Overeducated — My Story
by Karen Southall WattsLink to article
When I was growing up it never occurred to me that you could have too much education. My parents were first-generation college graduates and this meant they achieved much more than their own parents and grandparents. Going to college was assumed in my home and education highly valued.My brother ended up as an engineer. His four year-degree in a highly technical field made him very employable and successful. My sister finished school eventually with a linguistics degree. Not as practical as my brother’s education but she managed to turn it into a viable career with the government. I don’t know if her job could be called exciting, but she supports her family quite well. Then there’s me.
My first degree was in humanities. Yes, I got one of those liberal arts degrees that meant I could be charming at a cocktail party and hope for a job as a secretary. I managed to postpone all that by marrying and having children and immediately taking jobs that worked around the needs of my children. In all, not necessarily a bad plan…unless you end up divorced.
You know those life event tests, the ones that tell you how many major events in one year will drive you crazy with stress? Within a couple of years both my parents died, my marriage ended and I wound up struggling to survive emotionally and financially. If I’d had the money I could have kept a therapist busy 24/7 for years. Instead I lived carefully to stretch my inheritance as far as I could and then decided to go back to school and get more education. The plan was to make me more employable.
Now, I didn’t decide to get a masters degree on a whim. I had accidentally fallen into a job teaching business classes at a local community college, and I was really good. However, after three years the school came up for reaccreditation and was forced to get rid of all instructors who did not have an advanced degree. So, it seemed a logical step-get the required degree and step into my new career. After some fumbling and stumbling I found an accredited online school, signed up for student aid and began working on my education again.
What I didn’t realize is that career positions in the community college system are almost impossible to land. Full-time instructors and administrators stay in their jobs until they die. And though the system functions on the use of part-time adjuncts, it’s impossible to make a living as an adjunct. I graduated with my shiny new management degree, a mountain of student loan debt and no prospects for employment.
I had become “overeducated,” which meant no academic institution would give me a full time job, no non academic company wanted to talk to me and entry-level service type employers just thought I was crazy. My impressive grade point average and wonderfully written papers meant nothing. After almost two years my masters degree means a mountain of student loan debt I wonder if I will ever be able to pay off and a resume albatross.
When you’re overeducated and unemployed there are a few commonly held beliefs that make your life quite miserable. Here are a few of the most frustrating.
People assume that you just won’t take certain kinds of jobs. I have been getting advice for years on how I should just be happy to “take anything” to get started, and since I’d been out of the workforce for a while I should be grateful to have a job-any job. These well-meaning folks seem to be under the impression that this thought has never occurred to me. They see me sitting in some unemployment ivory tower where I only apply for perfect positions, content to take nothing at all rather than “settle.” Explaining to my friends, family and acquaintances that I really will take ANY job remotely near my home makes me feel even more pathetic.
Employers who do interview me assume I will leave for a “better opportunity.” There seems to be a huge disconnect between employers and human resource professionals and the job-seeking public. Sure we’d all like to have a dream job some day, but while I’m waiting for that day I’d like to be able to pay my electric bill and eat something besides instant noodles. Really, where are all these better opportunities that I am supposed to be jumping on anyway? If they were that easy to find, don’t you think I’d just skip the middle phase and go straight to the dream job? Maybe it’s just politically incorrect to discuss the NEED to have a job that pays a living wage. Ok, employers want certain skills-fine. I’d like to do work I enjoy (or at least don’t hate). But more important than any of that, I want to stay off welfare, keep a roof over my head and know I won’t spend my retirement years living in a box somewhere.
Scam artists and multi level marketing types assume that unemployment means I have either lost my intelligence or my ethical bearings. True, many days I am desperate. However, I know that there are no businesses that can guarantee fast wealth, and tricking people into a scam is bad for you. Either you get caught and punished or the bad “karma” wrecks your life later. Yes, I need work and yes I’m willing to “think outside the box” but I am not willing to lie, cheat and steal-not yet. Oh, and I can tell the difference between a real job and a come on so stop wasting my time.
If you aren’t working now or have a “spotty” work history there’s something wrong with you. When HR people reduce you to a standardized form they really miss out on lots of valuable information. Most application procedures and websites are obviously constructed for the convenience of the screeners and with the assumption that all applicants will fit a preconceived form. So the part-time, seasonal and parenthood or lay-off interrupted career looks substandard because it doesn’t fit the forms. Just because you haven’t been lucky enough to find a great career path yet doesn’t mean you lack talent and potential. It does mean that employers will have to spend the time to look below the surface.
America is in for a hard time if we don’t smarten up. While India and China are expanding higher education opportunities we are kicking our educated professionals in the teeth. Not only do we run the risk of losing out in the global marketplace, but we are creating generations of depressed and desperate job seekers. These people make prime targets for scam artists. The overeducated and underemployed may end up overusing their credit cards or moving back home to live with their parents. So, I beg you HR professionals, before you utter the words “overeducated” or “overqualified” again-think. Think about the talent and skills you are passing up. Consider the professional who will work for you with enthusiasm and loyalty because you could see past the standardized form. Ponder what you would do if suddenly you found yourself downsized or laid off…and “overeducated.”
About the author: Karen Southall Watts has been teaching business and entrepreneurship since 1999. She is a veteran of marriage, divorce, long-distance relationships and being overeducated in the American job market. Karen’s latest workbook “Sex is good for business-a workbook for couples in business” is available through www.sexisgoodforbusiness.com or by emailing the author directly at KSouthall2@gmail.com
February 17th, 2008 at 6:26 am
A few weeks ago I happened to spend 15 min at the Union Gospel Mission. Even for 1/4 hour it was a lesson. I don’t think any of you have to worry about that. But maybe help out at Thanksgiving or Christmas, or any way you can. It is a lesson to be learned.
February 17th, 2008 at 7:43 am
I agree with everything you wrote, except the comment that a humanaities degree is worthless. There was a time it was the preferred degree. It meant the person was WELL ROUNDED (the same could not be same of chemistry or engineering majors).
The point of a humanities degree was to teach people to think! To expose them to a variety of philosophies, arts, sciences, etc., to make the better employees and better people.
Unfortunately, our society soon scorned these well rounded types for in-the-box, corporate robots that took over American business.
I was amazed at how little those who walked above the glass ceiling knew of art, science, literature…the world. It was terribly sad and explains much of the trouble we’re in.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Over-qualified and under-employed female academics flock to the Middle-East lured by higher salaries.Realising that the promise of all those retiring professors is usurped by institutions rehiring of said professors, demoralised they fall into the pit of mediocrity that is HE in the Middle East. Indeed, once there academics are surprised to discover the scam in Higher Education that is happening in places like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. Private universities have set up “store front” institutions that promise “international standards and US models of HE”. Initially, the “cut& paste” culture of these places have an easy time in “developing” programs that look good on paper (of course, they’ve all been downloaded). However, the very crux of intellectual activity is negated in these places as critical thinking and democratic values are condemned…therefore absent. Accreditating bodies rush to cash in on the windfall of $$ that is available and turn a blind eye to the “universities” that churn out “graduates’ every year. The stench of inbred mediocrity is ovewhelming. Having taught at the Royal University for Women in Bahrain, I have been witness to the collusion between monarchies, accrediting bodies and private companies that are rushing to catch a ride on the “educate women” bandwagon. The bar is so low, admitting to having worked there is a source of embarrassment. Like most ME “international” universities, the first phase of attracting students is to hire North American faculty. Once students & parents “believe” that they are sending their children (and regardless of age,students are treated as children) to a NA university, the institution moves on to the second phase. This phase includes condemning any actions, discussions, classes or courses that may provoke critique or critical thinking. The truth is that these ME countries don’t want education…only the pretense of education. To have an educated population would undermine the hold they have on their subjects.Though slavery has been abolished, the culture of slavery exists and has been reinforced with oil revenue. If you are an academic thinking of teaching in the ME…….think again. You will be a slave to mediocrity.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Regarding a liberal arts and well-rounded education…you are so right and I stand corrected. When I first got my BA degree I truly believed in the value of a well-rounded and well read education. I guess I have just heard the derision so many years I started to believe it myself. I can tell you that over the years I’ve found most Americans “don’t read much” and willingly admit it–and this and a lack of exposure to art, music and social studies shows terribly in the way we live and do business. I guess I forgot that just because it’s not marketable doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Thanks.
Karen
February 24th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I agree and sympathize with Ms. Watts about her struggles as an “overeducated” and “underemployed” single mom. It seems that most single mothers, regardless of education or employment status, go through this stage in their lives trying to reach the same “full time” overworked living standard they had when married. For most part, this is mainly the men’s fault. I still have an old decal on the fridge that reads: “Women’s place is in the home, and she should go there right after work”. The best way to prove that overeducated and underemployed women can still make it on their own is to start real or virtual businesses and make it successful with the knowledge they already have. Don’t expect any heartless HR type to give them back the job they always had. Here is some help to get started: http://www.99websites.net
March 20th, 2008 at 4:00 am
I received a BSEE and a BSCS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) in 2002. High tech employers were not hiring, and were dumping staff by the tens of thousands. Could not get hired in the traditional areas of EE either, because, with my CS degree, I was deemed to be ‘overqualified’.
Now I read that people with EE and CS degrees are perhaps back in demand, but without experience, nobody will even look at my resume — I’m not a ‘new grad’ anymore, but the job market didn’t allow me to gain any experience due to being ‘overqualified’.
I’m pretty much to the point where I probably will end up just shooting myself dead, because I don’t see any other way out.
March 21st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I hear ya sister. I was unemployed for two years, and currently am subsisting on a per diem position, so in truth I still consider myself unemployed. In a bizarre scene I found myself enrolled in an undergrad economics class. Surrounded by 18 year olds, we were learning about opportunity cost. The professor asks “Do you think your degree will be worth it?” His careful lesson plan did not include a contingency plan for the 38 year old unemployed, over educated woman in the second row. I wonder if any of the students actually heard me when I told them I have begun to believe putting myself in debt for the sake of a degree which is useless if I can’t use it was worth it.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Mark,
Do not lose hope yet! I truly understand your frustration, I am getting a small but steady stream of heartbreaking emails from all over the place since I wrote this piece. Please try to find someone to brainstorm solutions with…if you can’t do it locally, email me. I feel we must turn our justified anger outward and push for better hiring practices, better placement help from schools and consequences for corporations who outsource overseas. Don’t turn your anger inward on yourself. I am not a “Pollyanna” and I really understand the depression born of unemployment, but by networking with like minded people you can survive this.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Yeah, this is pretty much my story, too, with a few variations.
Desperately wanted nearly all my life to be a scientist. Ended up bailing on it in college due to typical female self-esteem complex. Shortchanged myself into a useless, pointless, boring humanities program, just to finish the undergrad degree in *something*, and not have the stigma of being a dropout.
Ended up spending the past decade either unemployed altogether, or just horribly underemployed for a few bucks better than minimum wage at various crappy part-time, temp and/or per diem jobettes. Completely crushed with guilt for foisting my failures onto the loved ones who shouldn’t have to support a nearly-29-year-old in their retirement. Dreams of career in chemistry now reduced to bitter joke. Cannot afford taxes anymore. Could not even afford to buy myself a new toothbrush and some tampons this month, without having to hold out my hand and mooch for help.
Like Mark, the same thing happened with my early job hunt- I was born in 1979; graduated college in the Class of 2001. At the time, we were practically in a nouveau Great Depression. Nobody hired me for anything I could even remotely deal with doing (in my case, mental health issues and some physical limitations have made typical exploited rat-racer lifestyle pretty much impossible); and now, here I am pushing 30 without any of the junior-level experience they wouldn’t let me get started doing all those years ago. I am completely trapped, and it’s all because of this wonderful “free market” and its bottom-line mentality.
Now, I desperately want to fix my past and go back to school for either Chem or CS; but at my age, in my condition and lot in life, and with no money and no more eligibility for trad student grants, I’d be forced belly-under in debt. I’m effectively shut out of improving myself.
Meanwhile, I can’t even get a crappy just-for-now job at so much as a doctor’s office, or even retail chain.
Sometimes, the cynic in me wonders if this country is about to get a personal taste of the instability it has wrought on so many others abroad. And I’m not even a leftist.
April 27th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Hi Karen,
It was refreshing to read your story. So much of job-hunting involves putting on a fake “everythings-ok” demeanor, even while things become increasingly hopeless. It becomes next to impossible to talk to anyone outside of the job hunt, as they assume there must be something horribly wrong with you that you can’t get a job. They may not say it, but you know they’re thinking it.
I’ve been writing a blog about the process, for my own therapy. Maybe other UP readers will get something out of it.
http://cjpv.blogspot.com/
July 1st, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Hi there, I don’t know if my case is similar that yours, I’m like Mark, too much education, no experience and, ok what the heck, OLD.
I was saying that maybe is not my case because I’m an immigrant (I’m in Canada, I didn’t go to the university in Canada, but in west Europe, got a Msc) and maybe someone could argue that being underemployed is the price that immigrants have to pay for live in Canada (please notice that I love and I really like Canada), so the best thing that we have to do is to be very, very happy with a 15 $CAD/hour, and wish that our children will realize our dreams (a well paid, brain challenged job). This has some logic, if even white Canadians are working by 10 $CAD/hour why you little immigrant are demanding that much?
Peace