Appreciate your scattered thoughts! Now here are some of mine … lol …. I work as an executive recruiter for information technology positions -.NET, Java, SAP, OBIEE, ETL, etc -. With all the talk of unemployment, we cannot find people fast enough to fill open positions. When I get an IT positions that requests a USA Citizen, I almost have to raise my fee, because Americans just don’t go into computer science/engineering related fields … 7 out of 10 choose liberal arts etc. To further complicate matters the federal government is cracking down on immigration, taking more skilled labor from other countries such as India off the market. All at a time … even in a bad economy … when every company imaginable wants its brand-product-etc. pushed out to the internet-mobile phones-ipads-kindles-social media etc.

Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining of the lack of Americans interested in IT … because thus type of market is great for recruiters, especially good ones. I often wonder … if business is this good in a bad economy, how will it be when the economy picks up?

Why do Americans go to college for a BS in Psychology (e.g..), graduate, are $30k in debt and wonder why they cannot find a job in their chosen degree field?. Of course in Psychology you need an MS to even pry the door open. My personal favorites are the BS or MS in Ancient Byzantine Art majors who end up working at Apple-Bees or TGIF, after a brief job search in their degree field turns up empty.

I just finished my bachelors degree at age 40, so I am not down on higher education. Matter of fact a BS Degree is the first thing recruiters look for these days on a resume. It’s the quickest way to weed the resume stack down. Word on the street too, is that in the next 10-20 years MS degrees will become the standard weed out mechanism.

In my opinion the problem in all of this lies with Universities and also in the mindset of us Americans when we pick a degree. First, I think the final product of most universities are consumers and not producers. Most Universities beat down the ‘creative class’. People graduate with excessive student loan and credit card debt, and in a most cases … with no practical real world experience in their degree field. Then for some reason they think “I have a degree now … that means I get to start at the top … paying the price and working your way to the top is for those without college degrees.” Compare that mindset to the dude with no college degree who starts a business struggles and fails over and over again, fighting tooth and nail to get to the top. The universities are complicit in this. My experience in finishing my BS and brief brush with a MS degree (I lasted 1 class) was that when it comes down to brass-tacks …. Universities are most interested in getting that federal government student loan money first and foremost.

Finally, I think us Americans operate on the faulty premise that we somehow need to pick a degree in a field that we ‘like’. We believe if we pick the right degree we will ‘like’ going to work and be happy every day of our life. Let’s face it … even if you work in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, there are going to be some days you want to beat down your little umpa-loompa co-workers.

From where I sit the economy is humming, there are tons of jobs starting at 70k, and there are so many niches in the new economy to make money I am thinking of off-shoring myself to duplicate my efforts so I can work 24/7. To encourage the ‘creative class’ I think there needs to be a massive shift in the way us Americans think.

-Jeff
http://www.linkedin.com/in/JeffreyFriess