Overqualified

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What are some examples of people that got a lot of education and work at jobs that are unskilled?

I have known, have met, and have worked with, many people who have "lots of education", but:

-They cheated in most of their classes, and don't actually know anything about the subject.

-They did well on the theory in a classroom, but can't actually use or apply it practically in the real world.

-They selected an overly niche degree with limited utility and opportunity.

-They received all of their education from non-accredited institutions who basically exchanged money for a diploma.

-They're technically good at what they do, but they're too irresponsible to be trusted to do it.

-They're technically good at what they do, but they're too lazy to do anything with it.

-They're technically good at what they do, but they have a bad attitude and most places don't want to hire them.

-They're technically good at what they do, but there's no market for those job skills where they live.

Usually it boils down to either "They're not actually good at their chosen field", or "Even if they are good at their chosen field, they're not actually good at the job", with the occasional "you picked the wrong field" mixed in.

She took time off to raise two daughters and wanted to go back to work again.
She started at the very bottom doing menial secretarial work.
They discovered she could write and started promoting her.
She finally had money to get her teeth fixed!
She is now a senior editor!

-They earned a PhD in Philosophy and ended up waiting/bussing tables in an off-Broadway restaurant.

Electronics technicians and pharmaceutical manufacturing requires a lot of people with various amounts of skills. I know plenty of engineers who started in non-degree roles like technicians, maintenance personnel, or operators and after 5-6 years of that could pivot to a degree or enjoyed a more supervisory or manager role

I knew an electrical engineer who worked in a hotel.
He got laid off around 1974 and moved to Hawaii where there are very few engineering jobs.
He told me that he used to design integrated circuits.

Forklift ticket
Front end loader ticket
Boiler operator ticket
Bachelor of Psychology
Certificate 3 in IT

I work as a cleaner

that's more a symptom of being in Hawaii. There's not much work outside of defense and tourism.

The son of my former supervisor graduated from ITT Tech & he's working in the electronics department at WalMart. He may have been working at WalMart before he graduated. He was offered a mangement or supervisor position but he turned it down due to the stress. Me & my supervisor had worked at that same WalMart doing custodial stuff & we were both under lots of stress as well as other management & lots of other employees.

The lesson of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz is that conferring a higher education degree upon someone is not the same thing as conferring upon them a brain.

I know a bit of cases of various disabled people working jobs they would be very overqualified for based on their degrees &/or certifications if they were not disabled. Some of them cant handle physical requirements of their education field. Others can only handle working sporadically & most employers require more consistency.

To elaborate, I have met a lot of people who happily earned their HASS degrees in the belief that they were going to change the world for the better, and wound up having to look for jobs in a market already glutted with HASS degree holders.  Some eventually found gainful employment in mid-level managerial positions (ones with little or no chance for promotion), but most seemed to end up in retail or the service sector.

People who are overqualified for a job position are by definition qualified for the position.

The fear among employers is two-fold.

1. "Overqualified" people will demand higher salaries, and if they don't get what they deserve . . .

2. They will remain only long enough to find a better-paying job, and then they're gone.

Sadly, the employers will then be stuck with lower-quality workers who may never leave.

You get what you pay for.

In my experience this is extremely common. There are just more college educated people than there are jobs for them, so it's inevitable. Also, most college degrees are not related to a job, they just might qualify one more generally for jobs that prefer or require a college education.

I don't have an advanced degree but I have a bachelor's degree from an Ivy League university, and before I became too sick to work at all I worked in retail for near minimum wage.