Post recession, college degree is key to even entry-level jobs

With the competition for new jobs as fierce as ever, a college diploma is no longer an asset job seekers can do without, new research shows, LiveScience reports. A study by CareerBuilder discovered that employers are looking for educated applicants to fill not only highly skilled positions, but also lower-skilled jobs. More than 30 percent of the hiring managers and human resources professionals surveyed are hiring more employees with college degrees for positions that were historically held by high school graduates. The research shows the trend is most prevalent among financial services companies, but also spans a variety of industries, including manufacturing, transportation and utilities, information technology, professional and business services, retail and hospitality…

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The university has no clothes

The notion that a college degree is essentially worthless has become one of the year’s most fashionable ideas, with two prominent venture capitalists (Cornell ’89 and Stanford ’89, by the way) leading the charge, reports New York Magazine. Pity the American parent! Already beleaguered by depleted 401(k)s and gutted real-estate values, Ponzi schemes and toxic paper, burst bubbles and bear markets, he is now being asked to contend with a new specter: that college, the perennial hope for the next generation, may not be worth the price of the sheepskin on which it prints its degrees…

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Education gains shield women from worst of job woes

Steady increases among women with college degrees over the past two decades apparently have paid off during the recession, with government statistics showing they fared better than men over the past year, and for the first time surpassed the number of men holding payroll jobs, reports the Wall Street Journal. Women were earning about 166 associates degrees and 135 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 earned by men in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. More women were employed in teaching, government and health care, sectors that held up better in the recession. The construction and manufacturing sectors, which often require less schooling, have shed millions of jobs in the last few years. Revised data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed women held about 720,000 more nonfarm payroll jobs than men in January. They also exceeded the number of men on the payroll during four months last year.

“This is unprecedented,” said Tim Consedine, regional economist,at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in Boston.

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