Maine college students have many reasons to worry about whether they will find work when they graduate this May. Jobs are scarce, underemployment rates are high, and heavy college debt provides more stress.
The Associated Press reported recently that about half of new college graduates in the United States are either jobless or employed in positions that don’t match their skill level. What the analysis found — that 53.6 percent of those under the age of 25 who hold bachelor’s degrees are unemployed or underemployed — is scary.
How can Maine students prepare themselves? They can start with a resource they are already paying for: their school’s career center. It’s difficult to find a good job — there’s no disagreement there — but students throughout their years in school should, and have the tools available, to treat their job search like another rigorous class.
Colleges and universities are already working hard to ease students’ transition into the work force, and they should continue to devise creative ways for students to network and gain real-world experience.
Colby College in Waterville, for instance, has started Colby Connect, a four-year program that about 60 percent of students are taking. In it, they learn what career path will suit their skills and interests; explore online resources to find potential mentors and work; analyze their industry of choice and the organizations within it; and are taught how to communicate confidently, Career Center Director Roger Woolsey said.
The goal is to connect students to a network of parents, alumni, community members, employers and faculty, he said, and the program appears to be working. Upon graduation in 2009, 50 percent of students were employed, and 20 percent were planning to attend graduate school. In 2011, the percentage increased to 60 percent employed, 20 percent attending graduate school and 3 percent receiving a fellowship for research or teaching.
Whether for credit or not, internships and job shadowing are essential ways for students to gain experience. The Ladd Internship Program at Bates College in Lewiston pays students to work during the summer at specific organizations and companies. Colleges regularly post new job openings online. At the University of Maine, students access CareerLink; at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, it’s eBear.
Timothy Diehl, director of career planning at Bowdoin, said it’s important for students to seek applicable internships, network and remain committed to their job search. Bowdoin, in return, does not wait for students to contact the career center. It meets with students in their residence halls during their first year to explain how the center can assist them.
Thomas College in Waterville goes so far as to guarantee their students a job. If students are not employed within six months of graduation, they can come back to school for up to two more years and not pay tuition, or the school will pay their federal loans for up to one year until they get their first job.
Tom Novak, director of the career services center at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish, said over four years, people at the career center will meet with all graduating students. In order to improve, the college will continue to develop relationships with employers, both to make it easier for students to get internships and future full-time jobs.
While it may be difficult for recent graduates to find work, their prospects are much better than those who don’t further their education after high school. About 88 percent of college graduates were employed in 2010, according to the Brookings Institution. In comparison, high school graduates had a much lower employment rate of 64 percent.
Recent grads: We don’t envy your position. Finding a full-time job is often a full-time job in itself. But your perseverance will be valuable in your new position. Colleges: Don’t stand still. Keep innovating and growing your career-related programs. Your own viability depends on it.
Guarantee A Job By letting kids go another year or two. BS. I say give them the money back they paid. All the job placement percentage lies they tell to recruit they should be criminally charged .
My advice. No Job,make your own.
“make your own” job. Now there’s the entrepreneurial spirit! Now, what do they use for capital?
Older generations of people, who came of age in a time of tuition free public universities; good jobs for high-school grads and a much higher minimum wage have NO business preaching. They owe today’s generation an apology for not affording them the same investment.
I was merely making a suggestion, but since you brought it up. Capital. How about ingenuity& your education for starters. What did you learn there? btw I don’t recall there ever being tuition free public universities in Maine.
Thanks to the GI Bill there were several million men and women who could afford to get a college degree. Of course that wasn’t exactly free. California was the only state that had free tuition if I’m not mistaken. Could be wrong on that.
California had free community colleges.
There are still college savings plans for those in the military I think. Most militrary jobs these day require a decent education also. I’m not sure “gender studies” will lead you anywhere though. I have known two young people that have joined the military in the last year both took a year before they were accepted.
I used to work in Economic Development. I saw many people, as driven as they were ingenious; business plans/ideas well constructed — though they had these qualities in spades, they could not overcome the lack of capital. Pull as you will on those bootstraps, there really is no substitute. At the same time, we were throwing public money at corporations with hairbrained schemes….
There are fewer tuition-free institutions of higher learning in this country than there were. ..and there are other factors. Tuition has skyrocketed, while family incomes have remained stagnant. That “minimum wage” with which many of a certain age boast to have “worked their way through college” — tuition was lower, the minimum wage higher — states subsidize a much small portion of the cost to educate a person. Pell grants used to cover a larger percentage of the cost as well….
A perfect storm that cannot be explained by looking at the students and their families themselves. You must consider societal changes, and take responsibility for those as well.
Right now there are few positions for the college grads.. You’ve been told that English Lit and gender studies degrees really mean something and they don’t. I get that.
There never were very many tuition free programs in his country and certainly none available to Maine students ever. I’m not sure why you think that is some kind of powerful point. The world you think existed never did.
Tuition did skyrocket but complaining about it doesn’t change the situation these kids find themselves in.
For want of a better analogy the new grads have been dealt a poor
hand. So what? You play with the resources you have. We all do. I know it is easier to complain about how hard things are and what you are incapable of doing but you should really be focusing on using the advantages you have.
“…complaining about it doesn’t change the situation…” “…
new grads have been dealt a poor hand…”
What you call “complaining”, I call civic engagement. After all, WE are the ones who control the “hand” our young people are dealt.
Those of us who can walk and chew gum at the same time can, also, simultaneously, “play with the resources we have” AND use our civic power to demand, and to shape change.
Those who came of age at a time when society DID, in fact, demand better; who benefited from it, and who owe their educational and employment opportunities to it….. …..have an obligation to pay it forward.
Somehow I doubt college grads are best served with, or need, your advice.
Yes sitting on the used sofa in daddies basement is a better use of your time.
Half of all undergrads are doing that? Be realistic.
What do you suppose these folks are doing if not looking for a job or busy creating their own?
It isn’t what YOU “suppose” they are doing!
Plutocrats WISH grads were doing that — instead of out there working for a better deal.
Cheese, I am right there with you. UMaine has a wonderful Innovation Center that can help students with writing business plans, initial office space, and technical support. Capital is of course always a problem, but this is a very talented generation and with some ingenuity and some luck there will be lots of small startups. The biggest obstacle to many people that would like to start up a business and would like to start a family is healthcare. If we could invest in a single-payer system we would have a new dawn of innovation in America. However, as an employer it would probably be harder to keep people in a job if there wasn’t the threat of losing healthcare for your employees.
I was unaware of the Innovation center. Thanks for the information.
As for healthcare as many as 1 in 3 small business are considering dropping their plan once Obamacare comes fully online in 2014. That may be an impetus for some sort of universal plan and what they planned all along. You can bet there will be a new tax per employee to cover any national plan. It will likely make no difference to the bottom line of any business.
Very informative, thank you for sharing this. Thank you also for highlighting the trap our employer-based, so-called healthcare “system” can present. Those to whom I refer in the above comment, though, had no such barrier as they had no health insurance in any case.
“Finding a full-time job is often a full-time job in itself”. Should really read: “Finding a good full-time job should be a full-time job”. Getting a good job requires discipline, a solid investment in planning and focus as well as developing a professional network that can be helpful in identifying a full-time job that is a good fit for the graduating student. Jobs just don’t happen. Unfortunately many young people either don’t know how or overlook networking opportunities and as a result they shortchange themselves.
I would bet that the grads with the higher marks have no problem finding good jobs. That is if the potential employers don’t find them first.
I’m suprised that Main Maritime wasn’t mentioned in this editorial. They have a remarkable percentage of graduates with jobs waiting for them upon their graduation.
and I don’t believe MMA has a Women’s Studies or Art History major either.
I honestly don’t know what some kids are thinking with their choice of majors. They should think “critically” about what they will do with that major once they graduate.
…so only students with trust funds should study art history? …women’s studies?
My grandfather believed, most of his life, that, “There are jobs for people who want to work.” He meant jobs with family wages, regardless of major or even whether or not they went to college. This is no longer true, but if we want it to be…
If you want a society that can support an expert in art history of women’s studies, then you have to decide that is what you want. You don’t simply leave it to our captains of industry.
“What the analysis found — that 53.6 percent of those under the age of 25 who hold bachelor’s degrees are unemployed or underemployed — is scary.”
What’s even scarier is that many people, who are wildly out of touch, seem to think that this is a choice and to the degree that it is not a choice, we must give “job creators” more tax cuts as a remedy. Such nonsense.
Just curious. Who said that?
“We have bought hook line and sinker the idea that education is about training and success defined monetarily rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.” ~Chris Hedges, “Empire of Illusion”
There has been a concerted effort in this country over the previous few decades, for the business community to use our higher education system to shift their training costs onto society.
Those on this thread who devalue English Literature, and other courses of study upon which corporate plutocrats place no monetary value, are “condemning” all of us.
You are one funny person. You would have us believe education has only recently been used to feed ourselves?
What happened to “hard work” being used to “feed ourselves”? Oh… wait — that doesn’t work anymore.
We can NOT maintain a democratic society without education, though.
No, our public education system does not exist solely to serve the desires of the business community for their labor force. You are confusing education with training. They are not interchangeable.
Tell me then, when jobs run out from the current crop of English Lit majors are we then supposed to create jobs with only them in mind?
Btw It never has been hard worked used to “feed ourselves” soley. It is hard work with a modicum of wit properly employed.
There was a time, not too long ago, when a university degree could easily open up doors to people OUTSIDE their major course of study — including English literature. There would be a job for any educated person, in any major. Businesses did not expect colleges to TRAIN graduates to their specifications.
Business leaders came to the table thirty years ago, or so, and organized to shape public policy that more of their training costs would be bourne by the student at the higher institution from which they graduate.
We have to decide what sort of country we want — one rich in intellectual diversity? …of arts and sciences? ….of philosophy? …or a “United States Inc.”
It’s up to us — not the “market”….
All those things you mentioned are important but it would seem to me the subject should be getting jobs for the unemployed graduate and baring that encouraging people to create their own.
The options beyond that are mighty few and excuses and complaining leaves people like that at the mercy of Darwin.
“All those things you mentioned are important…” They are NOT at all “important” in your nihilist world, where those who achieve expertise in those subjects are destined to be eliminated by Darwinian natural selection.
What is “barring” us from employing the unemployed graduate? Are we supposed to accept that? I made a living encouraging people to create their own jobs, and am a big believer in that. (Such an ungodly amount of money, though, is funneled to larger, more established competition for already difficult start-ups, making the playing field ever more unlevel.)
The options beyond that cannot be “mighty few”. The economy itself is a monster of our own creation, and can reflect better values IF we want it to.
Anyone who doesn’t accept what the imaginary invisible hand wants is a “complainer”? Anyone who can’t find jobs that don’t exist; who cannot acquire the capital to “start their own” are “making excuses? Individual responsibility is not enough. We have to rebuild our sense of social responsibility