Written by Anonymous
When the supply is higher than the demand, the price of the goods or services get lowered.
If human beings are considered resources, such as natural resources, we would know that those human beings who have skills and knowledge which are more scarce in the world would be more valuable (financially), whereas those whose knowledge and skills that are very easy to find in large quantities, their economic value will be less. At the moment – with the massification of university degrees, the supply of university graduates is much higher than the demand for them. Graduates are an overly supplied resources today. Our value fluctuates according to the market and to the country. Given the emerging educationalization at the global scale, our value is doomed to decrease with the increase of university graduates. Because of this oversupply, the price (economic) of human resources gets lower, and this resource may even be wasted (thrown away after use), since it can be found in such abundance.
A metaphor might help picture better what will happen with all these graduates. What happens with the oversupply of food? In the markets, in order to keep cheap prices, there is overproduction of food. The supply of food is higher than the demand for it (at least in the developed world). The result is that half of the food in the supermarkets gets thrown away. The big multinational corporations do not care about it, because they have calculated their profit even including such big waste. The supermarkets have no choice because they keep on ordering new stuff every day and they have to remove the old one (even if it is good). So half of the good perfectly eatable vegetables, bread, and other goods get trashed every day. Imagine: you dear graduate student one day may be like one of those good vegetables in the rubbish bin that is being thrown away as a waste or surplus. Unemployed because nobody bought you…there were cheaper and better quality graduates on the market. Trashing graduates is byproduct of the capitalist system.
The problem is that, human beings are not objects, natural resources or products. And the inflation of their value, leads to inflation of their salary, and the waste of their resource, means the dismissal from employment at any time…from their salary their existence and that of their families is dependent.
The underpayment, exploitation and redundancy of the oversupply of graduates make their lives extremely unstable, and at risk of severe poverty or death. This is not exactly what graduates are promised when they enroll in university. It has been shown that a considerable percentage of graduates have been disappointed and disillusioned by discovering that their degree is actually worth a little more than nothing. Many students according to EU Strategy 2020 are disgruntled, disenchanted and disengaged due to problems which include the worth of their degree after graduation.
Further, the fuel of this illusion that having a degree would open access to high paying jobs is like believing in Santa Claus. A lie that society keeps on repeating to young adults before and during their college years. Which then disappears as soon as they have accumulated the debt for paying tuition fees. University education is a business and a big one off course. Students are the customers and eventually the victims.
We will are exploited. For an agenda that is not ours, with no or little chance to change it. We will see global injustices without seeing any global impact of our attempts to reduce them. We will give up our social relationships, families, for surviving. The system is organize to maximise profit, at the expense of every thing else. Including our lives.
The war we fight against each other to get jobs, internship or to enter university cannot but benefit the system. We have to realize that the system is consuming us, and say NO. This is not progress. So many people toiling for the enjoyment of few. Collective struggle is necessary to change this.
educationinthe21century 