Commentary
One of the worst ills besetting American society today is the rising number of well-educated people who can’t find jobs suited to their learning. They did the right things but can’t find the right post. We know that the American meritocracy runs on smarts, hard work, and accreditation. In this case, however, they did work hard, they showed they had the smarts, got a bachelor’s degree, plus an advanced degree, from a Tier One institution, and now they’re stuck in low-paying, low-status jobs with no security. How does that happen?
It’s not an uncommon fate. The “overproduction of elites” phenomenon has been noticed for a few years now, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing. I remember hearing about it first a decade ago when law schools started to be criticized for admitting and graduating many, many more lawyers than the field needed and the society could absorb. In my own area of the academic humanities, however, though it hadn’t been formulated in “elites” terms, the overproduction had been happening for decades before that….