Scott Schimmel (00:02.898)
I've lost count over the years of how many times I've gotten a call and I'm not exaggerating call from a mom or a dad of a kid who is in their mid to late 20s. And some of they heard about us or me, a friend told them to call me. And the question that they have for me is like, how can you help my kid? And the situation is usually the same. It's a kid who still kind of lives at home, maybe
goes between an apartment with some friends and comes back for a few months and goes out again. It's a kid who has a college degree typically from a good university, oftentimes in degrees like business or communications or psychology. And this parent is worried because they don't know how to help their kid find their way. And it's way later, years into when they feel like they should have by now. And what they're most concerned about is the lack of drive.
and the lack of kind of initiative and clarity. And what I hear in there, one, as a parent, is a big yearning to figure out how to help their kid. Also, I hear frustration, disappointment, disappointment in themselves. I hear them express a bunch of regret, what, you know, I wish I had done this earlier. I hear them kind of process out loud ideas that they have, like cutting their kid off financially.
But the pain that kind of comes from that, I mean, it's just, it's kind of a mess, quite honestly. So what I want to talk about real quickly is that dynamic, which happens quite a bit. And it's happening more and more. There was an article that I saw this past weekend in the Wall Street Journal. And it's a study of 10 million, 20 somethings over the past few years, as they enter the workforce. And the stats are
that's five years after college graduation, after getting a diploma, over half, 52%, are what economists call underemployed. And specifically, the kind of zooming in on what that means for them is that they have jobs, but it's not jobs in the career fields that they studied, that they have credentials in. And it's not necessarily what you think. They kind of parse out, I don't know, almost two dozen.
Scott Schimmel (02:27.03)
different majors. And it's not all it's not all the sociology, psychology, kind of, you know, humanities, fluffier kinds of things like that old joke is, for instance, 57% of business majors have jobs in career fields that don't relate to business. And what they specifically get into are things like working at a restaurant working in retail, doing administrative services, just to kind of get some income. And they
kind of shed light on how bad it is from an economic perspective. These are young people who five years after college have not landed their first job within their career field, which means they're not qualified for it. Their earnings potential is significantly depleted and you kind of play that out over the course of decades. If you're not in a career field and you're not earning money,
even though it's entry level work in your career field, that all stacks up for years and years, really for decades. It means the, like the, the up into the right graph of your lifelong earnings is flattened. It means you're not saving as much, certainly in your social security benefits, your 401k if a 25 year old is gonna do that anyways, but it's bad news.
And back to that phone call, the question for me is how can I help? And what I've experienced for the, I'm talking kind of mid to late 20s, maybe early 30s person, I've spent a lot of time with that kind of person. And by then I'm never without hope, but I don't see it working. I don't see at that point, a lot of people that I've worked with and have talked to, I don't see them turning the corner.
And it's why it's the primary reason why we for you school have gone more upstream earlier, earlier intervention towards clarity, because I don't look at this as an economy perspective that there aren't jobs out there. I don't look at this as like, oh no, they won't earn as much. I think about it more from the personal standpoint of that person in their mid to late 20s, who has yet to experience
Scott Schimmel (04:54.93)
what it's like to contribute to something in a meaningful way. I'm burdened by that young person's disappointment in themselves, the regret that they feel, the, how overwhelmed they probably feel at that point, how lost, how sad. There are people who see their peers thriving in careers on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and they look back in through that mirror at their own.
lack of progress in their life. And that just takes up a ton of feelings. My perspective, and I've done a deep dive into what's called the self-determination theory, that everybody needs to feel like they have competence to offer, that they contribute to something. Everyone has a, it's a psychological need to feel like you are ordaining your own steps. In other words, autonomy, that you are in charge of your own story.
And when you're in a place where you can't even, let's say, find a job in your career fields, or find a way to get motivated towards waking up the next day and putting yourself out there, again, your sense of autonomy, your sense of competence goes down, it feels awful. And I'm sure you know people that are way older than that, maybe in their late 30s or 40s or 50s, who would also confess or maybe readily share.
I never found my way. I'm doing something that I can't stand. And this sort of like jaded, cynical, this is life, I guess. I'm just going through it. Quiet lives, or the lives of quiet desperation, as the saying goes. I'm curious what your perspective is. How do you approach with your own kids, with the students that you work with, how do you walk alongside them?
so that they don't turn into someone in their late 20s who's still lost and wandering. How do you present some of these questions at an earlier age and not just wake up like I did almost to the end of my senior year in college and think, I don't wanna do this because I don't think it's an economy issue. I don't think it's a jobs macroeconomic point of view. I look at this through the lens of lack of clarity.
Scott Schimmel (07:19.206)
most of the college students that I've met who are graduating seniors will easily tell you that they're graduating with a degree that they're not confident in, that they had to along the way pick something because well, the system makes them and to their parents were kind of pressuring them. And the reason that they made the choice for whatever the degree is was an uninformed choice.
It wasn't autonomous. It wasn't because they felt like they had drive to become competent in that area. It wasn't because of passion or interest or because it was personally important to them. It was because they felt like they were supposed to make that selection. Or it was the path of least resistance at that point. And they wanted, they knew they had to get out. The clock was ticking. They felt like that's what good people do. They felt like that's what you're supposed to do if you wanna have a stable, secure life.
They listen to outside voices. And so they're graduating with a degree that really means nothing to them. And then they're supposed to go and let's say, find a job with that career field in mind. And they're dead in the water from day one, day zero. So going upstream matters more than ever. Failure to launch, arrested development, whatever you call it, it's a real significant problem. And it's not going away, it's getting worse.
The Wall Street Journal talks about it five years ago, it was 43%, that's a 10% increase over five years of people in their mid to late 20s who were underemployed. And underemployment to me, that sucks that they won't make enough money or be able to retire at 60 or 65. But I'm way more concerned by the hit that they're taking on their self-esteem, on their sense of hope about tomorrow getting better, about their own drive.
to live a story that matters. That's what burdens me. That's what I want for my kids. And that's what I'm committed to doing through the U school. So love to hear your perspective. How do we avoid the underemployment issue? How do we take a hit on that 52%? Let's bring it back down over the next five years.
