User:Cgsheehan/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Graduate unemployment

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
As someone who received their undergraduate degree in the wake of the Great Recession I struggled to find a job immediately following college along with countless peers. I have also seen how generations pushed to attend college and just get a degree because that's what our parents and grandparents said was the thing you must do to get a "good" job. Then following graduation, and often taking on significant debt, these same people couldn't get a job and those that could either afford their student loan payments or living expenses but not both. Our society in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s pushed young people to go to college under the belief that it was the only way when in reality there were many other ways to be successful and make a living wage.

Evaluate the article
This article was disappointing in its lack of thorough research in my opinion. The beginning is filled with conjecture and bold statements with only one citation supporting the statement, if even that. It also seemed odd how the beginning of the article focuses heavily on US statistics and the author(s) beliefs taking a very US centralized point of view but when it got into the data there was far more time/words spent on China. Australia is given a section but only includes one sentence which hardly seems logical to do if you aren't going to fully expand on a section. Overall the article lacked neutrality, made blanket statements with minimal research to support, and neither focused solely on US Graduate Unemployment nor did it take a balanced approach to addressing and comparing Graduate Unemployment worldwide.

The article also fails to look at the Graduate Unemployment rate from different demographics. Do male or female graduates have higher (or lower) unemployment rates? There is no comparison of races or ethnicities. They also don't mention anything about how non-citizens in a given country who immigrate for school may, or may not, effect graduate unemployment rate. Additionally, the article refers to the Great Recession but pulls in little to no data or sources to actually state with any real knowledge how the recession did or did not affect graduate unemployment.

In reviewing sources some links no longer work and others aren't primary sources (ex: using CNN article instead of pulling the actual information from Department of Labor). In reviewing the Talk page for this article there are many others who have brought up similar evaluations and state there either needs to be significant improvement of the page or it should be deleted all together. The article is part of 3 WikiProjects but all are "rated start class, low importance."