<p>Calmom,
with all due due respect to you and your hard working kids, a LOT has changed in the US economy since you or they were in HS . For today’s new college graduates, it IS a brutally difficult time to be trying to find a job. Any job. I thank the gods above that my DS landed a fully funded fellowship in his PHD program, and it is very likely that he will be able to find a well paid position 5 years from now, since so few students are interested in his particular field , the demand is great worldwide, and many older professionals here in the US are close to retirement.</p>
<p>That said, the MIT student was encouraged to find internships by MIT during the 4 summers he was there. [MIT does offer a lot of internships to its own students]. To return home each summer and take a 3 month long vacation, instead of doing anything?? That smacks of an overly inflated ego, and / or extreme naivete, perhaps encouraged by those who thought a degree from MIT was a golden ticket.</p>
Not in my world. Poetgrl has it right, I was too busy with my own life that I didn’t have time to micromanage my kids. The only thing I really did was place limits on my daughter – I insisted that she reserve at least one day a week for unscheduled, social time. (If there had been a way for that kid to schedule 32 hour days, 8 days a week for her dance classes, she would have doe it I actually tried to talk my son out of signing up for AP English – I thought with his dyslexia he would be overwhelmed by the writing assignments. </p>
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Work in college was needed to pay the bills. If my kids didn’t have jobs they would have to have gone without food & text books. My daughter did take unpaid internships over two successive summers; she arranged grant money for one & financed the other with extra hours of paid work. Her basic m.o. was to work in the spring to raise as much as possible for the summer internship; and work extra hours in the fall to pay off the credit card bills she had run up for travel & living expenses over the summer. </p>
<p>Life costs money, and the only way I know to get money is to work for it.</p>
<p>Both kids are currently looking for employment right now. D. has secure employment, but in an agency with no possibility of advancement – looking for improved pay & career track. S. was laid off when funding for his nonprofit job dried up, is entering grad school in the fall, is trying to juggle job-hunting with parenting a toddler, & spent this weekend in a training session for a part-time job, waiting to hear on a second part time job. </p>
<p>The problem for the young grads described by the OP is that they are now competing for jobs against individuals like my son & daughter. When my daughter leaves her current position, they will be looking for someone with a master’s degree to replace her - though no increase in pay. That’s just what they can get in today’s employment market. </p>
<p>The best thing my kids have going for them is multiple years of employment experience.</p>
<p>I will say…every veterinary grad we know had to do at least several clinical rotations which would have been some practicum experience at the very least. In addition, as noted upstream, to even get accepted into vet school, they needed some experience with animals. I find it very hard to believe this vet grad has NO work experience. Re: the MIT grad…what is the degree in? Some MIT degrees would lead to employment opportunities and others would not. </p>
<p>I do wonder if/how these young women are contributing to their households.</p>
<p>I’d add to post #64 that the fact that the current employment market is tough only underscores the need for new grads to have substantial work and/or internship experience on their resumes. Again, they are competing against recent grads who have put in the effort to get the experience, as well as individuals who already have several years of work experience and competing for entry level jobs because of layoffs. </p>
<p>The problem the OP raised isn’t that the recent grads are jobless; it’s that they apparently are not even trying. </p>
<p>Maybe the real problem is that neither of them actually wants to work.</p>
<p>Calmom, when you connect all the dots --and the anecdotal evidence in your posts-- you might conclude that the situation for recent graduates is rather bleak. The reality is that college graduates should find jobs that correspond to their academic preparation and experience, as limited as that might be. Nobody can disagree with the concept that work experience is a bonus when looking for a job. The question should be about the fairness of this system of high expectations as it develops further. </p>
<p>In the end, it is an employer’s market. Again, let me repeat that even students who accumulated the right ingredients might find the going pretty tough, including the competition from better educated students who used graduate school to overcome a horrible job market. This is especially true in areas that produce large numbers of elite graduates.</p>
<p>Re post #65. I think the OP probably has fudged because the DVM degree doesn’t make sense – but maybe she wants to change enough details so as not to infringe on anyone’s privacy - so perhaps she is referring to a different professional level degree. I’m thinking JD, because it certainly was and is possible for kids with very little work experience and an unclear idea of what they want to do with their degree to go to law school – and that is also an area where individuals may emerge with grossly inflated salary expectations. I can see a newly-minted JD turning down offers in the ~$40K range, mistakenly believing that the big firm associate salaries offered to some her classmates are the norm for the profession.</p>
. At the level of a bachelor’s degree, there are very few jobs that “correspond” to academic preparation, outside the field of engineering. A BS in biology (as hypothesized in the OP) really isn’t preparation for anything in particular. It is the sum total, degree + work experience, that lays the foundation for employment. But a significant number of new college grads will find jobs that have little or nothing to do with their college majors, and a whole lot to do with whatever marketable skills they have picked up along the way. </p>
<p>My d. was a math-averse poli sci major and did find a job related to her field, but they also specified that they wanted someone with bookkeeping experience. She could honestly say that she had been responsible for tracking expenses at a previous job & that she was familiar with the software they used. The agency budget was large enough that they might have passed over her in favor of someone else without that background.</p>
<p>Certainly no one I knew who was a law student/graduate was turning down any legal jobs if one was available…especially after 2008. Main issue with most law school grads I know is the overwhelming debt from law school and/or undergrad. </p>
<p>Know one 2008 law grad who is counted as fortunate to have landed a legal job making $30k/year in NYC considering the vast majority of his class ended up with zilch legal job offers/any employment due to collapsing economy/law market. </p>
<p>However, he’s struggling heavily to balance that against undergrad/law school loans which with interest are approaching $400k…and rising.</p>
<p>I’m with calmom. And, what Blossom says about the idea that a new hire is expected to bring something to the table that says, I am a choice worth making, a risk worth taking. That’s not a college degree alone. </p>
<p>Yes, there’s a bad economy. But, there have been bad economic climates before and there will be again. Rather than make excuses for our kids, rather than suggest expectations are too high, too burdensome, we should help them learn the attitude and skills that will let them eventually stand on their own two feet. And, roll with the many punches life will dish out. </p>
<p>No one is saying your kid has to live a life of drudgery, scrambling to juggle coursework, finding a cure for cancer and holding a job. That’s extreme. But don’t let them develop such an insulated view of themselves and such lofty dreams of a perfect job that they can’t eventually fly. We’re talking life skills.</p>
<p>As for OP, I don’t care if she altered the facts to generalize or is using other families’ personal situations. She made an interesting opening point that led to an interesting, if heated, discussion. And, I don’t care if she misused pronouns along the way.</p>
<p>Say what? Are you totally oblivious to the concept of … entry-level job? Or oblivious to professional majors such as accounting, finance, nursing, and … computer science? </p>
<p>^ I think you misread calmom. The degree alone usually doesn’t get you an entry level job. Something has to strike the employer that you are a valid choice, even for entry level. People hire people, based on the needs and some sense you can fill them, with some assurance you can manage the responsibilities and produce. </p>
<p>Some majors, as you suggest, are pre-professional. Either the course of study includes experience (eg, nursing) or the academics are geared to the profession. Just not the case for all majors.</p>
<p>There have been other threads arguing that entry level jobs should go to inexperienced kids. It helps to view this from both sides.</p>
<p>Most of the people I know with jobs in the IT field don’t have computer science degrees. They tend to be self-taught programmers, network techs or web designers who have followed a career path based on experience & word-of-mouth, not academic credentials.</p>
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Unfortunately, in a tight employment market, that’s not the way it works. “Entry level” often comes with a specific requirement of experience – and employers will invariably hire someone with relevant experience over someone with no experience, as long as there is not too much experience. (Too much meaning that the person is so clearly over-qualified for the job that the employer cannot reasonably expect the new hire to stick around for very long)</p>
<p>Because the topic at hand is the apparent inability of an MIT graduate with a degree in biology to get a job. </p>
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<p>That’s a lovely illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Which, by the way, is just one more barrier to employment for individuals who think that their college degree stands on its own as a job ticket.</p>
<p>There is nothing lovely about the above comment. Do you really think insulting others, especially people you KNOW nothing about, validates your comments. But, of course, we already know you know everything. </p>
<p>I know what I mean when I post, and obviously at least one other poster understands what I say… and yet you persist in responding with non sequitur and irrelevancies. So either you are playing games trolling for a fight, or else you are misreading or misunderstanding my posts.</p>
<p>It is the height of conceit when someone points out that you have misread or misunderstood the words of another person to simply claim that you are “certain” of your reading. You can’t read someone else’s mind. Lookingforward clearly got my point and reflected that in her own post; you clearly did not.</p>
<p>If that is your idea of an apology, I suggest you go back to the drawing board! There was no need for your first ad hominem, and even less for the additional “conceit” one. </p>
<p>I wonder when the job (labor) market will get appreciably better in this country? I wonder if the “new normal” means unemployment around 9% and underemployment rampant. </p>
<p>What I gleened from this thread, the first part, was that two recent grads wouldn’t accept work immediately out of college if the job didn’t pay as much as they expected (or wanted). Okay. Then, I guess you won’t work. </p>
<p>For some folks that (not working) isn’t an option. You take what you cna get at whatever rate of pay keeps a roof over the head and food in the bellies of your family. My 17 year old is “looking” for his first real job (I use the term looking loosely here).</p>