JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has some surprising criticism for colleges and universities around the U.S. amid Generation Z’s recent ongoing struggle to find jobs after earning their degrees. In a new interview with Wish-TV, the CEO claims that there should be more of a focus on job placement as opposed to furthering education.
“If you look at kids, they got to be educated to get jobs,” said Dimon. “Too much focus in education has been on graduating college or graduating this, but it should be on jobs. I think schools should be measuring did the kids get out and get a good job.”
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Dimon also believes that “we've fallen behind as a nation” when it comes to pushing these efforts, and that there are a plethora of jobs that can make teenagers up to $70,000 a year.
“You could be a teller and make $40,000 a year as a 17-year-old, and if you happen to have a family at 18 or whatever, you get $20,000 of medical benefits for your family,” said Dimon. “So you could be a welder, you could be a coder, you could be cyber, you could be automotive, all those jobs are 40 to 60 to $70,000 a year.”
The comments from Dimon come after a video on TikTok went viral in January where a woman named Lohanny Santos broke down in tears over her struggle to find a minimum-wage job after graduating from college with two degrees (one in communications, the other in acting) and despite having the ability to speak three different languages.
“This is the most humbled I’ve ever felt in my life,” said Santos in the video.
@lohannysant I got tear stains on my resume 😔😔😔 #nyc #unemployed
♬ original sound - Lohanny
The video has gained over 25.4 million views, and while some users expressed support in the comments for her bravery in sharing her struggle, some users criticized her choice in degrees.
“Both of those degrees mean less than having a degree,” wrote one user in the comments.
In September last year, another user on TikTok, named Alison Johnson, went viral for sharing her struggle to land a good-paying job in marketing, which is a field that she earned her college degree in and one that she claims put her in $80,000 debt.
“All I got is my degree, you know people say ‘get your degree’ but then they don’t talk about how you need experience,” said Johnson. “The degree was the experience.”
@fitnesswithalison somebody, anybody..make it make sense. #servinglife #serving #collegedegree #debt #brokeasf #servelife #server #mentalhealth
♬ original sound - ALISON JOHNSON | FITNESS
Many companies across the country have recently revamped their hiring practices by dropping degree requirements for certain roles and pivoting more towards skill-based hiring.
According to a recent survey by ZipRecruiter that polled over 2,000 U.S. employers, 45% of respondents said that their companies have removed degree requirements for select roles in the past year. Also 72% of employers said that they practice “skill-based hiring” where they focus more on skills rather than certificates.
Some employers in the survey also selected “hiring manager insistence that candidates have a specific background (e.g. a college, degree)” as a large barrier to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at companies.
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