DUSTY DEGREES

FOR generations, children have been grown up on the premise "Education is the key to success."

It is no different for the millennial generation – those born between 1980 and the early 2000's.

Families across the country rejoiced when government announced that tertiary education would be free and many people rushed at a chance of betterment through higher education.

To date, thousands of students of all ages and backgrounds have graduated from universities and colleges in TT. But what happens after graduation is vastly different from the life many expected.

For many, university degrees remain untouched – just another page in the dozens of resumes and applications they diligently fill out, hoping to land their dream jobs. But with an economic downturn, a foreign exchange shortage and an increasingly high cost of living, many graduates have to face the reality that they may never get that “perfect” job.

A Newsday survey of 100 people revealed that 73 of them held university or college degrees from local institutions. Of that number, 42 said they were between the ages of 20 to 29; 27 said they were between the ages of 30 to 39; four between 40 to 49 and two were older than 50.

Of those respondents, nine people hold degrees in accounting and human resources, seven each in mass communications/journalism, education and social work, five in nursing, four in business and management, two each in law, economics, finance, statistics, history, psychology, engineering, and one each in humanities, environmental studies, tailoring, Spanish, agriculture, nutrition and criminal justice.

But only 20 people said they are employed in their field of study with 53 degree holders either underemployed or unemployed.

Asked why they have not been able to find jobs, these were some of the responses: “Applied unsuccessfully”, “No jobs in that field”, “No experience in the field, jobs are also tough to get in this economy”, “For a new upcoming journalist, the salary isn’t much and I have a few monetary responsibilities that I have committed to until I’m debt free.”

When tabulated, the most popular response is “applied unsuccessfully.”

The last question respondents were asked was whether they felt the time spent pursuing degree programmes was worth it. Of the 73, 37 said yes while 36 said no. One person said, “Sometimes I feel like it wasn’t worth it. I have had to do jobs that I hated, that didn’t pay and for which I was way overqualified just to get by. I feel cheated. Degrees have become like O'Levels now.”

Apart from the survey, other responses were collated from social media interviews.

In one interview, a young man who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications said he is not employed in media or a related field.

“There's always a requirement of ‘X’ years of experience in the field, which I don't have. Employers also don't seem to be willing to take the time to train people to give them the amount of experience needed.

“It's a really difficult concept to grasp that we spend so much of our time and our money investing in what we want to achieve in our careers, only to not be hired in that field, worse yet, to not even be considered.”

Education Minister Anthony Garcia admitted the complaint that highly-qualified millennials cannot get jobs is not new to his ministry. He believes this is because the programmes that some institutions offer are not in sync with the country’s developmental needs.

Speaking with Newsday earlier this week, Garcia said since he was appointed in 2015, he has put a new policy in place.

“We have been working with those accredited institutions to have them offer programmes that are in sync with our developmental needs.” Garcia said these programmes were decided on after consultation with the Ministry of Planning and Cabinet.

He promised to provide a list of those programmes on Thursday last, but efforts to reach him subsequently were unsuccessful.

So what happens after you have spent years pursuing a degree only to be unable to find a job?

Secretary of the Psychiatrists Association Dr Varma Deyalsingh says he believes underemployment and unemployment are factors that lead to depression in millennials.

Deyalsingh said one of the most frightening issues today is that the second leading cause of death worldwide of those in the 15 to 29-year-old age group is suicide.

“If after the millennials have spent a significant amount of time studying and preparing for a certain field and they feel they are not getting the jobs they are entitled to, all of these factors can lead to depression,” he said.

“There is a greater number of millennials who are job hunting and not finding success and are failing to satisfy themselves by achieving their goals. If they are not employed, their whole sense of self can be shattered and their generation has been found to succumb easier to depression. They are saying ‘Here I am, I have a degree and I cannot get a job’.”

Deyalsingh said mental health issues are still stigmatised in TT and it is a challenge to get millennials to talk about their problems. “Sixty per cent of the people who are depressed do not seek treatment. Mild and moderate depression can be treated effectively with talk therapy.”

Deyalsingh said psychiatrists are seeing younger people coming in with depression overall.

Psychiatrist Dr Ian Hypolite said although he has not seen a rise in millennials with depression, he believes that the expectation they have about education being the key to success can trigger depression.

“Like everyone else, they have dreams and aspirations. And after they spend their time going to school, getting a proper education, they have an expectation that once you get a degree that they are going to get jobs.”

Hypolite said university degrees are not worth what they once were.

“The world has changed drastically. Even people with professional degrees are having problems getting jobs and the higher your expectation for getting that dream job, the more despondent you are going to be when you don’t succeed.”

In addition to psychological problems, economist Indera Sagewan-Alli says the fallout from underemployment and unemployment is very significant.

She said this inability of highly-trained people to get jobs also affects the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

“If you are looking to quantify that loss, if you are looking at 100 people who are unemployed – let’s say they would have earned $10,000 per month – you multiply $10,000 x 100 x 12 and that would provide an estimate for the annual loss of GDP.”

She said there is also a loss to society which would have benefitted from the services that millennials would have provided.

“You have the loss to patients who need health care but there is no money to hire more doctors, so the quality of service citizens get is much worse than it should be and that goes for every sector.”

Sagewan-Ali believes that a mission to satisfy a United Nations quota is what has led to this issue.

“What needed to have been done wasn’t done, from the time a country decides to embark on a drive to increase its human capital, there was supposed to be a manpower planning mechanism in place and that was done and is not being done.”

She said there is no sense in achieving that goal as successive governments have failed to develop other sectors outside of the oil and gas industry.

“We are reaping the problems that come from our inability to have it done right the first time. There is no quick fix to this problem. If by some miracle the price of oil skyrocketed tomorrow, then government would be able to create jobs but, as it is, we need to start expanding outside of those sectors to fix this.”