Why don't the students do as Mitt Romney suggests: Borrow money from your (undoubtedly wealthy and connected) parents?

Or just cash in some of your stocks. That's what Romney did. Sell some stock. Isn't that what all college students do to pay for their Harvard educations?

These statistics do not connect with our reality. If these statistics were true, then there would not be a single unemployed person with a degree, and we know that's not the case.

It's not like high tech companies haven't noticed Goldy. Microsoft has been sounding the alarms on this for years and has been investing millions, if not billions, in education in the United States and around the world.

@2, 3: Well, it's been true for decades that a BA doesn't get you very far. I doubt however, than any recent grad with an engineering degree or computer science degree would be out luck finding a job even in today's Obama economy.

It'll be up to people with the skills companies want. They will move here, and then they will either get used to the rain or brutally disappear. Such is life in the PNW.

As a business owner myself I can say you're painting with a very broad brush there, Goldy. We're a five person shop and taxed way more than we should be for our size. Frankly we have no problem finding qualified workers. The opposite. There is a glut. We should be paying less than we do. But we don't.

I suppose we could offset more taxes by doing what The Stranger does and hire more unpaid interns.

I find that when I'm hiring I'm getting a lot of resumes from folks that have degrees in things like journalism, or art history or some other thing that is not related to the job, so degrees don't mean much to me. I look for work experience. I have seen a glut of MBAs in the market the last couple of years, so most companies are only hiring MBAs from top schools since they have the pick of the litter. And I'm sorry, but if you are getting a degree in journalism in this day and age, you are making things harder on yourself. Save the college tuition and start a blog to show off your skillz.

(I should note that I didn't go to college because I couldn't get the money together and was terrified of debt, but rode that dotcom bubble to a pretty successful career. I do understand that college is important, but I am biased towards experience.)

Are apprenticeships still a thing?

Something isn't right with that article. Here's the weird part:

"In 2011, the city had 6.2 job openings for positions that typically require a bachelor's degree for every single unemployed worker with a degree, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit organization that tracks employment trends. Contrast that with only 1.8 job openings requiring a high-school diploma or less for evey one worker that might qualify."

So if there were 100 college grads looking for jobs there would have been SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY jobs for them.

Even the high school grads have great prospects.
100 high school grads and ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY jobs.

Something isn't right with those numbers. If that were the case then our college grads would be at near-100% employment. And there would be higher salaries as companies competed for them.

There's a lot of ways you could read this, and like the others, I believe there's more nuance to it than simply "tax businesses more."

One aspect might be that lots of companies are asking for (at least) a bachelor's degree for jobs that really don't need it. Example: in the 7 years I've worked for my company, we've had only one admin assistant who didn't have a bachelor's degree. The job does not require that level of education by any means, but nonetheless that's what they ask for. I can't imagine we're the only ones doing that.

Part of the problem (I think) is employers are not wanting well rounded college educated types but instead those who are super specialized in one very specific area. If you happen to get your degree in something that maybe in the technology area but not the precise area someone like Microsoft wants at that time you are going to be non-qualified for that position.

Employers are demanding that their very specific (and let's be honest) next to impossible requirements be met. And if they are not they are going to complain there aren't qualified employees.

This is a pretty major change from 20 years ago when an employer would bring on a college graduate who had a good basic skill set that they could develop to meet the needs of the employer. Employers not only don't want to pay taxes for colleges to prep future employees, they don't want to spend any money on getting new employees ready for the jobs they need filled.

I wish them luck in making those goals.

There's Small Business Owners like our friend @8, whom I'm sure @4 mistakenly equates with the type of person who benefit from tax cuts for the wealthy, inevitably reinvesting in their own businesses (even though all economic stats show those benefit the most hoarding cash and shoveling capital into low-risk, illiquid investments).

Then there's "Small Business" Owners, who stand shoulder to shoulder with @8 once every 4 years out of PR-driven political convenience, after spending the previous 4 years in a financial reality 99% of us can't even fathom. It's the imposters I'd like to tax more heavily and fund education or social services or both. In the same we that 99% of us can't conceive the 1%'s financial reality, the 1% have no clue why we have social services and who the people are that use them.

"There must be a better way," they would say, out of pure conceit. Rmoney's suggestion that we just borrow money from our parents is exactly why they don't get it. You see, borrow from Daddy is just one of the many, many options they've always had, so they literally can't conceive of a an explanation for why someone who is hard working and conscientious couldn't make college happen. And their social Darwinist tendency has them figure those who don't make it, are deficient in some way. Finally, their love of self-mythology has them exaggerating their own struggles to the point that they're equivalent to those who are far, far, far less fortunate than them. Then they parade themselves around saying "see?!? I did it! And you can too."

Come fly with me, said the Eagle to the Ostrich.

Sales taxes hammer both the poor and retailers in Washington. Seems (R)s want to improve the business climate, (D)s want to address the tax imbalances, but neither so much that they would suggest abolishing the sales tax and implementing an income tax to replace it.

Um, why invest in educating Americans, only to have them get all uppity with their demands for living wages? If we only lifted our shortsighted caps on H1B visas we could simply import enough Indians and Chinese (usually educated at public expense in their own countries) to solve the shortage.

A) What kind of degrees?
B) How are these jobs being advertised?

@13, Very well said.

In my field (engineering), the issue is employers/academia. They want a master's or higher now in some random specialization that's largely dependent on fleeting tech trends. If students have a degree in engineering closely resembling the job described--but it's still too general--they'll still get passed over. It's really a downer for everybody but the one's who wish is only to maximize profit. They pass over the naive folks who actually are the lifeblood of innovation in those environments while potentially paying for someone who may be indoctrinated to NOT think laterally. Or they've manufactured the justification for outsourcing another crop of jobs at higher levels of education.

@18,

One of the engineers I know says that he can't (or at least would have significant trouble) just getting into a master's program without more work experience. So that's a nice double-bind the industry has him in.

What this really means is corporations are paying the lowest tax rates in history, sitting on piles of cash, and not using their own money to train their own workers to do jobs.

Fact.

But we do need more engineers.

And way fewer lawyers.

From what I've witnessed, Seattle has plenty of educated folk (and plenty of uneducated folk, too) willing and able to work for local firms, but several firms - like Microsoft and Amazon - would rather pay many thousands to move someone with experience out to Seattle rather than train local people who perhaps have less experience.

Just pisses me off a little to see them spend 10 grand moving someone to Seattle from the East Coast when there are plenty of educated, out-of-work people here.

I used to be a recruiter/HR person for tech companies. The number one issue with hiring is that tech companies (and most larger employers) don't want to train anyone ever for anything. They want Candidate 1 in Job 1, Candidate 2 in Job 2, and so on. God forbid your hired Candidate 1.9 and train them for Job 2, or hire them for Job 1 and let them learn on the job, move them into Job 2, then hire Candidate .8 for Job 1 and so on.

This is why they LOVE those H1B Visas. It's totally xenophobic and racist, but that H1B is just a set of skills on a non-white, non-American that they can keep around for a while and then when that person starts asking about Green Card sponsorship, they can eliminate the position and hire a temp for three months or so, then hire another H1B!

It costs a shit ton more to go the H1B route, hire through a recruiting/placement firm, or headhunt from other companies than it does to TRAIN SOMEONE ON THE JOB - but then you have to MANAGE A PERSON AND TREAT THEM LIKE A HUMAN BEING... which is antithetical to all "Best Practices" in business.

And don't even get me started on MBAs. What a fucking waste of time and money!

What @22 said. Except for MBAS. the reason to do an MBA is to get connections, actually. If you don't do that, you're missing the point.

www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm pretty much says it all...
4.1 unemployment rate for those 25 and over with at least a 4 year degree.

2: Shitty, stagnating wages combined with inflating education costs. With these in force, you can have 100 percent "employment" among college grads and still have both a student loan debt problem AND a shortage of educated workers.