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文章摘自《大西洋月刊》，作者Bourree Lam

 

英文原版请往下移。

 

沃顿商学院的教授peter Cappelli在他的新书里指出，人们常用“你以后想做什么”来回答在大学该选什么专业的问题。表面看来，大学所修专业跟以后的事业方向是息息相关的 ，然而事实是你根本无法预知你在大学所修专业和你以后的事业方向，二者会有什么样的相互作用。

 

Peter Cappelli是宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的教授，专门研究人才招聘和美国职场。“Will College Pay Off?”是他最新书籍，本书关注大学生就业市场的复杂性以及将高校教育作为未来工作培训的谬论。

 

如今，大学依然被当成是通往美好生活的门票，然而美国很多毕业生却还不起贷款。“Will College Pay Off?” 这本书向大家抛出了一个问题：上大学是否是明智的财政决策。

 

最近我与Cappelli讨教了他本人就大学教育跟就业市场的关系的看法，谈话内容已被清晰记录下来。

 

Bourree Lam：请问是什么促使您决定写这本书?

 

Peter Cappelli: 特别在教育行业，最初烦扰我的是有很多数据表明一种很明显但是不正常的现象，是说因为大学生待遇颇丰，因此每个人都应该上大学，不去上大学的都是傻子---这一说法在我看来是很奇怪的，因为并没有直观的证据表明大学毕业后能带来丰厚的报酬。

 

为什么大学生比高中生挣得多？有人认为我们是应该清楚此类问题的，但是事实上我们对这类问题并没有一个清晰的答案。是因为他们考上大学前就表现超群？事实确实如此：能考上大学的孩子一般都才华横溢，也更聪明，即使他们无缘大学，也会比一般人过得好。顺利大学毕业时所获得的能力与进入大学时是有所不同的，而你在这期间所学的也许有一天能派上用场。

 

不管怎么样，雇主一般不会特别看重你在学校学到的学术知识，至少对于本科是这样的。因此，我是无法回答为什么大学生挣得更多的问题。然而，有人认为大学里学到的将有助你找到高薪职业，而这也是你应该上大学的原因。

 

我特别担忧的是很多人去上大学而有些人却为去不去上大学而纠结不清。而那一部分决定去上大学的人已确信毕业后会收入颇丰。让人担忧的是很多人抱着毕业后就能获得丰厚报酬的初衷而陷入经济窘境。

 

抢手的工作之所以抢手是由于不可预见性造成的。

 

Lam: 人们是否一直是这样谈论大学的？将大学作为一种经济决策或者投资是否是现状？

 

Cappelli:这些观念是由于学术模式导致的，而不是学术自身。而人力资本就是经济，因为教育就是投资，并且以后都能得到回报。有人认为大家之所以要自己支付大学费用是由于以后能从中获益。

 

“付出收获说”在30，40年前还不太普遍，而今却很盛行。有人相信读完大学后就能找到高薪工作，所以很多人愿意自费。而这一说法也导致政府就大学资金方面的投资作出调整。在美国80%的孩子走进大学校园，进而导致教育投入越来越高，进而导致父母的支付能力无法提高。付出回报说是必然正确无误的，因为如果付出没有收获，那些贷款上大学的人将会陷入泥潭。

 

Lam: 您书中写到学生们尝试预测以后抢手的工作岗位，进而选择自认为合适的专业的说法激起了我的兴趣。学生是否应该在大学选专业时有这样的想法呢？

 

Cappelli:答案是否定的，但是他们还是会照此进行，如果你不这样做，别人会认为你是疯子。事实上，大学前的热门工作，或者你预知将来可能会成为抢手的行业，也许在你毕业后或者几年后情况会完全不一样，因此选专业还需慎重。

 

Lam:为什么？

 

Cappelli: 其中最大原因是经济弹性大，从而带动了热门工作的变动。以科技为例，其实并不是所有的关于科技的工作都热门，而每一个热门工作的出现一般都是由于一门热门的新产品新技术的兴起而带动起来的。比如，石油钻采工程是由于液压破裂法火起来了，这是10年前无人能预知的。

 

Lam: 亦或iphone手机。

 

Cappelli: 确实如此。在石油钻采业以及手机app行业发展繁荣时，工程师需求巨大。从而导致市场供不应求，这些职位进而变成高薪职位，但是仍供不应求。如此一来，很多孩子就会在大学选择相关专业，但是当他们毕业时，这些工作就没那么受欢迎了，因为经过几年，这些工作岗位已渐渐饱和。

 

书里还提出了另外让我担忧的事情，就是扩散那些非常行业性的专业，好像是建设赌场之类的事情，因为真的很冒险。如果赌场在你毕业那年不雇佣你，哪怕你拥有这个专业的学位，那又打算怎么办呢？最好是学习文理方面的专业，因为学习文理专业可以学得更多，而且学费也不是很贵。

 

Lam: 您是否指我们的劳力供应链失调？

 

Cappelli: 很久以前，雇主会雇佣掌握基本技术且聪明，适应力强的大学生，然后会根据公司需求来培养雇员，让其掌握工作岗位所需技能。但如今，雇主们已不会再愿意培养员工，而只期望能招到能立即上岗的雇员。由于大家喜欢预测热门工作的原因，常常导致供不应求，因此常有雇主抱怨招不到合适的员工。

 

Lam: 您在书中提到大学的地理位置的重要性超乎人们的想象。为什么您这么认为呢？

 

Cappelli: 我有些研究此现象的同事非常赞同此说法。因为雇主们只会去特定的学校招人，也不是说如果你的学校没在他们公司备选人才的资源库的名单里，你就找不到工作，只是会很难。很多雇主都只会区域性招募，如果你不在这个区域，基本不会得到这个工作。

 

Lam: 请帮忙解说下您所谓的“Home Depot approach “，请问您为什么将之说成是麻烦多多呢？

 

Cappelli: Home Depot（美国家得宝公司）认为每个工作都需要特定专业毕业的人才，工作的性质定义是十分明确的。事实上却不然，以硅谷为例，所有人都能编程，然而只有10%的人才有IT文凭。造成此现象是由于很多人认为得到此文凭就能找到对应工作，但是可能文凭只是会缩短工作培训而已。

 

Lam:雇主最关注应届毕业生的哪些方面？

 

Cappelli:报告显示说应届毕业生或者年青人普遍被认为不够成熟。这并不新鲜。很多小孩的确是这样，很多老人常常看着现在的年轻人无奈的说：“这就是现在的小孩！”

 

人们更关注所能获得的报酬，而对实际能学到的知识却不太关注。

 

Lam:在这个语境中，成熟是怎么定义的？

 

Cappelli:主要体现在责任心方面，比如：不迟到，工作努力，对自己从事的事情比较上心，有自主性。

 

Lam:记得在大学时我也担心工作，担心怎样才能更好的向雇主展示自己，貌似这是很自然的事情。鉴于现实中工作需求市场以及大学生专业选择的关系，请问您对大学生以及刚进入大学校门的孩子们有什么建议吗？

 

Cappelli: 首先，我只能说并不是所有的事情你都能控制。因为其中参杂着着随机性与运气。毕业后的第一份工作并不能代表什么，因为这是一场长跑，然后对于很多人来说这是没办法接受的。

 

Lam: 有报道说毕业于大萧条时期的大学生的第一份工作会对其职业生涯有很大影响，因此很多人相信第一份工作如果找的不好，将会影响以后的事业发展。

 

Cappelli: 一般来说，确实如此。个人认报道总是基于平均水平，但是并不是很多人都适用于用平均水平来衡量。

 

不管你曾经做出怎样辉煌的成就，都已不再那么重要，未来的发展以及成就才是真正值得称道的。即使你没办法进入名校，也没能一毕业就找到高大上的工作，但是你依然可以在以后通过别的途径闪耀自己。因此要积极展望未来，不要固步自封。

 

相对于学业成绩而言，雇主更看重的是你的工作经验，义工活动，课外活动。

 

喜剧演员 Steven Martin说到：做的要比每个人更杰出”。也许他的观点是对的，但是没有多少人能做到比其他每个人都杰出，这也是一个不太乐观的事实。

 

Lam: 我一直在思考供需关系问题，以及人们怎样努力去找寻竞争的职业，以便容易让自己脱颖而出。

 

Cappelli: 事实上你以后是否能飞黄腾达亦或贫困潦倒都不重要，而是”我是否做了我应该做的？我所做的，在我家人或者朋友眼里是否能成功？”而这些对于我而言是无可厚非的。而真正让我担忧的是，人们努力去获得一份好工作是由于需要还清贷款。亦或为了获得一份高薪工作而追逐高学历。没有证据表明高学历就能获得高薪职位，而有些人一味追求高学历也是逼不得已才这样的。

 

英文原版：The Danger of Picking a Major Based onthe Jobs Are

 

In his new book, the Wharton professor Peter Cappelli argues that banking on a specialized degree’s usefulness is risky. After all, one reason some jobs are in high demand is that no one predicted that they would be.

 

The question of what to major in during college will often get another question in response: “Well, what job do you want?” On the surface, it seems that what a person studies in college should relate to hisher planned career path, but it turns out that it’s very hard to predict how those two things will interact with each other.

 

Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studies hiringthe American workplace. His latest book, Will College Pay Off?, looks at the complexities of the job market for college graduates as well as the fallacy of treating higher education as job training.

 

These days, college is still sold as a ticket to the good life, yet many American graduates simply can’t afford to pay back their loans. In his book, Cappelli tackles a fundamental question: Is college a good financial decision?

 

I recently spoke with Cappelli about how he thinks about college in relation to the job market. The transcript of our conversation has been edited for clarity.

 

Bourree Lam: How did you decide to write this book?

 

Peter Cappelli: What began to worry me, particularly in the context of education, is the arguments suggesting that it was an unqualified obvious thing that everybody ought to go to college,that it paid off enormously,that you were crazy not to go—which just seemed a little odd to me because the evidence about the payoff from college was not completely straightforward.

 

For example, things you think we would know—like why it is that college grads make more money than high-school grads—we actually don’t have a very clear answer for. Is it because they are better off before they go to college? We know that that’s generally true: Kids who go to college have resources, they’re smarter, they would have done better even if they didn’t go to college. We know that the ability to graduate from college signals something that simply getting into college doesn’t signal. Then there’s the idea that you might actually learn some things useful to employers.

 

But if you look at what employers say, at least about bachelor’s degree folks, they’re not particularly interested in the academic material that you learn in college anyway. So, answering the basic question of why [college grads] make more money is not completely obvious to me. Yet, you would think, listening to the rhetoric, that it was absolutely a slam dunk that you’d make more money because of all the things you're learning in collegethat it’s obvious you should go.

 

In particular, the reason that I was worried about this is that you get lots of people who are going to college who are really struggling to go.the reason they’re going is because they have been persuaded that it’s going to pay off financially. There’s a big concern that a lot of people are getting into big financial trouble on this promise that these college degrees are really going to pay off.

 

“The reason that [hot jobs are] hot is precisely because you can’t predict them.”

 

Lam: Has this always been the way people talked about college? Is it a recent phenomenon to look at college as a financial decisionan investment?

 

Cappelli: A lot of these ideas are driven by, not academic research per se, but academic frameworks.the human-capital framework in economics is that education is an investmentthere’s a payoff from it. That got picked up by people in policy who were arguing about how we’re going to pay for college. The implicationextension of that argument was, “Well, individuals should pay for it because they’re benefiting from it.”

 

That argument, which we didn’t hear so much 3040 years ago, is pervasive now—that you should pay for the things you benefit from. As in, cut back on the government investment in these things because it pays off for the individual who paid for it. So once you head down that line,then policy adjusts to it, there have been pretty dramatic cutbacks at the state level in funding for the universities, which is80 percent of U.S. kids go to college. Income has gone nowhere for parents,college costs have gone up. The cost has gone way up; the ability to pay is flat. You as an individual now are being told you should go because it’ll pay off. It’s a changing way of thinking, but it’s also a necessity for a lot of people because if it doesn’t pay offthey borrow the money to go, they’re in big trouble.

 

Lam: One of the pieces of this that I found so interesting is when you talk in your book about the futility of students trying to predict the job marketpick the “right” major. Should students be thinking about job prospects this way when they’re picking majors in college?

 

 

Cappelli: I think the short answer is no, but they absolutely do. It’s almost presented to youyou’re nuts if you don’t. The problem is we really don’t know,even to the extent to which we know, one of the things we’re pretty sure of is that our ability to make long-term predictions is terrible. So if you’re a 17-year-old,you’re picking a collegeyou’re picking it based on the field you want to go into—for the average kids it’s about five years before you graduate—but if you’re picking your major then, it’s six years later that you’re in the job market. The odds that you’re going to be right are close to zero.

 

Lam: Why is that?

 

Cappelli: Well, one reason is that the economy bounces all over the place in terms of jobs, particularly for these jobs that we hear are “hot” all the time,tech jobs. The reason that they’re hot is precisely because you can’t predict them.it’s notall tech jobs are hot—that’s a myth. It’s notall engineering jobs are hot—they’re not. The ones that are hot vary every few years,the reason they’re hot is because something happens to increase demanda new technology. Take petroleum engineering, for example, which is a hot job because of fracking. Nobody saw fracking coming 10 years ago.

 

Lam: Or the iPhone.

 

Cappelli: Yeah, there weren’t that many petroleum engineers,the mobile-app [industry], which is the hot thing in IT, people didn’t see that comingso suddenly they need a lot of it. They don’t have very many people who can do it, so the job payscrazy. But you wouldn’t have known that going into it,so the next thing that happens is that the kids on college campuses all start pouring into those programseven if the jobs are still there when that huge cohort starts to graduate they dampen down the demand. So then it’s no longer hot anymore.

 

One of the concerns I raise in this book is this proliferation of these very vocational majors,casino constructionthese sorts of things, because you’re really taking a huge risk for error. If casinos aren’t hiring the year you graduate with a casino construction degree—what are you going to do? You'd be better off with a liberal arts degree, partly because you would have learned more. The other thing about these majors is that they’re not costless to pursue, these very vocational majors, because there’s a bunch of things that you could have been learning that you’re not.

 

Lam: Is this what you mean when you say that the labor-supply chain is dysfunctional?

 

Cappelli: Yeah. A few generations ago the employers used to look for smartadaptable kids on college campuses with general skills. They would convert them to what they wanted inside the companythey would retrain themthey’d get different skills. They’re not doing that now. They're just expecting that the kids will show up with the skills that the employer needs when the employer needs them. That’s a pretty difficult thing to expect, because of these kinds of problems. So the employers now are always complaining that they can’t get the people they need, but it’s pretty obvious why that’s not happening.

 

Lam: You made a point in the book thata person graduates—the geographical regionyour college is—matters more than people expect. What makes you think that’s true?

 

Cappelli: My colleagues who study this say it's true.you can kind of see it if you talk to different employersseethey recruit. It's surprising that many companies target certain schoolsnot others. It's not that it's impossible to get a job from a college that's not on their list, but it's a whole lot harder. How would you know they're hiring, if they don't come to your schoolhaven't talked to anyone from your career officesaid they're looking for people? ... A lot of employers only recruit regionally, so if you're not in that region you're not going to get that job.

 

Lam: Tell me about what you call the “Home Depot approach”why it's problematic.

 

Cappelli: This is about the skill gap. The Home Depot view is that people think employees are kind ofwidgets,jobs have these really clear definitions, which are kind ofthe size of a bolt. Say you need a petroleum engineer,it's completely defined exactly what that is. If you don't have exactly those skills you won't be able to do a job,only a ?-inch bolt nut will fit on a ?-inch bolt. When you get into the workforce it's absolutely not true. If you look at most of the people who are in computer programming, for example, they have no IT degree—they just learned how to program. Maybe they had a couple of courses in it, maybe they were self-taught. In Silicon Valley, the industry was built with only 10 percent of the workforce having IT degrees. You can do most of these jobs with a variety of different skills. I think what's happening now is that people have come to think that you need these degrees in order to do the jobs, which is not really true. Maybe what these degrees do for you is they shorten the job training by a bit, but that's about it.you lose a bunch of other things along the way.

 

Lam: So what are employers actually concerned about when it comes to fresh grads?

 

Cappelli: What they say in the surveys about graduatesyoung people is that the kids aren't mature enough. That's not exactly new. A lot of this goofy generation stuff is really just that, it's older people looking at younger people saying, "Kids today!"

 

“The diminishing returns set in really quickly when it comes to how much planning is going to pay off … We probably worry far more about that than what we're actually learning.”

 

Lam: What is maturity defined as in this context?

 

Cappelli: Conscientiousness mainly: Show up on time, work hard, care about what you're doing, be a self-starter—it's motivation basically.

 

Lam: I just feelit's so natural to worry about these things. Even as I was going through college, I was worried about getting a jobhow to present myself to employers. What advice do you have for those graduatingjust starting school in terms of how to think about this in a way that's more based on the reality of how these markets work together?

 

Cappelli: Well, I guess I would say that first of all you can't completely control these things. There's an awful lot of randomnessluck. The diminishing returns set in really quickly when it comes to how much planning is going to pay off,how many job-hunting skills are really going to be useful. I think we worry far more about this than is useful—there's just not a lot you can do about all these things. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The first job is not the end, which I think is difficult for people to hear.

 

Lam: It is hard to hear, because we read 。reports saying that, for example, for the generation that graduated around the Great Recession, not getting a great first job is going to dampen your lifetime earnings.

 

Cappelli: Well it's true, on average. I think that's something important to remember: These reports are always on average,not many people are average.

 

That doesn't mean there are things that can be done. What happens to you later is probably much more important to the outcomes than what happens 20 years before. For example, kids who didn't get the best job out of college,didn't go to the best schools, there's a million ways, particularly in the U.S., to distinguish yourselfget the best jobs later on. The importance of what you did the year you graduate starts to diminish year by year. It might still matter a bit, but what you've done recently matters way more.

 

We probably worry far more about that than what we're actually learningexperiences that might be useful to us. Certainly if you look at what employers are saying, they reallywhat people have done more than I think the academics do. They really seem to value work experience, internships, volunteer work, extracurricular activities. If you look at the data, they care more about those things than your classroom experience.

 

There's one piece of bad news on this though. As the comedian Steve Martin said, "Just be better than everybody else." That's probably right, although the problem is that not everybody can be better than everybody else.

 

Lam: When I bring this research to a personal level, I keep on thinking about supplydemandhow everybody's trying to play this gameyou try to aim for a field of work that has less competition for jobs so you can stand out.

 

Cappelli: What you put your finger on is that to a lot of people, what's really important is not really whether they're going to do wellpoorly—it's "Am I doing what it looksI'm supposed to be doing? Am I doing something that my friendsfamily will believe is a success?"that's perfectly fine. I'm much more worried about the folks who have to get a good job because they have to pay off their loans. People who feel they have to chase these degrees that seem to offer a hot job, there's no evidence that it's going to,they're chasing that because they have to.

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