How many of you have a 4 yr college degree or higher and still earn less than $10 per hour? -

I m just wondering because I interviewed over 150 applicants for a Leasing Manager of an apartment community and couldn t believe how many of the applicants had bachelor degrees in business management and were earning such low pay. Of the 5 top candidates, not one showed they didn t have any accounts in collection or filed for bankruptcy. It was very discouraging. One applicant had over 25 accounts in collection... how am I supposed to trust her with over $35K coming in for rent money every month? No, she didn t get the job, I kept searching and finally found the right person, she s been there over a year now and the residents like her and she is very trustworthy!|::::|A 4yr degree in Business is the new 4yr psych degree.. it s pointless and doesn t get you anywhere.|::::|I don t have a degree yet but I know many people in that situation, and a lot of the time it isn t their fault, it s the economy or job market or both.|::::|Agreeing with quot;rebekkahquot; above me, a lot of the times, when folks are living from one paycheck to the next, some out-of-control debts aren t their fault. When you have folks that poor between pay periods and *Greedy* Banks all too willing to nail you for $30 at a time for any and all *minor math errors* of a nickel or less (unless you bribe them with an quot;overdraft protectionquot; savings account that earns no interest and flushes more money down Big Banking s Toilet), it happens. People can get behind and not even want to. People can get loopholed in a heartbeat into having loads of quot;bad debtquot;, and it can be as simple as a credit card company s *dropping the credit limit* on your card without due notice. That one s been in the news a *Lot* these past few weeks, that banks are dropping credit limits without warning *OR* regard to your past payment record. Meaning you can get loopholed into quot;bad debtquot; even when you pay your bills on time. ANYONE can. Which brings me to my point, Not So Gentle Asker. Did your quot;candidatesquot; consent to your probing of their credit records? Was it *Necessary*, in these times, to probe their credit record for a $10-an-hour managerial job? Is it necessary now to rag on people for having accounts in collection or in bankruptcy court? Most people are exactly ONE medical expense or car repair away from being bankrupted as it is.... So was this necessary? Was it called for? Did your superiors insist on this? Is it *LEGAL*? Honestly, this question itself borders on being libelous--if you had mentioned any identifying info at all it would be, because you re inferring *poor character* from a poor credit history. For shame. And for a $10-an-hour job, most likely with zero perks, that most folks would not stay in more than two years, under a better economy. It s a dead-end job. Why hassle and humiliate your quot;candidatesquot; so? And to answer your face-value Question, yes, I have a Degree and earn *way the hell* less than $10 an hour. Some of this was my doing as I made a poor choice of major and degree--one reinforced by a lot of false info from lying, deceitful quot;advisorsquot;. But a lot of this wasn t my doing....it took me a bit longer than average to graduate because I had to juggle *work, school and therapy* at the same time. And even now, I m still plagued with a persistent mood disorder--and a mental health system that refuses to be competent, on average, for more than nine months at any given time. It gets *really old* really quick these days. Why can I not secure both counseling *and medications that work* at the same time and actually *get better*? Oh yeah, because I m poor. Why am I poor? Because I can t work as much as I d like to, due to the mood disorder....oh, and yeah, HMOs refuse to pay one red cent of my psychiatric medical costs at my end. On my last job, I was working full time, doing ok, had the respect of my peers and everything. Until the last month hit and I was *jerked around* on healthcare. My medical expenses, in one month, jumped from a modest copayment to *more than my damned rent* at full cost out of my pocket. Even if the stress of dealing with that wasn t too much for me, essentially the only way I could have kept going was to pay for ALL of my healthcare myself. Which would have earned me a *Part Time Wage* for Full Time Work. And I d still be income cliffed out of everything else too--housing and such--for working Full Time. So yeah....you can blame that on me I suppose, call me dead wood, and throw my job away, flush it down a Pakistani toilet or something. We both know better though. I can and have worked full time and competently. HMOs won t let me *keep working.* And folks like you who want to punish folks who are down on their luck, you *don t help*. Just saying. Thanks kindly for your time, such as it is.