So High, Do So Many Jobs Go Begging?
PBS - The News Hour - Making Sense - 9/19/2012

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2012/09/why-with-unemployment-so-high.html

As former President Bill Clinton put it in his speech earlier this month at the Democratic National Convention, "there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled in America, mostly because the people who apply for them don't yet have the required skills to do them."

We've looked at this claim of a jobs-skills mismatch before on Making Sen$e, here and here . But in researching an upcoming story, we heard a very different explanation for the failure to fill jobs from Wharton School professor Peter Cappelli, an expert on employment issues. He puts the onus for unfilled openings on employers:

"First, they're not training. They want to hire people who can step right into the job with no training, with no 'on-boarding.' Second, they're offering wages now which are much lower than they used to offer, that is they're expecting people to show up with much better credentials at the same wage than they used to expect. Third, they're expecting skill sets which they never saw in the same person before. And fourth, they're expecting to do this without any humans doing any of the interviewing or doing any of the screening process.

They're expecting to turn the whole thing over to software and having the appropriate candidate pop out at the other end."

It's number four that we focus on in the story we're readying for broadcast -- a sobering look at the process of searching and applying for jobs online.