Trends in Higher Education

Why the Global Economic Model is Frustrating More Graduates

The economy is one of the issues which has dominated discussions in higher education for a very long time. The global economy has not seen a significant recovery in the longest time, and it is likely to stay like that for the next decade. The global reordering and the economy is affecting and will continue impacting students, institutions of higher learning and the post secondary market in general. In the article “Trends: In Higher Education," from Planning for Higher Education,” Grummon (2010) explains that thousands of college students are graduating without jobs and with government debt. Most of them are enrolled in high number with the hope and promise that a university degree would bring better employment.

However, as we have seen this is not proving to be the case. Radermacher et al. (2014) explain that even for those who have jobs, 64 percent are unhappy in them. Even graduates with the sought-after degree like accounting and nursing have dim prospects. While some people argue that the millennials are lazy and have a deep sense of entitlement, it may not be entirely accurate. New graduates, according to Forbes, are flooding the job market in record numbers and face a lot of frustrations. They were merely shown a single path, one option in life: go to the university, work hard, get a degree and then a lucrative job awaits. As a result, most students in colleges and universities spent all of their time, money and effort working towards the option.

How the Economic Model Influences Institutional Practices

Upon graduating, most young people realize that the economic promise of good jobs after college is not coming to fruition with ease. The problem is not on the part of the students. The challenge is in the framework and in the way the global economic model is incentivizing people. Since capitalist companies largely control the economy; they own the money and the jobs. They, therefore, decide who gets employed and who does not.

The economic model is affecting institutional practices like legislation and legal policy. Low employment rates among graduates will change institutions for the next decades. These graduates are not likely to contribute to endowments and feel any deep affiliations with their universities. As a result, most of them will have low admission rates. Some of these graduates would not recommend their children to attend universities because of the low employment rates. They are unlikely to contribute to colleges and hence will influence legislation.

International and Multicultural Diversity Aspect of the Issue

The problem of many university graduates flooding the job market with no hopes of gainful employment is global. It is affecting the global student population because the economic model is similar. Globally, most students are encouraged that getting degrees is a sure way of getting good jobs (Jones & Schmitt, 2014). In the multicultural diversity dimension, graduates from the minority communities seem to be affected the most.

Graduates from the minority communities and highly educated immigrants are going for low-skilled jobs because of the flooded job market. Trevena (2013) explains that highly skilled immigrants in fields like medicine, accounting and nursing encounter several challenges when trying to find jobs in the United States. A study by the Resolution Foundation in 2017 found that graduates from the black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds are less likely to be employed than their white colleagues.