When it comes to getting a job, college degrees aren't what they used to be. Perhaps the most glaring proof of that comes from a job opening at a Winchendon Mass., McDonald's, which is requiring applicants to have one or two years' worth of experience and a bachelor's degree for a cashier position.





That instance not only serves as a reminder to the general challenges of finding a job in this economy, but more specifically to the challenges of the job market for recent college graduates, new research has found.

As a result of those economic challenges, college graduates are being forced to take jobs that do not utilize their skill sets completely. In turn, this is causing a high degree of turnover among recent graduates who are taking those jobs. Because of this, researchers say there is a glut of college graduates looking for jobs that utilize their skills.

Not surprisingly, researchers found that many of those workers are not satisfied in their jobs for a number of reasons. The most common complaints from graduates were poor job security, poor pay and job content. To help the growing problem, a new report suggests people may want to rethink the model of higher education, particularly since access to higher education has increased in recent years while the number of jobs for those workers has not.

[What's Keeping Graduates from Finding Jobs?]

"Generally, the findings challenge the equating of job quality with wages at the economic policymaking level, and the high-skills, high-wages agenda, which has been prominent in the U.K.," said Belgin Okay-Somerville from the University of Aberdeen, who conducted the research with Dora Scholarios from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. "Acceptance of intermediately skilled jobs as 'graduate occupations' without interventions designed to make better use of graduates' skills may result in 'good jobs going bad' in the graduate labor market."

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The research was based on a sample of more than 7,000 employees in the United Kingdom and was published in the journal Human Relations.

This story was provided by BusinessNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Email David Mielach or follow him @D_M89. Follow us @bndarticles, Facebook or Google+.

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