Lonely Wolf
Having a hard time finding a job because you are “over qualified”? Well, not to worry, you are not the only one. According to Statistics Canada, one in every five people in the work force who have a university education are “overqualified”. Overqualified is defined as,” more experienced and educated than you need to be to do a particular job”(macmillan). In other words, all those hard years, and those thousands of dollars spent on higher education, won’t always pay off. In Adrian Wooldridge’s article”Dr. Dole Queue”, he claims that degrees have lost their value. Not only are students being ripped off financially, but, according to Wooldridge, they are also being stripped of their “best years”. For example, In 2008, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, over 10,500 Americans with PhDs or professional degrees were employed as “cashiers”, over 27,400 as shop assistants and over 4,700 as hairdressers, hairstylists or cosmetologists. In other words, Students spend many years and thousands of dollars trying to achieve their degrees, BA’s and PHD’s, and in the end, there may not even be a worthy pay off. With, more and more students receiving these degrees they are not befitting themselves, rather they are just simply neutralizing each other’s qualifications. Wooldridge argues that spending time in the workforce, rather then enrolled in higher education, it will benefit a person alot more due to the fact that the on hands experience is what will help you to succeed. In my essay I will demonstrate how Wooldridge argues that the problem with students spending more time enrolling in higher education is that they diminishes the value of their qualifications, which in turn causes it to become more and more specialized. It is clear that higher education is no longer as respectable as it has been in the past.
Although students believe that the more education they get, the more beneficial it will be for them, what they don’t realize, according to Wooldridge is
Cited: "Overqualified - Definition of Overqualified by Macmillan Dictionary." Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus: Free English Dictionary Online. Web. 05 Nov. 2011.
"The Daily, Thursday, April 6, 2006. Study: The Dynamics of Overqualification." Statistics Canada: Canada 's National Statistical Agency / Statistique Canada : Organisme Statistique National Du Canada. 06 Apr. 2006. Web. 05 Nov. 2011.