Based on a preponderance of the evidence, I don't believe this is a problem considering the issue of "elite overproduction." We are already producing too many college students, and those students are incurring substantial debt for unnecessary credentials. ~4 million students graduate from U.S. postsecondary/postgraduate programs each year, as of this comment, half of which don't require or otherwise cannot use those credentials for employment.
> A 2024 report by the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work found that, a year after graduation, about half of US college grads were in jobs that “do not require a degree or make meaningful use of college-level skills.”
In a properly run society higher education would be very cheap and its utility would not be measured solely on whether or not degrees are directly used in employment.
I hope to exist in such a society one day, but that is not what we live in today, and it will take an unknown amount of time into the future for that to change. Until change occurs, the best we can do is provide educational resources that are free for consumption until we're willing to properly subsidize higher education. Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, Yale|Harvard open courses, etc. You won't get the credential, but you'll have the knowledge, if you want it.
For instance: developing citizens who demonstrate critical thinking, responsibility, organization, independence, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation.
Not all of these are easily measurable, but all contribute to a prosperous and free society.
Yet every non-uni worker seems to develop those skills without going to university.
It would be interesting to measure. Critical thinking in particular doesn't seem to be taught.
I personally believe none of those skills were taught during my own engineering degree. For me it was a lot of simple regurgitation against closed ended test questions. In hindsight mostly a fucking waste of time: a piece of paper to get a job.
Ok, but then there's a nasty question: why do employers not choose to create high-value jobs doing high-value work? Wouldn't this indicate an economy with stagnant or declining productivity-per-hour?
It would, wouldn't it? Bullshit jobs are a component, but we can also look to China and India, and see that their youth unemployment is high and year over year, have large excess educated students coming out of their educational institutions. Is lack of will to invest in work for highly educated citizens the problem alone? I argue it's likely also a matter that there potentially isn't enough high value work for the overproduction that has occurred. What jobs would you create for the millions in some cases, tens of millions in other cases, college graduates who are not employed or are underemployed currently?
Record graduate influx lifts China’s youth jobless rate to 17.9% in July 2026 - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3364538/r... - August 19th, 2026 ("China’s youth jobless rate climbed to 17.9 per cent in July, as a record wave of university graduates enters an already crowded labour market, prompting Beijing to step up employment support. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, rose 3 percentage points from 14.9 per cent in June – the last of three straight months of contraction – according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The rate last July was 17.8 per cent and it then climbed to 18.9 per cent the following month – the highest level since Beijing revised its methodology to exclude students in December 2023")
India's young are more educated than ever. So why are so many jobless? - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17841zez8wo | https://archive.today/sitRv - March 19th, 2026 ("Start with the headline number: 367 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29 - the largest youth population in the world, and making up a third of India's working-age population. Of them, 263 million are not in education and constitute the potential workforce.")
State of Working India 2026 - https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/media/resources/SWI/SWI-... ("Nearly 40% of graduates aged 15-25 - and 20% of those aged 25-29 - are jobless, far higher than among the less educated, the report finds. Only a small share secure stable, salaried jobs within a year.")
> I argue it's likely also a matter that there potentially isn't enough high value work for the overproduction that has occurred. What jobs would you create for the millions in some cases, tens of millions in other cases, college graduates who are not employed or are underemployed currently?
Well that doesn't seem like a problem of "elite overproduction". Elite overproduction proposes that there exists a specific glut of extractive elites, rather than a general glut of productive labor. This sounds more like a general glut of labor, because vast masses of people aren't being absorbed into other, more productive non-elite jobs that ought, under such a hypothesis, to exist.
We are already seeing it in the California State University system. Many of the universities have plummeting student enrollment. I suspect Sonoma State will be the first to be closed. More will follow them. Our local school districts have lost more than 40% of their students from the high water mark in the early 2000’s.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 27.4 ms ] threadTalent Disrupted (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49279800 - August 2026
> A 2024 report by the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work found that, a year after graduation, about half of US college grads were in jobs that “do not require a degree or make meaningful use of college-level skills.”
College Grads Struggle to Find Jobs. Non-Grads Are Giving Up - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-08-12/colleg... | https://archive.today/ccseC - August 12th, 2026
The Elite Overproduction Hypothesis (2025) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48015504 - May 2026
Half of College Graduates Are Working High School Level Jobs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512160 - February 2024
https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses/
https://ocw.mit.edu/
https://oyc.yale.edu/
https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free
Not all of these are easily measurable, but all contribute to a prosperous and free society.
It would be interesting to measure. Critical thinking in particular doesn't seem to be taught.
I personally believe none of those skills were taught during my own engineering degree. For me it was a lot of simple regurgitation against closed ended test questions. In hindsight mostly a fucking waste of time: a piece of paper to get a job.
Record graduate influx lifts China’s youth jobless rate to 17.9% in July 2026 - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3364538/r... - August 19th, 2026 ("China’s youth jobless rate climbed to 17.9 per cent in July, as a record wave of university graduates enters an already crowded labour market, prompting Beijing to step up employment support. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, rose 3 percentage points from 14.9 per cent in June – the last of three straight months of contraction – according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The rate last July was 17.8 per cent and it then climbed to 18.9 per cent the following month – the highest level since Beijing revised its methodology to exclude students in December 2023")
India's young are more educated than ever. So why are so many jobless? - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17841zez8wo | https://archive.today/sitRv - March 19th, 2026 ("Start with the headline number: 367 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29 - the largest youth population in the world, and making up a third of India's working-age population. Of them, 263 million are not in education and constitute the potential workforce.")
State of Working India 2026 - https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/media/resources/SWI/SWI-... ("Nearly 40% of graduates aged 15-25 - and 20% of those aged 25-29 - are jobless, far higher than among the less educated, the report finds. Only a small share secure stable, salaried jobs within a year.")
HN Search: bullshit jobs - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Well that doesn't seem like a problem of "elite overproduction". Elite overproduction proposes that there exists a specific glut of extractive elites, rather than a general glut of productive labor. This sounds more like a general glut of labor, because vast masses of people aren't being absorbed into other, more productive non-elite jobs that ought, under such a hypothesis, to exist.