HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Grads May Be Stuck In Low-Skill Jobs.

The recession left millions of college-educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.

Underemployment—skilled workers doing jobs that don’t require their level of education—has been one of the hallmarks of the slow recovery. By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t traditionally require a college degree.

Economists have generally assumed the problem was temporary: As the economy improved, companies would need more highly educated employees. But in a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of Canadian economists argues that the U.S. faces a longer-term problem.

They found that unlike the 1990s, when companies needed hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to develop, build and install high-tech systems—everything from corporate intranets to manufacturing robots—demand for such skills has fallen in recent years, even as young people continued to flock to programs that taught them.

Remember this when cheerleaders say things like “At a time when the American worker’s wages are stagnant, and he is beset from competition from all sides, shouldn’t we be extolling education as one of the few ways one can invest in oneself — and not labeling it a dangerous boondoggle?” If you’re borrowing six figures for something that won’t get you a job that can cover the debt, it’s a dangerous boondoggle.