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Student Sues University Because She's Unemployable
digitalhermit writes "A C student (not the programming language) has sued her former school because she has been unable to find a job in the three months since her graduation. Yup, some schools are degree mills, but this just seems... bizarre."
As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record. But Monroe's career-services department has put forth insufficient effort to help her secure employment, she claims.
"They're supposed to say, 'I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right -- can you interview this person?' They're not doing that," she said.
Words fail me (briefly).
The best thing to come out of this story is that Ms. Thompson has sent out a nice big red-flag warning to any potential employers not to touch her with a barge pole. After all, if she does this, you can pretty much guarantee she'll sue her employer the moment she gets passed over for a promotion (after all, she shows up for work most days and her last project wasn't a total disaster).
"It doesn't make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald's and Payless. That's not what they planned."
It might not be what they planned, but it is the reality of the job market. The huge expansion in higher education, along with widespread dumbing down of course material and grade inflation, has created a market where many apparently middling graduates just aren't going to have a chance at getting a job that genuinely requires graduate skills. A lot of students who 20 years ago would have been considered middling (but would have gone on to get graduate-level jobs) are now clustered around the top of the class.
At the same time, the self-esteem and all-must-have-prizes philosophies that now pervade much of education have convinced everybody that they deserve to walk right into their dream job, just because they've done nothing more than show up for class and turn in assignments most of the time. The entitlement mentality is right out on show in this story. I do a fair bit of recruitment for my employer and I see plenty more applicants who seem to feel the same way. They don't get very far.
There is an unfortunate side to this. A lot of teens and their parents are still duped into believing that a degree will still lead to a guaranteed "good" job. There's plenty of material out there to counter-act this view and show that in many (possibly even now a majority) of cases, it's a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, this usually gets dismissed as right wing ranting (which I will no doubt get accused of in the replies to this post). The other unfortunate side is that some employers with vacancies that could be filled by a bright high-school graduate seem to feel the need to advertise for a graduate just to "keep up with the Jonses", though I've noticed a slight reversal of this trend recently.
I'd advise Ms. Thompson that with her achievements and attitude, she needs to lower her expectations. She mentions McDonalds sneeringly, but the fact is that they have a general corporate policy of promoting most of their talent internally. If she is as capable as she thinks she is and went to work there with the intention of proving herself (and the attitude to match), she could have a perfectly reasonable career. The same is true of any number of other employers that she probably considers below her social status. Of course, she won't.
All that education, and nobody teached her that the only person that is responsible for getting her employed is herself. Fits the usual American pattern of blaming everyone else for every problem faced in life and spamming lawsuits in every possible situation.
That will teach them for advertising that they help everyone find a job :-)
I can understand her anger at not being able to find a job,
and yeah, pretty much all collages help graduates find jobs, but FFS, she should have picked a better major.
I'm a geek, and I wont even go into a computer sciences or information tech, field, there are 10 times as many
applicants than their are job openings in that field. 10 years ago, anyone with an IT or Comp Sci degree would
get hired on the spot, these days, you might as well have a liberal arts degree.
It's obvious that as the entitlement generation grows up we'll see more of this: "I should get a job even though I'm mediocre at what I do and if I don't then I should be able to sue someone".
Let's hope she gets laughed out of court.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Obviously this woman doesn't have a case, but it's still not that hard to sympathise with people who are being pushed into higher education on the back of all the "you must have a degree to get a good job" and "knowledge-based economy" bullshit that's put about these days. Most of these folks would be better off learning an honest trade.
Can anyone explain what is a C in the US in the percentile range? Is this synonymous with miserable failure? What about the reputation of Monroe College?
Is she an average or plain-awful student?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I really hope this chick loses the case, and gets saddled with a bunch of court costs to add to her student loans, that way nobody will ever try anything so stupid again. Three month job-hunt? In this economy? College education is no guarantee of a job, and if you can't sell yourself, you're going to be unemployed for a lot longer than that. Your college can't convince employers to give you a job, they can provide some contacts and resources to help you, but that's it.
Oh no... it's the future.
Somehow, many students have the illusion that a degree will bring them to the top automagically. It doesn't work that way. Getting a degree is a good step forward... If they work hard in the university and actually learn. Then they will have to start 3 (or 5) years later in the job market, meaning they will lack many important skills no university teaches and therefor earn less. Even if they learn quickly it takes years to catch up (both in attractiveness on the job market and salary) with those that got into the same field without an university education.
This is true in most fields (including Engineering), but especially true in business administration and management.
The true value of the university education comes after a few years, because many companies have internal rules about giving priority to educated workers. Often there is a hard celing on how far you can get without a master, and it's not unusual for people to go back and get a MBA not only because they need the skills, but also because they need the diploma to continue their career. Some companies even pays for those MBA's to their management.
I think this belongs on the fail blog dot ORG.
and yes...there's plenty of room for the ol' kneepads zinger (and the fact that it's still not too late to deploy 'em).
If i'd shelled out $40,000 for a degree and found out its pretty much worthless in terms of getting a job i'd be pretty pissed too.
even more fail if McD**ald's and/or Pay*ess sue her for libel and defamation.
This is funny because just the other day I was talking with my mother, a director of hiring at a large telco, and she was talking about how the young people she brings in feel entitled.
I told her I agreed, then asked if I could borrow $25. When she said no I wrote the local paper exposing the BULLSHIT THAT THIS IS!
I have been jobless for at least 1.5 months now, can I get at least 50% refund?
if you don't have any previous work history in a field. I'll freely admit I got both of my IT jobs by referrals from friends and acquaintances already working in the companies.
University/College studies are as much about networking as they are about learning. I spent most of my years in University in our student relaxing room playing boardgames and arguing with fellow students and faculty members. Now people who graduated years before me and have achieved higher positions in companies know me or are my friends and have a good understanding on how I fit in teams/groups. And since we mostly argued about our studies at hand they know that even though my grades weren't top notch I knew my stuff.
Of course this doesn't work at all if you're an asshole. You have to stand out somehow, but red flagging yourself for good by suing your school for your own failures is about the worst thing you could possibly do.
ive seen this time and time again. how many people do we know that have some kinda bachelors, and DON'T use it?? or maybe work but have a job in another unrelated field. I think that colleges overstate their utility in some respects. Not to overgeneralize this, but they are in the business of selling degrees to most.
I guess the most newsworthy part of this story is that apparently - I'm non-US - the US education system has been deflating for some time now, and in this economic situation, the results are finally beginning to show. This girl is definitely not alone, I expect. So, where do you go from here?
Being an Expert Schadenfreude Connaisseur, I do feel somewhat relieved seeing this development, as I intend to continue my career in the US, after I finish my Master here in the Netherlands.
This is going to be the end of the U.S.: lawyers can sue EVERYTHING, and NOTHING is going to be able to survive, resulting in a chaotic prehistoric civilization.
If she's so motivated to sue someone because "she doesn't get what she wants," why doesn't she use her business degree and start her own business. Find a niche and go with it. It will be more rewarding. The downside, based upon her attitude, is that the only person she could blame then is herself. Unless she sues the customers of the world for not buying her product/service.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
It won't teach them anything. Universities are HEAVILY involved in fraud. If you don't like this example, find another.
They raise prices far faster than inflation, just like the doctors and drug companies. They are against society in many ways, in my opinion, not part of society.
... now where did I leave my tiny violin?
Maybe next time they'll think before running a subject called "How to sue people for profit"
For not teaching her about how stupid it is to file frivolous lawsuits.
Technically, she's suing the career placement office for not fulfilling their duties as promised. I'm sure the contract with them says that they can't guarantee job placement, but according to the student, they're not even giving it a piss-poor effort.
From TFA:
Thompson says she has not hired an attorney to represent her because she cannot afford one.
When she filed her complaint, she also filed a "poor person order," which exempts her from filing fees associated with the lawsuit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If advertising didn't work, there wouldn't be so much of it.
Universities in .au, probably elsewhere as well, have been selling themselves increasingly for their job training and less for the concept of a liberal education for decades now.
Only a few go to university now to be simply educated, most are going to uni To Get A Job: it is an almost compulsory step between high school and any professional job. And most technical jobs. I wonder sometimes when more universities will go into more trade training, trying to steal business from technical schools. (As opposed to places like RMIT and Swinburn going the other way: technical colleges who became universities.)
And so, when university is sold as something which will get you a job, these expectations are built. Reasonably or not. (In my opinion, not.) But the trend is there, nonetheless.
A University education has gone from something needed for certain jobs, to something needed for certain classes of work, to a sine-qua-non of employment in entire sections of the workforce. And the universities have been competing with each other to advertise how good they are at giving an education which improves the student's chances of getting a job â" a good job, a desirable job â" advertising which might give the impression that such a job is practically guaranteed: that you go to this uni or that one not because of the education you get, but because of the job you are all but promised to walk into when you graduate. (Before you graduate, even, with graduate placements and the like.)
Personally, I think the uni sector would be better off selling the quality of the education itself, rather than expectations of the utilitarian results.
But I only work for a university, and as professional staff at that, so there is no hope that my opinion carries the slightest weight whatsoever.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Maybe it means she should start her own business? :)
She might as well, since she just made herself even more unemployable.
Who'd want to hire you, if you get a 2.7 and then sue your college because you haven't managed to get a job after 3 months?
If the college mistakenly gave her a 2.7 when she should have got something better, but refused to fix it, then sure sue.
I'm growing more and more tired of one-sided comments about the "entitlement generation".
The point this poster makes is particularly salient: the applicants are not the only ones who feel "entitled"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Chronic entitlement disorder. A lot of people seem to be suffering from it.
She suggested that Monroe's Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades. "They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement," she said.
You had a 2.7 GPA, with a "bachelor of business administration degree in information technology", and a "solid attendance record".
Okay, Trina, you've probably never heard this before, but I'll be frank. Those people with 4.0 GPAs are all probably much smarter than you are. If you had, say, a 3.5 GPA (and perhaps a more serious degree), that might not be the case. It makes sense for people to give them preferential treatment when it comes to employment in jobs that require intelligence and skills specific to their fields.
Considering that you're so lacking in integrity and responsibility that you decided to sue the school because you couldn't find an employer, I'll go out on a limb and say that those people are --in all honesty-- better than you. Had you not responded with such a childish action, I might hesitate to say that. Alas, that is not the case.
If you're unhappy with this, too bad. You can try harder, but now that you've made an ass out of yourself on national news, I don't think you'll convince anyone otherwise.
Now, try not to go get pregnant a dozen times.
Gads, a worthless degree that wants the school to promote an average person in a horrible economy. Amazing who many Americans expect a free ride.
A lot of people seem to think this is about her sense of entitlement - I'm not so sure. I suspect this is more about her moral character, or lack thereof. While I realize there is a lawyer boogeyman conservatives like to drag out whenever an apparently frivolous lawsuit makes the news, there are definitely a few people whose first thoughts immediately jump to lawsuits and "how much can I get?" at even the slightest hint of perceived wrong (which, in this case, I guess does boil down to a sense of entitlement after all). We can blame the lawyers, and I often do; but for each case like this there's also a willing client who's only thought is one regarding money.
#DeleteChrome
"...As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record..."
She's got it backwards. Aquarium algae can get a 2.0 GPA with a little training. If all the poor, dumb little chit can manage is a 2.7, then she'd be better off claiming she skipped two thirds of her classes and spent the whole last term drunk. At least that way, an employer might think she had brains and a commitment to doing the job right.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This individual has "peppered" companies with letters, CVs and only had 2 replies. That kinda tells you something about either her applications, or the job market, or the companies she's applying to. Now I don't know what "Business Administration" is - but it sounds like low-level clerical work, compared with "Business Mamagement" which is high-level clerical work :-) Maybe she's confused about exactly how qualified she actually is.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Part of the reason they have to raise their prices faster than inflation is because the government-supplied part of their funding is steadily being withdrawn, and the money has to come from somewhere. It's pretty simple math, really:
Cost = Facilities + (# of Students * # of courses per student) + research budget
Income = Gov. Grants + Tuition + Donations + Industry Grants
If you reduce the income, then something from the cost has to go down.
If you reduce the research budget, then Industry Grants will also dry up, further reducing the Income, so that's not going to work.
If you reduce the facilities, you don't have places to put the students.
If you reduce the students or courses, you lose Tuition, and Income goes down further.
That means that you _must_ keep the Income balanced with the Cost. Politicians however look at it and say "Bah! Nobody needs nunna that thar book lernin'! Ah'll jus take their budget ta pay fer mah fishin' industry project this month." So the Cost has not changed, but the Income has gone down.
And then more and more students enrol, increasing cost out of proportion to the respective increase in Income due to more tuition being paid. (Guess what? Your degree costs the University more than you paid in Tuition!)
The _ONLY_ way that the rising spiral of costs can be dealt with is to either increase tuition (which reduces the number of students as well, thus reducing the costs and bringing it closer to balance) or to find some other source of income. In the current economy, how much money do you donate to your local university? Not very much I'd wager.
You are generally unemployable coming out of any University. A University teaches you the theory of the subject matter and how to learn. Its up to you to take those learning skills and master its practical application in the real world.
It's only them do you become employable/useful in a commercial environment. Otherwise you don't stand a chance of getting a job over other students who do (unless of course you took a minor in bull-sh*ting).
Are you educated, do you feel like you've done your part, do you feel entitled, especially if you're holding a piece of paper, even if the contents of that document suffer the lack of genius?
Perhaps you're the perfect candidate for our exciting, yet trolling team, ..., just like you, we feel we should be properly compensated for other people's excellence, because we've got patents, just like the other cool kids on the block.
In fact, don't bother applying for a position with us, you shouldn't have to expend any effort at all, I'm sure your uni will send us your FB link along with a praising recommendation letter.
Yours truly,
PPC.
This idea that some (many?) students have that a degree is all they should need to be the ideal candidate. Ummmm, no, not so much. You ought to be smart enough to notice that what you are being taught is highly theoretical in nature. Universities aren't tech schools, they aren't teaching you specific skills needed for specific jobs, they are institutions of higher education and research. They deal heavily in the theoretical. This is quite noticeable if you pay any attention in class at all.
Thus, you should take something away from this: The university isn't giving me all I need to be an ideal job candidate. Practical experience is something you need to go and get on your own. My recommendation, especially for IT, is to get a job on campus doing just that. Now I'm a little biased, I work professionally doing IT on campus so we hire students. However, it is a good way to get some extra money and a great way to get some practical experience. All in all, it seems to work out ok for our students. They seem to go on to get jobs. Heck one guy got his bachelors in computer engineering, went on to another school and got his masters, then decided "Know what? I don't really want to be an engineer, I want to do support," and went to work as a support guy. While they appreciated the masters degree, they cared more about his time spent as a support guy.
For tech stuff I recommend university jobs since there seem to be plenty of them, and they have no problem hiring students, of course. A student position must, by definition, be filled by a student of the university. Universities also like student positions since they are cheap. However there's other places you can look at, or internships, or perhaps even just working on projects on your own time. Whatever, the point is to try and get some real, practical experience, not just a good theoretical education.
Also it really annoys me the idea that some graduates have that they should get a "high level" position. Ummmm, no. You have little experience, that is the definition of entry level. The idea that you'd start out in a higher level job is rather silly. After all, if a BS did that, then the majority of people would be starting out in high level jobs, making them not high level. If you are a new graduate, well then accept the fact that you are at the "entry level" of the work force. Goes double if this is your first job period.
Future prospective employers are now likely to throw out her application when they google her name and find out she's a whiny bitch with an inflated sense of entitlement who can't handle the stress of not finding a job within three months of graduating.
Good work there.
I guess she'll end up suing the entire internet for this article and any reference to it to be removed.
It is a sad, but true story folks.
Sure she is pompous and arrogant in her assumptions, however, the general American public is bombarded with the notion that going to college will somehow guarantee you success in the job marketplace. Reading a few of the comments here I see that not just this woman, or myself, have been the victim of the proliferation of this notion.
I think that our education system really needs to be reevaluated. It seems to me that High School has become increasingly marginalized in today's society and instead the focus is placed on, "what do you want to major in when you graduate?" This mentality is completely counter-productive when it comes to aspiring workers in a new market.
I was led to believe that without a degree, any skills I may have would be unnoticed or ignored due to a lack of a "proper education". With a little time in college under my belt, I see how erroneous that line of thinking is. After having gained a slight amount of experience in the matter I believe that proper skills in a particular field should be valued first and foremost, rather then aspiring to obtain some mystical certificate that will somehow enable you to have the skills necessary to succeed.
College should be supplementary, an institution to equip students with practical skills for potential employment in the future. Unfortunately, in my experience, college is nothing of the sort. I would say college is more of a place that is suited for learning the fundamentals of a particular area, rather then actually having practical, applicable skills that can be used in that given area.
Obviously college is only worth what you put into but I feel that if there were an actual system in place that actively trained students to deal with various workplace occurrences, potential employers would be more apt to hire someone straight out of college then they currently are. As it stands, the best course of action for any student is to study hard and to document your work for later inclusion in a portfolio, so as to illustrate a practical understanding and implementation of your knowledge.
You can't teach intelligence and age dont cure stupid.
There's a fairly widespread belief that people with a higher education are probably smarter than people without one - this girl very much disproves that. When I was in law school, it was full of less than brilliant minds to be sure, some I wouldn't even have trusted to cook me a burger at the local Mmmshack.
thought I was reading an article on the onion
Q: How long was the six-day war?
A: Six meters
Prof Swaminathan: According to therory of relativity... mumbo jumbo... six meters = six days. QED. So full credit to the student.
You get the drift.
Well, at least this suit brought back fond memories. Thanks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I had a 4.0 GPA from a top 10 university, but couldn't land a Deloitte internship. Ultimately, I got a job by reference. As any worthy nerd would imagine, this does not land well with one's ego. The job market is currently in a situation which can irrevocably steal your sense of self worth. What this student has done is an simply an act of exasperation and desperation.
whoops :)
College is just a certification program. After that, your education begins.
You will learn basic job skills, and then learn to fight your way up the ladder.
Most people are fucking idiots, even if they're smart at one or two things (what Michael Crichton called "thin intelligences"). They will oppose you and obstruct you with their stupidity.
You will learn to navigate the minefield of politics, which is greatly increased by people being in denial that our society is dying just as Spengler predicted it would -- from within.
Stick to what you know, and to your own values, and don't let anyone ride your ass. Hold out for something good and have allegiance to nothing less.
Because society loves a chump.
Futurist Traditionalism
It means she's ready to manage IT people ... er. Yeah.
If you haven't seen "The IT Croud", now is the time. Her degree is what the main woman has.
IMHO, that degree is only useful in very large corporations or government jobs. You know, places were people who don' actually 'do anything' can get a paycheck.
Ok -- this girl is a brat, I will not for a second say that she is not. I will not, however, immediately dismiss this lawsuit as being frivolous -- a lot of schools advertise heavily on their job placement programs. If she chose to attend this school, and she chose to give them tens of thousands of dollars on a promise that they would offer her a great deal of help in finding a job upon graduation, then she certainly does have a right to be upset about, as that is blatant false advertising. I know how this thing works from experience -- the school I attended (which shall remain nameless) made a huge to-do about their career assistance programs before I chose to attend and rack up $40,000 in debt. Upon graduation, I realized that their career placement was not much more than what I would have gotten off of monster.com. Granted, I was not dumb enough to depend on this and found work on my own, but I do feel ripped off.
The bottom line is, if you are going to advertise a particular service, you had better be prepared to put your money where your mouth is.* These schools need to learn that they cannot get away with making false promises to get you in the door, it is false advertising, and is nothing less than grand larceny.
*I know very well that this is likely not the case, it seems that she is more upset that she still doesn't have a job DESPITE the services being offered -- if the school is living up to their end of the bargain this girl is just an idiot, as opposed to being an idiot with a legitimate complaint. Regardless of whether or not the school is providing the necessary services, she is a 'tard for expecting to have a job 4 months after graduation with a 2.7 GPA, and even more of a 'tard for relying solely on the school's career placement to help her, as everyone knows that they are generally bullshit. This will not work out well for her, but if she is successful, it could work out well for future students in giving schools a bit more incentive to be honest.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I've been in IT for 17 years after getting a BS in Comp Sci from the U of Illinois College of Engineering. If you do your math, you'll find that means I entered the job market in 1991, which happens to coincide with the 1991 recession. Unemployment was high, like it is now, jobs were difficult to find, like they are now, and you had to stand out in your field to have any chance of getting a decent entry-level position.
Just like you do now.
And unlike your "10 years ago (in the middle of the dotcom bubble, which popped two years later and "disemployed" most of those people who had such an "easy" time finding a job), there were a lot fewer IT jobs around for anybody, because the field hadn't taken off the way it has now. No one outside of academic circles had heard of the Internet, etc. etc.
Things aren't, frankly, any tougher now than they were in 1991 for folks with CS degrees (they are a great deal tougher for other folks, such as mechanics and builders, but not for qualified computer scientists).
You can either (a) put up or shut up and go for it or (b) go to graduate school, get a masters, and hope the job market has improved in a couple of years (a pretty good bet, really). Or (c) opt out of the game. Yes, times are tough (a great deal tougher for those already in the job market by the way, than for those just entering the job market and able to underprice more established workers), and a lot of people I know have been laid off. Happened to me too...and I found another job in a very tough market because, unlike this person and a number of others posting here, I got out and hit the pavement, and didn't let the, admittedly very scary and difficult, job market send me running home to mommy/my lawyer crying "it's not fair! it's not fair!" Often it isn't fair, and that's unfortunate, but it is also life, and billions of other human beings live with that unfortunate fact every day of their lives. In her case, I suspect her inability to get hired is very fair indeed. Hell, I wouldn't even interveiw her...you might get sued for not hiring her instead of the dozens of emminently more qualified people she thinks she should have jumped ahead of.
I felt like I should share my story here.
I got my degree in interdisciplinary studies (Mathematics and IT) and have a fair GPA (I had chronic health issues through college) and have now submitted my 234th application+resume for jobs going from traders joe's to small it companies to IT healthcare to government jobs requiring clearance. Unfortunately most retail/wage jobs are not available due to the shrinking economy and you can only get them if you know people. Where I live you can only get a entry level job by getting security clearance. Problem: I've applied and the fact that I was hospitalized for a mental disorder twice precludes me from that. I am not unable to work and have maintained the problems stemming from a, admittedly severe, case of Type I bipolar disorder and PTSD unusually well. The auditors, despite letters from my all my doctors saying that I was fit for work and capable of handling state secrets didn't want to risk it. At this point I make an odd buck singing as I'm an operatic tenor (full-lyric/spinto) and will probably be able to reenter school under a scholarship for music (tenors who can be heard above a full orchestra and actually have a nice voice are rare). I'm also strongly considering going to cosmetology school as I've got an interest in make-up artistry and hair styling and it's a skill you can take anywhere. Until I get to the point, where I can foster my other talents, I'm applying for disability and SSI.
In the time I've spent now stuck in the house alone in the basement, I've found out that most of what I thought I knew from my college courses was actually watered down shit. I've essentially begun to reteach myself what I thought I knew through old math books that I've gathered from grad students that gave them to a book exchange program. Without projects in programming to work on I can notice my skills eroding and I'm not sure I'd be able to jump right into a job requiring that atm. I would contribute to some open source projects but the bar for the one's I'd like to work on (generally computer algebra systems and numerical computing) is so so high. I would go to grad school only I lack the courses (real analysis mainly) as my college did not provide any of the upper level coursework (at least not seriously [our numerical analysis was done by someone with their MA in math education and she had never touched matlab till two months prior and was technophobic, a complete joke]) necessary for that. I've learned that my degree is essentially worthless in almost every regard.
I was essentially forced to choose this particular school by my parents, who choose it because it's in biking distance and because the school has billboards (I shit you not) advertising that they get students jobs. They boast a 97% employment rate. They also host career fairs and have services for resume counseling and do hound you to use them. However, most of the fairs center around the schools most successful areas: nursing and accounting. They were once an all women 2-year school about a decade and some years ago, so this come as no surprise. They are also lead by a president who has amazing capabilities in manipulating figures. It took me a long while to realize that our ratings were mostly manufactured and overstated.
Now, however, after looking around at my graduating peers and listening to their stories, I realize that my school was not the only offender. In fact, there are a number of schools just like mine that have become, as one slashdotter here put it, 'degree manufactures'. They essentially live by manufacturing mediocre graduates, and taking their savings in the process, and consequentially flooding the workforce and devaluing degrees of talented people. I am at odds to decide though which category I fall in here. My degree is worthless in consideration of the fact that it failed to help me get a job and I learned little of my actual knowledge in the classes taken in pursuit of it. However I am (and I say this with the utmost confidence) more capable in what it prescribes then
Your post proves my point.
You think she is entitled simply because she threw $70K of her parent's money down the drain and expects it to get her a job.
The reason university graduates of my generation had no problem getting a job was because the standards were much higher: typically only 5% of the population got a degree.
University is not and shouldn't be for everybody.
So yes, you're right, the standard of graduates has gone downhill since then: which is why so many of them can't get jobs.
They're the unemployable 'me me me' entitlement generation.
Another way of putting it is evolution in action: at least you failures are less likely to reproduce.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The economy is absolutely in the crapper at the moment. How can you honestly expect to be getting job offers thrown at you when even the majority of large employers these days have either severely limited recruitment or have hiring freezes in place? Personally, I just graduated (with a 3.1--nothing to jump up and down about, but decent) from RPI with a B.S. in Comp. Sci. and some really stellar references. I started looking for a job before I graduated and it took me the better part of two months to even get noticed. I think I probably sound out around 30-40 or more applications to just about anything that either employed programmers or had a CS related job posting. In the end, out of all those, I actually landed one response--an interview which eventually lead to a job offer. Still, even with employable skills and a respectable degree, the market is impossible to do anything in. Hell, in the end I decided on grad school and at the moment, the economy is actually so bad here that I can't even find a job at a place like McD's or Payless. I should be so lucky -.- As far as "solid attendance" goes--since when do colleges even take attendance? Hell, there were classes I didn't even show up to except to take tests and hand in homework. Quite frankly, it sounds like she doesn't have much to offer in the way of skills and the economy being what it is, people don't want to hire fresh grads with no useful skills. I don't know if Monroe is/was suffering in the same way as RPI was when I left, but I know we were facing some serious cuts (i.e. any and every professor who wasn't either tenured or tenure track), resulting in things like an entire language/lit department (both foreign and english) being entirely axed, serious reductions in the number of elective classes (mostly taught by non-tenured professors), support staff members being laid off like crazy, etc. Hell, if there are still people still left employed to help the girl find a job, she should be pretty damn grateful. IMO, she should suck it up, stfu, work her job at McD's and keep up the job search.
Whatever her GPA is, she has worked hard for four years, spent $70k on it and is very willing and able to work. I don't know how many bachelor degree holders there is, but she likely has more education than 70% of the population. And she can't get a job.
It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over. The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
I can't tell if that's a masterfully crafted troll...or if you're simply Exhibit A for the entitlement generation. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for the former. If so, bravo.
I do the hiring for my shop. We provide technical support for industrial machines(greasemonkey/electronics/pc/controls/etc) To me, a degree only demonstrates you have the discipline to finish a job; It's the person's attitude/team focus/initiative I'm really interested in. I have mechanical and electronic aptitude tests to measure base skills. 4.0GPA or 2.0GPA, it doesn't matter; Bottom line: People hire people not degrees(or they should anyway imo).
It's too bad no one told this woman that if she filed this lawsuit she would be forever marked as an automatic 'NO' from every potential employer. If I was interviewing her and knew she had pursued this lawsuit, the first thought in my mind would be, 'OMG she's gunna sue us if she get's passed up on a promotion/raise/whatever she don't like'
> That she expects to earn a large amount of money by being immediately put into a "management" position and paid vast sums of money solely due to the fact that she is such a wonderful person and "deserves" to be a manager with a large salary.
What are you talking about? Any half-competent career services department should be able to see that anyone that lawsuit-happy who has that big of a sense of entitlement has a bright future at the RIAA (or any of the other MAFIAA franchises).
This is just a simple matter of matching up the person's personality and skill set to the right organization...
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
a 2.7 GPA is barely passing. How the hell can you get modded up? Who gives a shit how much she spent? Should have worked harder then.
Willing to work? Well, work for McDonalds then, you bloody cunt.
So, let me get this straight. A graduate from a [insert random no-name college here] obtains a [rather generic, non-specific] degree in "IT", and automagically expects to be hired in 3 months or less?
Forget economy or GPA for a second, what the hell ever happened to getting your damn feet wet in IT outside of a fucking classroom?
You want someone to hire you? Drop the ego and intern for a short while. Find out how good you are in the real world before you start assuming a piece of paper is your automagic meal ticket. Might also want to pick up a newspaper every now and then to see how long it's taking the average job with experience to land a job.
It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over. The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
Please.
There have been numerous recessions, and every generation has had to deal with downturns. Now it's our turn.
Yeah, this downturn is pretty bad...but much less so for IT people than folks in other walks of life most people on this board will look down on: mechanics, builders, janitors ... and some pretty prestigious jobs too, like architects, bankers (despite the recent bonuses, well over a hundred thousand workers in the financial industry have been laid off in London and New York alone), and so on.
Things may have gone downhill in some ways, but if you've got a decent college degree, from a decent university, in a decent field, chances are the job market for you isn't any more difficult than it was for a lot of us getting out into the real world for the first time during an economic downturn. And it's a great deal easier for you, coming in asking for an entry-level salary, than it is for a lot of us established in the field trying to hold on to the income we've worked long and hard to build up to ... so please, spare us your entitlement shit and go cry to someone else. Or better yet, get out off your ass and work to find a job, instead of bitching and moaning about how "difficult" it is and how you've been "fucked over" by the "older generation", you ageist fuck.
Just in case you think I'm one of the generation you're blaming for all your troubles, I'm well under 30. So put that in your ageist crack pipe and smoke it.
You been tellin' me you're a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean
The weekend at the college
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand
--Reelin' In the Years by Steely Dan
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
Just found this article in which the "Ski Channel" is going to offer her a job:
BS in Information Science and Technology from Penn State with a 2.95 GPA: $40,000
MS in Information Science from University of Pittsburgh with a 3.5 GPA: $24,000
Job as team lead (because I know how to use ghost and schedule, not because of my degrees) decommissioning computers for people who got laid off because of the economy: Priceless (also $20/hr, although it seems low at least I have a job)
Now I'll admit I chose the wrong career field. I got suckered in by the promises of a very charismatic department head. I got my MS just because it seemed like something fun to do that may have lead to a better chance of being happy in this field. It hasn't as of yet, so now I'm taking pre-med courses with the hope of making a career shift.
My only gripe is, as people have pointed out, I expected some training. All I got was some bullshit (BS!) about how to "think and make decisions better". I didn't go to class unless it happened to be particularly interesting subject (such as rhetoric and public speaking), I just turned in my homework, did my projects and in some cases asked the teacher for the final way early so I didn't have to think about going back. Was I lazy? Yes. Was my GPA in undergrad higher than that of anyone else I graduated with in my degree that semester? (ok there were only 5 of them) Yes it was.
The point is, I hope this girls case brings to light the crock of higher education these days and makes young people think about it before going just because they "should". If any young person today asked me if I think they should go to college (especially for IT) I'd tell them to think long and hard about it, and consider how much the guy who repairs elevators makes over your average entry level office worker.
My Comic : www.ourbadidea.com
Blame the artist for all mistakes!
Whenever I read a headline like this I think to myself, "Alright, some jackass is trying to get a bunch of attention. Surely there must be more to this story."
Imagine my surprise when I realized that, no, the title is 100% accurate. Amazing.
-William Brendel
I'm not an objectivist in her sense (I don't agree that economic achievement is a good measure for a humans worth), but this story provides basically the best living example of a leecher I've ever seen...
MONROE COLLEGE is a diploma mill silly girl. When I graduated college it was at the height of the internet boom and that was cool but the market took a dump and I went retail. I didn't have a problem with it since I always made enough money to live off of. I mean, being in school taught me about what was really important to me because I was a starving student. Really, any job was fine for me. Other people I find, have a problem with the jobs I've had and say that I should be getting paid more. I am happy with what I do ATM. I have full health, stock, 401k and they even pay for my transportation.
It's all about what makes me happy. Everyone else can kiss my butt!
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.
I don't agree with the grade inflation hype.
it happens in grade school, it does not happen in college. Colleges frequently have to deal with people who graduated high school with improper curricula, and rather than "dumb down" their coursework they put these students through augmented introductory courses to bring them up to speed.
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I kinda hope she wins and sues the College into next wednesday. While she doesn't seem to be all that bright and the attempt at a lawsuit is a tad silly, it's time that academia notices they've gone to far in offering degrees in a bazillion different soft fields of expertise and hyping their importance.
We're seeing the same effect in Germany now that there is a universal Tuition proposedly to improve the academic field but basically used to generate interest for some pockets higher up the food chain and nothing else. Universities turning into degree-mills, grad schools and 'who can bare the most crap' torture chambers, with stuffed curiculae, understaffed teaching crew and semester plans completely void of any concept or sanity.
I resent academia more and more and say that most fields with 'social' and 'modern' in their names - and some others - should be dumped in favour of keeping the good old hard sciences healthy. There is to much rubbish out there in academia, to much stuff that doesn't belong there and to much power in degrees and papers with fancy titles on them - especially here in Germany. But I see the same problem in the US. If that stupid girl feel for the hype it is her fault - but not alone. Sue the colleges back into shape, that's what I say. Or at least get you tuition back.
Stupid girl or not, I completely see her point. Many young people fall for the legend, and don't be fooled: I did too and so did you. The only difference is that circumstances caused that she noticed it earlyer.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Politicians however look at it and say "Bah! Nobody needs nunna that thar book lernin'!
Actually, politicians tend to say "EVERYONE deserves all the schooling they can get, even if we have to bleed every working man and woman dry to subsidize it."
There was a time when it was possible to work your way through college as a waiter or a hospital orderly. That was before the government started shovelling money into our universities.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I busted my ass for year in college, worked babysitting and crappy ass jobs to put myself through college. I came out with a 3.5 or so. No one handed me an interview, I pounded the pavements, I called people, I went to job fairs. I found my own success. Years later, I lost the job I was at, and spent 10.5 months unemployeed. I applied for over 1000 jobs all across the USA, and in that time frame had 3 interviews, 2 of them fell through after a lot of work trying to prove myself. In the end my abilities won an employer over. I moved at my own expense and I was flat broke.
This world hands you nothing. You invest in a degree, then it is up to you to make it work for you. It's like buying a TV, if you don't turn it on, it's a waste of money. Well I can say that for this woman, the education system wasted it's time educating her when there are millions behind her who would have take that gift of education and done something positive with it.
It's a sad sad day in the world. I truely hope our justice system throws this one out and in her face?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
.. I don't feel overly bad for her. I graduated with a 3.4 gpa and had to work two years of shit jobs before I landed a job in my field. This was before the economy went to hell in a hand basket. I can see it's much worse then what it was when I was job hunting. The last thing I would do though is sue the university I graduated from, hell if anything I'd go back and see if they have job openings and lucky for me they did!
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I heard they are the only thing that can survive a nuclear war.
The reason the "older" generation did not have to deal with this "Bullshit" was because "Corporations" kept the work domestically! Now you see all these companies outsourcing peoples jobs for cheap pay to foreign soil! Of course people of Generation X & Y are going to have issues getting jobs, there are not a whole lot left in ones home country! Life is not fair, get use to it! No one is entitled to a "Big" job just because they have "Higher" education. I have my degrees, I worked hard at finding a job (the schools did say they would help find me a job but I had to do some leg work as well), started from the bottom to get where I am at now. Only the "lucky" or A$$ Kissers fall into the high paying management positions!
There isnâ(TM)t a case here, part of going to a higher educational institution is to obtain additional knowledge that you hope would eventually get you a job. It is up to you as an individual to obtain the work experience required to solidify your education (provided by the school) so you can obtain your desire job easier. Your school main focus is to provide you with education not to find you a job, many or most schools have career services to assist student along the right path but they do not act as an employment services. Also most employers do not pay much attention to what kind of GPO you have or how much school work youâ(TM)ve done unless those works apply to the job you are seeking. What they look at is the work experience and your work ethics. You cannot expect to obtain a job with no work experience and the only thing that can back you up is a mid-range GPO and the idea that youâ(TM)re the best of the best. Especially if Thompson is going into the IT related field, the work experience is what employers look for in IT not school work.
...or, at least, a big snob, but she's a recent grad with a C average and a "bachelor of business administration degree in information technology". She has no experience and a degree of questionable merit (field and GPA). Seriously. So she can do ... what? Why would someone want to hire her? For her "solid attendance"? Not a chance. And certainly not now.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I've got 12 years+ in IT and I had tons of skills before graduating (hardware, programming, admin, etc.) college, it still mattered not. I had to bust my ass for years before actually making even decent money, and even though I am now, I would throw in the towel on IT in a second to do a normal job. IT has become worthless, it is seen as mostly worthless, and there is no loyalty or dedication to computer-related employees. Add to that the current economic climate and best of luck to new grads. Colleges and tech schools never helped land jobs anyhow, no matter your GPA or quality of the school. Students will soon find that having no outside skills and simply a baseline degree will get them nowhere.
Fuck college, go to trade school, pay a lot less, be in demand, have an normal life. Anyone reading this who is young enough to still change course, do it. I promise you it is the best advice you've ever gotten from an anonymous online stranger for free.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Jobs should be allocated on skills. Not paper. The process of getting the paper should give you the skills. If not, it's worthless.
If the course is looking worthless, perhaps it is, and it's not worth wasting more time and money on it. If you spent 3 years of your life doing a worthless course, what does it say about you? You're left 3 years older and still lacking the required skills.
I dropped out of a virtual reality course (name should have been a clue, but I was young and naive) after a year and a half because all my learning was self taught and the course interfered. It was all very disappointing and depressing. Dropping out was like a weight off my shoulders. I spent six months moving my C++ programming from the Acorn to Windows and then got a job doing 3D engine programming. It's nearly a decade later now and I have seen very "qualified" programmers not worth the space they use up. I'm sure some of the good programmers I know are better for having done "good" courses, but I don't think a good course can make a bad programmer good and plenty of good programmers who did "bad" courses have told me it was a waste of time.
Ultimately I think market forces have caused many courses to set the bar too low, and not to raise it high enough during the course (or recruiting of lecturers?). Maybe some come back from people who complete the courses and come out without employable skills is a good thing.
Nice to see that story filed under "Entertainment Story" :-)
bickerdyke
What a great example of the product of a politically correct society where the expectations of entitlement abound. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for her.
Yes, the job market is tough right now. I know, because with 20 years of IS/IT experience, it recently took me over 2 months of uncertainty and doubt to land a local IT job. I could have gotten a job elswhere in the country, but I choose to stay local, so I had to accept that it would take me longer to find a job.
There are absolutely no guarantees for employment whether it be in finding employment or keeping it. From the recent graduate to those who are "solidly employed", there are zero guarantees. Your job can be offshored quicker than you can say Bangalore, and in states that have "at will" laws, your job can end immediately without notice.
Time for the Obvious Police to arrive on the scene. Sorry, but this isn't a socialist country yet. Those who perform well get preferential treatment. It's called a free market, and it's the way of business. The phrase "Everyone's a winner" just doesn't apply in the business world.
That's not what they planned? That's not what they planned? WTF? This girl really needs a kick in the pants and a good dose of some reality pills. It's called life. Things aren't just given to you. You have to earn them.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I like how people like the GP are blaming *us* for expecting to get a decent job straight out of college. (By decent I don't mean 80K cushy, I mean something better than working at a retail store at the mall; you know, the same shit you did from 14 - college graduation, working for someone with less education than you.)
YOU FUCKERS ARE THE ONES WHO'VE SOLD US THIS LIE!!!! Fuck.
(Glad I didn't fall for it though!)
At the risk of sounding like some 4-chan lurker, im going to quote this for truth in case the neo-con mod-squad that seems to dominate /. buries this one too.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
She has obviously not applied to work oversees, I know multiple firms in the Middle East who would pay her reasonably for merely having the barely acceptable qualifications she so proudly presents, and if all else fails, there's always Iraq to go to, ask Bush Jr!
It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over.
Here's something no one may never have told you: LIFE IS NOT FAIR
The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
10% national unemployment in 1982
The Great Depression of the 1930's
The Industrial Revolution that forced people off the farms and into factories
Yeah, it sucks now, but it sucked then too.
It's obvious that someone eventually had to do it. She may not be the best candidate to make the case, but she is a representative of a growing crowd of a clear trend.
At previous generations a university degree pretty much guaranteed a decent job. Universities at that time didn't seem like just any other money making businesses. There is a huge growth of the "higher education industry". They market themselves as gatekeepers of decent future for individuals, the fees are skyrocketing, the "BA production line" is at full speed world-wide. Yet, the number of well-paying jobs at large are declining, due to technological advance, outsourcing, etc. There is an obvious growing gap and nobody is addressing the issue at large: What are the long term consequences for society, that there is a growing population of young people with BA's which don't seam to worth much, except the high debt of student loans. Where do we go - as a society - from here?
She may be just the first one to draw this to attention with suing, but she is not the only one, who feels that something is not quite right: you paid a lot for something you expect more in return. You would not accept the idea of buying a car for $30.000 which may or may not work, depending on unpredictable conditions, beyond your power. You were a consumer of education, you want to get something that pretty much guaranteed to get you on the road. Once you start paying back your student loan from a low wage job your frustration will just grow. Most importantly, this is not the case of this particular individual, this is a case for a growing number of population, world-wide.
Maybe she is a pioneer to sue and all the others who accept that "welcome to harsh reality" are who don't see the "big picture" and can't or not willing to roll a dice and fight.
There was a time when it was possible to work your way through college as a waiter or a hospital orderly. That was before the government started shovelling money into our universities.
That was also back when companies cared about their appearance and hired people who worked hard instead of people who worked cheap.
"It's not who you know, it's who you blow". Take note ladies of Slashd...oh, wait...
The way universities advertise, they make it sound like getting a degree (specifically from them usually) is _the_ ticket to getting your dream job. This admittedly not too bright girl bought into that, and when cold hard reality came in and level-set her, here's where we land.
I'd like to see some positive impact to the "university business" based on this.
My favorite part is "She suggested that Monroe's Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades. "They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement," she said."... This is the inevitable result of the 'Everyone Gets A Trophy Just For Playing' Generation. \ Hey, she showed up. She did 'all right'. She wants her pay-off now. What did we, as a nation, expect? We tell our children that everyone should be treated the same, that winning isn't as important as playing, and pat them on the back and reward them for attendance. Now she is an adult and wants a reward for attendance and thinks its unfair the students who worked harder to be the best are getting preferential treatment. This is not her issue. It is our issue. My fear is that there will be many more Ms. Thompsons graduating.
Her lawyer is supposed to tell her that her case is frivolous, because there's no reasonable argument that the liability is the school's, not hers. But instead her lawyer is suing. They're supposed to protect the court, and thereby the public which funds and depends on the court, from frivolous lawsuits.
Courts should be throwing out a lot more of these cases as frivolous. Opposing lawyers should be arguing that the other lawyer's case is frivolous. When a lawyer brings a case ruled frivolous, they should pay a fine equal to the average judgment award in cases of that type. A second frivolous ruling should suspend the lawyer for six months, and require they pass the bar exam again in that state to continue practicing. A third frivolous ruling should strip them permanently of their license in that state, disbarment. And any frivolous ruling in any state should cause them to go through hearings in every state in which they're licensed to determine whether that strike should count in that state too, towards eventual disbarment there. Not to mention what their insurance policy should charge once they've demonstrated their high risk.
Being a lawyer is a privilege that is equal to easy profits (there's never a shortage of drunk driving cases for money). Abusing the privilege that the public subsidizes at every step, in the delivery of justice essential to a functional society, should see that privilege stripped as soon as it can justly be stripped. Let these frivolous lawyers get jobs in the circus, where clowns are to be laughed at instead of respected.
--
make install -not war
So, the economy sucks, jobs for people with experience are hard to find, and here we have someone fresh out of school trying to act like things are going well in the world? I also find is laughable that the attendance record for college classes would even be recorded by anyone but the instructor. Seriously, it is college, not high school. If you show up for classes or not isn't the issue, it is if you do the course work and learn the material. Even then, the college as a whole won't care about if students are showing up for class.
In this particular case though, you also have the basic concept that people pay for a college education. It can be hoped that a good job/career will come of it, but there are many people who go to college without any clear idea what they want to do in life, and even after they graduate they still have no idea. That does not mean that the school did not do what you paid them to do. Three months of looking for a job in this job market is also not all that long. People have lost their jobs, where they had been working for YEARS, and someone without any job experience is complaining about having a problem finding a job? These days, a LOT of people would be happy with ANY job at all, because things are really bad.
So, I agree with those who say that this IDIOT has basically made sure no one would ever want to hire her.
Vacation times in Europe are indeed longer than in the US. However, at least if you're talking about manager positions and above, that free time stands in no correlation to the salaries. While a European manager might earn 5x more than a regular worker, in the US 100x and more is not uncommon.
So, unless you have a family you want to spend time with, the situation in the states is a lot better. They need to only work for a 20th of the time to earn the same amount of money... so either they can retire that much earlier, or are that much richer, or a combination of both.
Whatever her GPA is, she has worked hard for four years
Negative.
She's got a 2.7 GPA. That isn't outstanding, that's average. That isn't hard work, that's showing up to class and doing what you're told. I'd accept that she'd worked hard if she walked out of there with a 3.0+ GPA. A 2.7? Nope.
spent $70k on it
So?
If I spent $100k on a college education am I now more deserving of a job than she is? What if I go to a community college and only spend $20k? Am I less deserving?
very willing and able to work
Maybe.
I don't know her, you don't know her. We don't know how badly she wants a job. Maybe she feels this lawsuit is a better way to get some money than flipping burgers is. And able to work? I guess we'd have to sit her down in some kind of workplace environment to evaluate that, wouldn't we? Just because you've got a degree doesn't mean you're actually capable of doing the work.
I don't know how many bachelor degree holders there is
There are lots of folks with a Bacheolor's in something. It really doesn't mean much. Four years isn't really enough time to teach you a whole lot of specialization... And a four-year degree isn't going to focus on a specific set of skills either. There'll be lots of general education, lots of theory...
I always tell people that a Bachelor's degree proves one thing - a capacity to learn. Nothing more.
she likely has more education than 70% of the population
Education is borderline meaningless once you enter the job market. Nobody cares what book you read or how you scored on your exams - they want to know if you can do the job. Someone with 2 years experience doing the job (but no degree) has a better track record than someone with a 4.0 GPA coming right out of college. That's why internships are critically important. That's why you want to tinker in your free time and build up a portfolio that you can show potential employers. That's why folks take crap jobs right out of college to build up their resume.
And she can't get a job
Sure she can. Just not the job she wants.
I guarantee you there are jobs that she's qualified to do, but doesn't want - like WalMart, or McDonald's. I guarantee you there are jobs available that she's not qualified to do - like civic engineering or carpentry or something. The trick isn't finding a job, the trick is finding a job that you want.
I worked at Electronics Boutique for a year after I graduated with my BS in Computer Science... Then I worked as an Adjuct Professor at a local community college for another year... Then I finally found a job that actually involved doing what I went to school for - two years after graduation.
It just is not fair
Welcome to the real world. No, it isn't fair. Nothing is. Fairness is an artificial construct. In the real world nobody is going to give you a job just to be fair. You've got to earn your keep, just like everyone else out there.
Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over
I disagree.
The vast majority of "kids" I deal with these days have a crippling sense of entitlement. Interviewing people is downright painful. The attitude seems to be "I've show up to claim my job" instead of "let me prove to you that I'll be a good investment"
The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then
Really?
Despite the obvious problems with your overgeneralization... I do, mostly, agree. There was a time when this nation was built on the backs of skilled laborers. If you were willing to sweat, you were able to get a job. And there weren't usually enough bodies
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
Every generation has had trouble finding good jobs. There are always notable exceptions when a particular field is hot, and of course the economy goes up and down. And I'll grant you that it's not your fault how the economy is doing 22 years after you were born. But it's too bad you can't tell my grandparents that they had it easy in the Great Depression. You'd get off their lawns in hurry, and with nothing to console you but your shelf of participation trophies.
Like a lot of people, I graduated into a bad economy. Fortunately my GPA was a little better than a 2.7, so grad school was an option.
Yes, college is considerably more expensive these days, even after inflation. There used to be much more direct and indirect federal support. I sure hope your generation registers to vote and then remembers to vote for its own best interests. Your parents' generation got way too hung up on whatever "values" were being preached at the time, and got skinned alive in the bargain. Probably won't help you, but maybe you can change something for your kids.
I am not a crackpot.
Which 'older' generation are we talking about here? A 27 yr old (and BTW that seems 'mature age' for someone just completing a 3-4 yr degree) is Gen Y.
We Gen Xers could tell these young whippersnappers a thing or two. Being deemed slackers and 'dole bludgers' during the early 90s recession that our parents and grand-parents generations caused through the '87 crash. Finding your degree you have a massive student loan for isn't worth anything isn't a new phenomenon. Being passed over for 'graduate programs' and all the while being told with a tertiary education you're overqualified for unskilled work isn't new either. Then when you go back and get yet another qualification, miss the dot-com boom $$$$ because you're on a 'graduate' salary, and then find there's a tech-wreck soon after hardly inspires hope.
It took me about a decade to pay back that student loan, for a degree in a field which I don't even work in. Today's generation have it hard? :(
Actually, politicians tend to say "EVERYONE deserves all the schooling they can get, even if we have to bleed every working man and woman dry to subsidize it."
You haven't been paying much attention to politicians lately, and you've got the "before/after" backwards on that government shoveling of money. The trend over the last decade has been very much along the lines of reducing the money that goes to education, and especially to universities - that is the reason the cost to the individual students is going up.
Paula, is that you?
What?
She suggested that Monroe's Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades. "They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement," she said. Wow, no shit? Maybe it should have occurred to her at some point during her 4+ years at college that she'd get more out of it if she earned better grades.
"At Monroe, students take a Liberal Arts core and combine it with their program of choice to ensure a well rounded, comprehensive education. Programs include Accounting, Baking and Pastry, Business Management, Criminal Justice, Culinary Arts, General Business, Health Services Administration, Hospitality Management, Information Technology, Medical Administration, Medical Assisting, Nursing, and Public Health."
This mishmash of subjects doesn't inspire confidence in Monroe's academic focus, and one wonders about the academic rigour of its courses. It doesn't appear to be a traditional degree mill, but there's a disturbing vagueness behind the gushing self-adulatory rhetoric that sounds a warning note.
A mediocre degree from such an institution can't be expected to give its graduates any hope of beating stiff competition from traditional degrees awarded by more substantial institutions.
With an attitude like that, no wonder nobody wants to hire her.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If universities issue degrees for people that are not qualified enough, their degrees have no value, and they aren't much less of a fraud than if I start printing degrees in an ink jet printer. They don't fail people because they prefer to milk their money. The employers are also to blame, because they are lazy, and it's easy to filter people based on them having a degree or not. So people end getting a degree because they are required to, even if the quality of these universities suck.
I know everyone will be tempted to use this as some excuse to blast "Generation Y" as some over-entitled bunch of brats. But might I caution you, before you do so, to remember that this is ONE PERSON (likely a nutball) and ONE LAWSUIT (which clearly has no merit and will be thrown out). Judging the actions of an entire generation by one single person is even worse than assuming every /. poster is a smelly virgin who plays WoW all night and wears a pen protector and goofy glasses.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
She has a bad GPA, 2.7 is not respectable enough. A lot of employers have their cut off at 3.0. She should have tired a little harder in school and then she would have not had this problem.
Ahhhh...millenials and their sense of entitlement. This is what you get when you have a whole generation raised by hellicopter parents. Sad.
I imagine her expectations were unrealistic, but why is everyone so quick to condemn this girl? Why is it unreasonable to live in the wealthiest country in the world and expect to be able to find gainful employment? When you finish paying out tens of thousands of dollars for a college education, don't you expect to find better work than the local Walmart? If not, then why would you risk carrying so much debt?
Does it help you to sleep better at night telling yourself that ALL the unemployed or underemployed people in this country richly deserve it?
Kind of ironic coming from the crowd that has been working feverishly to develop machines that can replace human labor in a wide variety of jobs.
Actually, politicians tend to say "EVERYONE deserves all the schooling they can get, even if we have to bleed every working man and woman dry to subsidize it."
In a way that's actually part of the problem here in Colorado. K-12 education keeps getting more funding without figuring out where that money is going to come from. So when it comes time for a mandatory increase, it comes straight out of university funding. It is good that they are attempting to improve the condition of K-12 schools, but it is causing a bunch of increases in university tuition.
Also maybe this lady should consider taking an econ course to find out how the job market actually works.
The RIAA is gonna snap her right up, she's a perfect fit!
It is not the place of the teacher to figure out what the future of a student should be, and I have been in this case scenario myself, having gone to a degree mill college, and gotten my degree....I happened to fall on 1 teacher that was going to affect my turn out, I quickly asked to be transferred out of his class, not only alienating myself from the rest of the students (that are like packs) but also making a name for myself as a whiner, but I knew his style teaching would be a confrontational point for me, and I just could not bear to see my hard work be so quickly erased by attitude from one teacher biased or not.
Sometimes it is also the student's role to interact with their education from a different point of view then just bystander, and not accept anything because that is what you think things are, but question and ask, why not be able to do differently, luckily for me it worked out in the end.
I would sue if this case was mine, purely that you are allowed no discrimination when going for a job interview, and you are not allowed to even remotely discuss the student's grades when someone asks you for a reference, you either give one, or you do not.
All you can say when a reference is asked, is if you know that person/student, and if they were able to complete the course. This is the law (here anyways)....she over stepped her boundaries...she should be punished.
As for the student, she did not help herself really, I was in my situation, smart enough to know that a reference is everything to gaining a job, and was able to acquire one, with great comments from one of my favorite teachers, hence the knowing I would get
a good review.
I am certain that the degree mills, need everyone to get a job, to help bring their average up...so to speak, as for this student...
she could easily help herself by getting some work on the side, from family or friends needing a website developed, and then using THEM as reference instead, website development being 1 week for a small one...if you know what you are doing.
If you don't you can easily buy a template or 2 for web development and use them, makes life easier.
And a 2.7GPA is an embarrassment. Nothing short than a 3.0 is/should be acceptable as a measure of hard scholastic work. I had a GPA close to 4.0 when I was an undergrad, and that went dipping down to 3.3 at the end of my grad school years. This in Computer Science. I'm embarrassed to say that.
And this tard of a woman thinks it's ok to advertise she has a 2.7GPA from a freaking community college? On Business Administration of Information Technology (whatever the hell that is)?
If she were that intelligent, she would apply to Home Depot (where I worked back in 92-94), and work on the cashier register, then work her way up to the returns/customer service desk, or become a cashier lead, or find her way to work in the store's data processing/reporting office. Having a degree in admin (and on IT), assuming that degree mean some valuable crap, coupled with hard work and lead skills, she would quickly climb the management ladder into department/aile supervisor. That's a type of skill she can build a resume with, which she can later transfer to another job should she wished it.
But that kind of positive, constructive mentality can only come from an intelligent, hard-working and diligent person, not a POS woman who thinks she deserves a job (and has a right to sue her college) because her miserable and embarrasing 2.7GPA didn't materialize into a power-broker position among the managerial echelons.
--She mentions McDonalds sneeringly, but the fact is that they have a general corporate policy of promoting most of their talent internally. If she is as capable as she thinks she is and went to work there with the intention of proving herself (and the attitude to match), she could have a perfectly reasonable career. The same is true of any number of other employers that she probably considers below her social status. Of course, she won't.--
Silly, of her ain't it?
--The other unfortunate side is that some employers with vacancies that could be filled by a bright high-school graduate seem to feel the need to advertise for a graduate just to "keep up with the Jonses", though I've noticed a slight reversal of this trend recently.--
This brings up another issue. If an employer sees 5 years experience here and yonder for 15 years, that person is considered loyal and experienced. If you have 25 years at the same place, then you are seen as a looser by prospective employers. That's some of what is going to be seen as smaller companies go out of business that have been in business for years. If you really are someone that helps hire people, don't forget people in their 40's or 50's that have a lot of experience at a small place. Hint hint. Anyhow, you don't work somewhere doing something somewhere 25 years without doing something right.
Now, that I have ranted, I would say in this case the parents are behind it. Kids today are really spoiled lazy. Her parents are probably paying the lawyer fee, because I can't see any lawyer taking something like this pro bono unless there is more to it.
for the Munroe Office of Career Advancement.
This is why we need to have penalties for filing nuisance law suits. Yes, another person in this world that wants to blame their problems on anyone else.
It's not necessarily true that colleges don't help you find employment after graduating. I went to a small Catholic school that placed a lot of emphasis on career placement and alumni networking and everyone in my class (2004) landed a decent job, even with tough majors like philosophy and sociology. I paid a premium for that kind of access but it has been well worth it.
Apparently, the college that the article is about IS a trade school. That she paid 70k over the lifetime of her tuition to attend.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Never? Must be nice to be young...
In the early 80's, it was quite difficult to get even a minimum-wage job. I was there.
Really? I haven't been able to get any summer job whatsoever. Anywhere. Including fast food.
Going to a college used to be about being educated.
There should be many options open for straight job training if that's what you want. You should be able to go to college to learn and to "learn to learn."
It's a shame that University does equal job training in so many people's mind and the doors on so many options have slammed shut.
I got a degree in communications, and then went to work at a video game testing place, all they required was a degree (in anything) from there i went and applied the skills i learned (sql etc) and got myself a real QA job, then going off to switch departments to working with clients for installations and setting up their networks for our software. So I took my degree in speech, my real world education in computers, put the two together and found myself in a damn good job.
I think these people just need a little creativity. All a college degree does is show you know how to get shit done, and handle yourself at least decently.
Complaining won't get you paid. Paying your dues will get you paid.
I meant a real trade. Electrician, plumber, welder, carpentry, culinary, etc. Colleges and crap IT schools like this one are churning out garbage graduates like this one left and right, but there is a true lack of skilled trades and will be for many years to come.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
... that she failed to notice that the country is in the midst of a (oh what's that word again... oh yeah) recession. Nobody's having an easy time finding a job. Methinks that someone right out of school, likely with little to no work history of any kind let alone in IT, would be in about as in demand as, say, someone looking to manage large scale COBOL projects.
Filing a lawsuit after only three months of a job search doesn't seem like a great marketing tool either.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
for not being intelligent enough to find job.
Japanese companies sound more than generous! Ask for an inch, and they give you 100 yards!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Yet another idiot, moron, democrat! You know, those that believe in entitlement!
And by initiating this frivolous lawsuit, she is insuring that no employer will hire her worthless 'C' average ass!
Impeach all democrats!
Impeach claire mccaskill, impeach b.o., waxman, reed, pilosi, etc. they are all bad for the country.
REpeal the stimulus (porkulus) bill, after all b.o. and his henchmen say the economy has recovered.
Stop printing money, stop spending money the country does not have.
No government run health care.
No taxpayer funded health care.
Do Not Approve of sotomayer. Deport the illegal aliens. Punish the sanctuary cities.
Remove all csars. They have too much power and no oversight.
Stop the socialist, marxist, communist directions the current government is taking us toward!
A bigger reason is likely the ease of access to student debt. All areas of the economy where there's easy access to debt will find high inflation. Housing is a great example -- people couldn't even afford to pay back their million dollar mortgages, but house prices kept going up because the debt flowed so freely. Education is another great example. No kid on earth can actually afford to go to school, but let them take on enough debt to pay for their first house and suddenly it's perfectly reasonable to have prices as high as they are. It distorts the usual supply/demand curve.
Just watch and see what would happen to tuition costs if kids couldn't get out of high school and take out six figures of debt.
It's been a long time.
The funny thing is that I bet the alumni association still calls her every year seeking a donation.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
You lost me at artificial construct, the matrix took control.
They want the best workers but want to be "competitive" with salaries.
Whilst they want the best CEO and pay out the nose for it.
They want "at will" employment yet eternal loyalty from the employees.
They want to fire you and not pay you but don't want you working for anyone else.
Let's face it, in the real world experience and achievement will get you hired way faster than any degree (outside of regulated/licensed professions). I personally know people with BS degrees in IT who can't even figure out setting up a simple Windows domain, can explain subnetting, or program even a very simple Access database.
Degrees and certs only really count if you can back them up with actually having done something. They don't impress me at all by themselves.
Counselor: Well I now have the results here of the interviews and the aptitude tests that you took last week, and from them we've built up a pretty clear picture of the sort of person that you are. And 1 think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the ideal job for you is chartered accountancy.
Mr. Anchovy: But I am a chartered accountant.
Counselor: Jolly good. Well back to the office with you then.
University, despite it's commercial perversion in the years since 1980, is not a trade school.
Although a key to gainful, professional employment may be a classic liberal education, it does not therefore stand that the objective of this education is commercial marketability of graduates. Nor is the measure of education's success the commercial placement of these graduates.
The "liberal" in the term "Liberal Education" refers to it's breadth and fullness of development. This is as opposed to the vocational training of a specific skill-set, solely focused towards career placement.
I have not reviewed this plaintiff's transcript, but I would not be suprised to discover that she showed only cursory interest in those aspects of her education, which did not seem destined to provide professional remuneration. She may well have "chuffed this off", as uninteresting and irrelevant. I have witnessed this myself - especially in younger, contemporary University students:
"Why do I have to learn about Charlemagne!? Who cares!"
Well, I needn't bother to refute the type of vapid ignorance and pathetic intellectual narcissism represented by that incurious statement. Persons of such a view do not belong in Graduate education. They are unlikely to be happy with the institution, nor successful in academic outcome.
Me? I was a monster at my A-Level, then declined the universities for the immediate lure of slacking-off in cafes and night clubs. With a lifelong academic for one parent, I'd understood my temperament would not result in satisfaction on either the part of the school or myself.
Counselor: Er, well, Mr. Anchovy ... I'm afraid what you've got hold of there is an anteater.
Mr. Anchovy: A what?
Counselor: An anteater. Not a lion. You see a lion is a huge savage beast, about five feet high, ten feet long, weighing about four hundred pounds, running forty miles per hour, with masses of sharp pointed teeth and nasty long razor-sharp claws that can rip your belly open before you can say 'Eric Robinson', and they look like this. http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02_01/LionBAR0602_468x393.jpg
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Ahahahahahaha!
Wow, are you serious?
In New York, college fail you!
They pay... and are hiring... heck she could even continue her degree program with the GI bill that was reintroduced this week.
If she wins then she proves that her education is relatively worthless. It proves that the education of all her fellow alumni is relatively worthless. If she cannot get into another school based on her education from this school... it proves she is not capable of gaining a valuable education. This would further devalue her as an employee. I'm very glad this person did not go to my university.
... and I see no way she can appear competent other than using her threat of action to secure a large settlement out of court. That would imply cunning and a willingness to take extreme risk.
If she loses then her education is worth something and she is in fact capable of gaining a valuable education. Her failed claim would show her competent. Her successful claim would imply her to be only half as competent as an incompetent... making her extremely incompetent. Her formulation of this tactic implies extreme incompetence
So her only winning scenario is to lose in a certain spectacular way.
IMHO, there is merit to this. I have two degrees in engineering yet I had a helluva time finding a job. Why? Quite simply, the curriculum was about two years out of date. This was 1990 and what they were teaching lent itself well to working for a defense contractor. Problem was that defense spending had been cut severely and companies weren't hiring much let alone people with no full-time work history. They spent years teaching us to program in Pascal and Ada when the companies that were hiring wanted people with C and C++ experience. The recruitment experience at the school was a joke. You didn't have the internet to help you find prospective employers or post your resumé. So ultimately I had to lower my standards and move from Boston to St. Petersburg, Florida (IMHO, the WORST possible place for a single guy in his early 20s to be). And truth be told, they hired me to do Macintosh programming which I had never done before so clearly they were desperate. IMHO, if you are getting a technical education, it is the school's responsibility to teach current marketable skills.
Huh??? Most knowledgeable IT directors that I've worked with have sneered at certifications
He can sneer all he wants - but if there is a slot he needs to fill - today - the cert gives you an edge.
In this economy, there will be many - likely far too many - applicants who have the degree he wants to see and the experience and the cert.
He can't interview them all. He may have the time to look at the best two out of three.
PHB. Minesweeper and Consultant and Solitaire Expert
"Doesn't work or play well with others." Leave your Dilbert comics and attitude at home.
Your buddy's degree in marketing implies at least some basic social skills and instincts.
You buddy is ready for the management track if he wants it. That's what makes him worth $20K more than you.
The vast majority of "kids" I deal with these days have a crippling sense of entitlement. Interviewing people is downright painful. The attitude seems to be "I've show up to claim my job" instead of "let me prove to you that I'll be a good investment"
That may not actually be a sense of entitlement. In college, when nearing graduation, we were given interview advice. The important parts to remember were "be confident" and "they're not just interviewing you, you're also interviewing them". I can easily see people overdoing it and looking like they have a crippling sense of entitlement.
(From About Monroe College
"At Monroe, students take a Liberal Arts core and combine it with their program of choice to ensure a well rounded, comprehensive education."
Well there's your problem...
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Kick this bitch to the curb, she doesn't deserve to be a part of the workforce.
The Monroe College website has TONS of resources that everyday, normal jobseekers use and, on top of that, use successfully. They're the kinds of resources (monster.com, etc) that require the job seeker to push themselves, using their own momentum. In the real world, jobs don't come to you, you need to hunt them down. People like Trina Thompson are trying to destroy that, to destroy the American Way, and to infect our already messed up system with more laziness.
No, this must not happen, it goes against what Barak Obama and, dare I say, John McCain would stand for.
And if you told that to the kids today . . .
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
She's got a 2.7 GPA. That isn't outstanding, that's average. That isn't hard work, that's showing up to class and doing what you're told. I'd accept that she'd worked hard if she walked out of there with a 3.0+ GPA. A 2.7? Nope.
Because by definition about half the students at any given college score below average does that mean they are unworthy for a job? This whole below average thing is like musical chairs. The bottom half will always be there. To dismiss them is to pretend that somehow everyone could be above average if they worked hard enough.
I support the student's claim. College tuition has gone up way ahead of inflation+ average earnings. Yet the product that is produced is less likely to get someone a job. And lets not forget most colleges are not for profits. So aren't they in the business of doing something charitable (other than lining their own chancellors pockets)? Well it's time these institutions were held accountable.
Welcome to the real world. No, it isn't fair. Nothing is. Fairness is an artificial construct. In the real world nobody is going to give you a job just to be fair. You've got to earn your keep, just like everyone else out there.
Funny that cause we talk about "fair" in taxes and use that to stop politicians raising them on the middle class. And it's funny cause "fair" is used to justify compensation in in civil and criminal damages. And let's not forget that its because of "fairness" that we have such strict IP laws - especially to rich 60s pop stars. And what about "fair" to companies objecting to unions? But then again we seem to only care about "fairness" for those of high social economic status. The jobless, the poor, the uninsured - for them fair doesn't apply.
I'll back ya up. No job I worked in my twenties had paid vacation during the first year, and half those years were spent working as a chemical engineer.
When I worked at an auto manufacturer, I had zero days vacation the first year and then started earning five days per year beginning on my first anniversary. Gee, I wonder why I was so eager to leave for graduate school eighteen months later. The only bright spots were paid overtime and two-weeks unpaid shutdown at Christmas.
At other entry level jobs the best arrangement I got was the ability to sometimes schedule unpaid days off. Paid vacation? Never.
When I graduated, I had a head-hunter call me and offer me a job making as much money as I made before I went to college. I laughed at her and told her, I could have done that job before I spent four years getting my degree and $30k in student loans. I would work at McDonalds before I took a job in IT for such a pittance.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I know Paul Graham's is taken very seriously, but they are words from someone with *many* resources. So many resources that he could afford to wait for the perfect job. What you and the other "Be happy first and work will fit in" seem to have that steers so many people wrong is the luxury of being able to afford waiting for a job that fits into your happiness mantra.
1. There aren't very many of these around. Your anecdote nicely fills that in. Should your friend quit chasing the dream? Nope. But it looks like the method used isn't getting him what he desires. This is the rule, not the exception. So, I hope your friend is happy along the way. If he isn't then doesn't that kind of prove the point that happiness first doesn't work?
2. 'Happiness first' model just doesn't work. Do you think the majority of agriculture workers 'dream' of working in blazing hot summers harvesting produce for next to nothing? How about cleaning crews? Do you think they are 'happy' after a shift cleaning up other people's messes? The uncomfortable truth is there are way more of these honorable but not glorious jobs than the socially respected professions.
Now, does that mean this young woman should sue? Dunno. I'm sure the burden of failure is mostly her fault though. There is a *huge* gap between what the colleges have been promising and the socio-economic reality. Hopefully this starts a national conversation about the over-promising in college marketing.
I would argue that regardless of what you do, it should not make you sick & miserable. But that's different than Paul's thesis.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
She strikes me as the lazy type to stand there with her hand out to the world asking "Where's mine?" Welcome to reality. If you're stressed looking for a job, wait til you have one. Stop wasting my tax-payer dollars.
...and it struck me as having the air of a place like DeVry. Basically a glorified trade school.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Two words: class action.
A college degree doesn't guarantee you a good job after graduation. I've come across far too many people that assume just because they went to college, employers would be lining up for the opportunity to employ them. This is nothing short of a pipe dream. People that interview for jobs with this attitude are less likely to get hired compared to the person that shows up, knows their shit, and doesn't radiate this sense of entitlement..even if said person is lacking a degree or any other credentials.
From what I've seen having a degree only puts a higher price tag on your skills, but it doesn't make you any more employable compared to others without one. From an employers point of view, relevant work experience is far more valuable than what pieces of paper show.
Seriously, I wouldn't even start with degree schools, start with high school. High school has become a fast track to McDonald's. What is the point of making kids memorize the names of the tectonic plates, Lincoln's birthday, or finding the roots of a 2nd degree polynomial by hand. It sure as hell doesn't prepare you for a job, since you learn neither a practical knowledge or a trade. So, the argument everyone gives for high school is that it prepares you for college and/or helps you figure out what you want to be. Really? How does Romeo & Juliet prepare you for college? Reading & comprehension skills? As if there is a shortage of useful knowledge that kids can be reading, that they have to resort to reading a teenage suicide story. Or help you figure out what you want to be? After reading Romeo & Juliet what do you know about being a writer? Do you know what kind of education you need to be a writer? How much they get paid? No.
Long time reader, first time I've actually felt the need to post.
I went to a middle-of-the-road college. At the time, going in (1998), I was told that choosing IT was a GREAT move and I'd immediately make AT LEAST $60-80k right out of school.
During college, I watched the tech bubble burst, watched 9/11 happen, and noticed pretty quickly that I wasn't actually learning anything other than theory. Did I blindly charge ahead thinking "well, this theory will really pay off eventually?" No, I got a job in a computer lab (worked my way up to running the day-to-day operations there), started a chapter of the ACM with some friends to learn more out of class (and teach others at the same time), and got a pretty good internship, to try to set myself apart from the pack a bit.
The result? I graduated in '03 (yea, yea, it took me 5 years) with a worse GPA than Ms. Entitlement into a pretty bad economy. I tried to use my school's job-finding services, saw they were a joke, and instead worked my ass off to find a job on my own. My friends all did the same in one way or another.
The morale of all this? That was 6 years ago. Same basic generation, my mindset (and most people I know had the same one) was that we were obviously lied to many times so fuck what everyone else was telling us, we just had to go out there and hustle ourselves into jobs and do it on our own.
(and yes, when I was a kid, I do remember everyone getting trophies after the soccer season and in little league, so don't blame that, either)
So don't blame a whole generation, it's just a bunch of lazy-ass kids who weren't smart enough to see the signs and handle life like they should.
-Jed
PS: In case you're wondering, no, I didn't get a good job right out of school. I couldn't find ANY job right out of school. So after a few months of looking, I took a crappy data entry temp job, worked there till I found perm data entry job which had some small IT bits to it, then moved to a job where I was a recruiter, and worked my way up in that company to in-house IT, then up to head of IT there, now sys admin for a branch of a larger office. So nothing handed to me, I worked my way up like I should and am still working on climbing the ladder.
First of all, all students have to inform themselves before they pay for their education. Trina Thompson from the Bronx should have asked herself before studying: "Is this the best school I can afford". America's private universities are high standard, but also hardly affordable for most people. This is very different in some other countries, where public universities are internationally known for their almost as high standard and also being much more affordable: Germany, The Netherlands, and a lot of other European Countries. If she had done some research in beforehand where to study, she would find herself more likely in a different situation. But then again she probably is better off sueing her parents because nature and nurture probably made her so stupid
Secondly, there is no guarantee. It's not the spoon that bends, it's the mind. It's what students make of their education and the rest of their lifes, or to be more precisely what they make of their selves. If students are only interested in stuff from the curriculum, they will create their own guarantee they will not find work and end up working for MacDonalds. Ivy universities are no guarantee for work, however such universities makes sure that they don't have stupid students who only follow the curriculum. Graduates who don't mind their own attitude and passion are too stupid to be selected in job interviews. And even if someone is that stupid, even they should be just smart enough to know that. I wonder if she even knows what the American Dream actually means. I do and I am not even American.
Finally, I think she sues for a too tiny sum. $72,000 is hardly enough to live on for the rest of her life, since now she got the publicity. She will be lucky to have anyone (even MacDonalds) to hire her. I pitty her, and for most the New York's Monroe College and every student that graduated there because of all the bad publicity.
And win big, and get some of these universities to either fix themselves or close down. Sorry, but for the vast majority of professions and for the vast majority of people, a college education is a complete and utter waste of time. They have make work. They have filler courses.
And none of it matters.
Our education system in the US as a whole needs to be gutted and replaced. But will it? Probably not without the US being conquered by another power.
You forget why any business is in business. Businesses are not charities. Their only reason of existence is to make money for the share holders or the owners.
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Repeating lies doesn't make them true. My friends brother is a manager at McDonald's. They had 500+ applications last time they had a vacancy. Which is for a job with a wage a single person barely can live on. The myth of the easy to get jobs is just that, a myth.
Football Odds
This is one of the few times I've wanted to mod past +5. That tidbit made my day.
Now excuse me while I go tell my broker to short stocks in the "Ski Channel".
Care to explain what's unreasonable? Working hard to get a degree *should* let you get a decent job at the end. A university degree damn well ought to qualify you for something better than McDonald's. Since when was expecting a reasonable reward for effort a bad thing?
If an unwillingness to be shat on by employers counts as entitlement, than call me entitled.
Sadly unavailable, so until that's implemented you'll have to just stick with using the reply feature to make a better opposing argument.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
This article really amazes me and shames me as a human being at the same time. Yeah, this is crazy. Yeah, someone need to tell this girl she doesn't deserve it. Yeah, she has probably made herself completely unemployable now. However, I think she should aslo sue the Federal Government and maybe AIG. I mean, if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be in a recession therefore there would be a lot more job opportunities for her to fail miserably at. I really think she is missing the big picture here. Whose fault is it really that she can't find a job? It is hers for not putting any effort into it whatsoever? Is it the schools for not giving her as much attention as the students who applied themselves? Or is it the Governments fault for allowing the nation to plunge into a recession and allowing the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs, that she still isn't qualified for. I'm just saying, if your going to sue someone and destroy whatever shred of respect people had for you before, don't you think you should go for it all the way!!
Hmmm, I'm forgetting the 2.7 GPA. Wow, she takes mediocrity to a new level. .
After all, if she does this, you can pretty much guarantee she'll sue her employer the moment she gets passed over for a promotion ...
Although SCO might hit chapter 7 any day now, it looks like she might fit in there perfectly. And if SCO goes casters-up, maybe the RIAA is hiring.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Way to spend an hour replying to a troll, great job!
One could very well make a point that we are as you educated us to be. Generations don't just change attitudes radically from the previous generations without any change in upbringing. Maybe at some point our hugely empowered American middle class decided that their children could be princesses and a rock stars without instilling a core work ethic. So they told them that: "You can be anything you want" and racked up huge debts sending children to college, buying SUVs and million dollar homes. They set the example that you don't need to actually earn what you consume. We, as dutiful children, learned what you taught us. I don't mean me or you specifically, as I'm happily and successfully employed right out of college, and you likely aren't the cause personally.
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
Time to do what any bright young woman with a college degree would do to earn money... start stripping.
If I spent $100k on a college education am I now more deserving of a job than she is? What if I go to a community college and only spend $20k? Am I less deserving?
If you did that on the hope of landing a job, which you didn't, you would also understand that something is wrong. Do you realize how insane and how dangerous it is for society that education has gone from being a safe investment to financially one of the most stupid decisions a person can make?
Every generation says that. Kids look at their parents enjoying their mid/late years and think they had it easy. Parents look at their kids and think they're ruining the world. Everyone's convinced that the world is in a downward spiral. At the risk of sounding prematurely old (Get off my lawn!), I'd suggest that most of the problems these days stem from kids feeling entitled and being unwilling to actually work for anything. But, I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about my generation too...
You know, these days we have statistics which allows us to read up on the facts instead of listening to old farts whining. Real wages and disposable income has decreased markedly since the 1970s, unemployment and poverty has increased (even discounting the current business cycle). Number of hours worked has increased (men work the same as then, women significantly more). The trend is clear even if the government repeatedly has tried to obfuscate the statistics by changing how the numbers are counted. Oh and it's not only in the US, the situation is the same in the whole Western World even if it has been worsening at a faster pace in the US than anywhere else.
The womans education record would have been considered stellar 30 years ago but today is only average. Fact is that the current younger generation is putting in much more work today than what the previous generations did and is getting much less in return.
Football Odds
Whatever her GPA is, she has worked hard for four years, spent $70k on it and is very willing and able to work
As I understand, management is a resource allocation job where you just look at what needs to be tasked out, pick people to do it, and relax while things flow through. This is what she's looking for.
Once you actually get to management you find out you're in a meeting every hour, you have people on your ass asking for a status, you really WANT to stay back from your techs so they can get the work done that you NEED done, but you need to check up on them to find out wtf is going on so you can report it back. It's hellish, and complicated, and boring because you have no real work to do, instead you have a hell of a lot of stress to juggle and time-sensitive requirements to make happen.
I myself moved up from a job where I literally didn't have to do much of anything 99% of the time, and got paid for it. She wants my job, pretty much, but with less work. She can have it, it's boring... wait, no, fuck that, she should be thrown out on her ass for being such a lazy cunt.
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To whom it may concern:
I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever. There is nothing you can teach her. You would indeed be fortunate to get this person to work for you. She could not care less about the number of hours she will have to put in.
She's an unbelievable worker. Her true ability is deceiving. It seems her career is just taking off; a woman like her is hard to find.
Every hour with her is a happy hour. We generally found her loaded with work to do. I feel her real talent is being wasted here.
I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.
I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment. All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend her too highly.
There are obviously not infinite jobs, and the planners of economic policy strive to make sure that a certain percentage of the population is always out of work. The bottom third of jobs also don't pay enough to cover living-expenses (at least with the current exploitative rents), but are rather meant to be a supplement to income from an actual job held by one's parents.
for $6/hour. I need someone to cut my grass. Problem solved, case closed.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Wow, that's the first time I've ever wished for a "-1 Insufferable" moderation. Jolly good work, old boy.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
Mod parent up please
Okay, odds are against this being read: I'm posting as AC, plus there's already a ton of comments.
That said, I know I can't be the only one that sees the problem of matching applicants to employers as wildly inefficient and horrible? It is not serving the employers nor employees well. We need to find better solutions to this problem.
In my view one of the first steps is increasing the fluidity of the labor market by making it easier for workers to change jobs. In the US the biggest step in this direction will be a move away from employer-supplied health insurance. Too often workers can't just change jobs because they are reliant on their employer for their health care.
Another big step will come as public transportation becomes more widespread. The cost of owning and maintaining a private vehicle forces a lot of people to stick to jobs for various reasons.
But above all, we need to acknowledge this is a real problem that negatively impacts our lives and that we can find solutions that are more efficient and will lead to better lives.
The problem lies in that there are only so many IT jobs, and hundreds, if not thousands of people graduating each semester with IT degrees. Everyone thought it was the perfect high paying job and pushed themselves into a field where there are 100+ people applying for every job that comes open. If you don't shine like gold and smell like roses on your first impression, you are just another person not getting the job.
And you responded:
So when he says that the real challenge is getting the job you want, you counter by pointing out the difficulty in getting a job that 500 people want? Thou dost pretend to argue.
The fact that you think that is worth saying is striking; it suggests that you believe there is some truth in that myth (or that there should be). It isn't even a myth; it's just a foolish, baseless assertion.
The world must be a great disappointment to a person such as yourself who holds such high standards.
The trend over the last decade has been very much along the lines of reducing the money that goes to education
As they say over at Wikipedia, [citation needed].
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I never look down my nose at people doing the crap jobs and yes they are way underpaid for the hard work they do.
crap jobs get crap pay because it is easy to replace the laborer.
If there is a job that can be handed over to an honor camp prisoner to do with 15 minutes of training, it is not worth much. (The proverbial street-sweeper, ditch-digger, etc. type jobs.)
That said, even the crappiest jobs pay more than the minimum wage, when and if the crap-slinger gets good at it (e.g. more productive than the sod who can do just the basic job, but not as quickly or as well, if quality matters.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think it was the dictatorship, not the socialism, that caused problems in Russia. As in Cuba, China, etc. the "communist" government was a pack of opportunist thugs seizing power and making most of the population miserable. Socialism was a detail.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
>In short, it is impossible for universities to provide vocational training for professions. There are too many jobs,
>too many ways of doing them, and too many changes in practices in every single profession for any one institution to
>have a ghost of chance of keeping up with all of them.
I disagree with this assertion.
When I was going through my major coursework for my BS in Computer Science through Georgia Southern University, they were still using Pascal to teach programming, even though C was one of the major programming languages at the time (this was around 1998).
We had a professor who desperately /wanted/ to teach Visual C, but was unable to do so because of bureaucratic reasons - something about the professor had to be accredited in the language or some such, I can't remember. So to get around it, he taught a class called "multimedia systems", where we learned how to program applications using video and the like, that just happened to be taught using, as I recall, Visual C++.
Yes, Universities need to be focusing on teaching /concepts/. In Computer Science, the focus is necessarily on /algorithms/ and /algorithm development/, irrespective of technology. But, especially with technology oriented subjects, they also need to stay current with the times! It's great that Computer Science graduates know what a bubble sort is. What employers want to know is CAN YOU IMPLEMENT IT FOR ME IN A MODERN WAY?
In short, employers want people who can do, not just theorize about how to do it.
Universities need more vocational training in their curriculum. If they'd ditch all the useless liberal arts crap it wouldn't even take longer.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
There was a time when it was possible to work your way through college as a waiter or a hospital orderly. That was before the government started shovelling money into our universities.
That was also back before colleges became thinly veiled resorts. Two hundred channels, wireless everywhere, free everything, newly renovated dining facilities -- there's a whole lot of money being spent on the non-academic parts of colleges.
I work at my alma mater, and I can barely recognize it.
--saint
dont be an idiot:
I always tell people that a Bachelor's degree proves one thing - a capacity to learn. Nothing more.
without experience, education and networking in IT is *almost* the only way to get a job in IT. (networking, as in making connections with people who may be in the position to hire you, or recommend you to someone else)
to all the recruiters out there, how many of you would actually consider someone without any background in IT (education or experience)?
Probably more than half of the people here probably should hold their tongues. If you graduated with a degree in IT or CS back in the 90â(TM)s you were all but guaranteed a job. If you had a pulse and could install an OS, you were set. Many of us and YOU probably got into the field during this period and gained easy experience and qualifications.
Because of economic problems new graduates will have a much harder time getting started than many of us. People are not retiring (they canâ(TM)t) and even entry level help desk positions are requiring years of experience.
Business / IT degree imo should not even be offered at a university because it is a trade degree along with half the other CS / IT degrees made available. Back in the day people that were training for trades were required to intern / journeyman with local companies as part of the process. Now days most companies have absolutely no interest in providing internships and the unions are mostly gone.
In a good economy, a degree should be all that you need to get a decent entry level position. The problem we have now is that there are ten students for every five slots.
Now itâ(TM)s time for our children to pay for our decisions. The real problem is that this so called, âoeService based economyâ is a sham. âoeFree tradeâ is nothing but a way to fleece the middle class. Just pay us to teach you things we know you will probably never get a chance to use. We know you have the money because the fed is backing it, and we have every intention of taping that out to fill our pockets. Good luck with life; all that really matters anyway is me, right?
Damn formatting. This is what I get for using Word :P
Although a key to gainful, professional employment may be a classic liberal education, it does not therefore stand that the objective of this education is commercial marketability of graduates. Nor is the measure of education's success the commercial placement of these graduates.
Universities are selling a product. As with any merchant, their success is measured by their ability to provide a service that people want at a price they are willing to pay, while making a profit at it.
The thing is, their customer base has changed radically over the years. Society now requires an increasing number of specialized and intellectually demanding skills. Universities are, whether we like it or not, the place where those skills are bought and sold. This has transformed the university from a playground for the wealthy (who need not care about mundane things like employability) to the gateway to a decent career path for a huge segment of society.
This transformation means employment is now THE critical aspect of this education, not the well-rounded liberal arts education that was the goal of its former customer base. Universities know this well, which is why they market themselves with an eye towards their customers' future career prospects.
That's not to say that people don't care about the liberal arts aspect. We do... but for most university students, it's no longer the driving force behind undergraduate education. Few are willing to put themselves into years' worth of debt simply to become a more well-rounded individual. They do it so they can have a better career and quality of life. The liberal part of the education is simply a bonus.
It's just a case of balancing the breadth of a liberal education with the depth of an employable career discipline. That way we get an education that is both liberal and useful.
"Why do I have to learn about Charlemagne!? Who cares!"
Well, I needn't bother to refute the type of vapid ignorance and pathetic intellectual narcissism represented by that incurious statement.
And I needn't bother to refute the arrogance that assumes everyone should simply hand over their hard-earned money for a class without an explanation of why it's worth the cost. It is incumbent on the seller of a product to make its value clear, not a potential buyer. The annals of history are littered with defunct businesses whose clearly wonderful products could find no buyers.
... The Crying Victim In Outrageous American Lawsuits!
My generation, GenX, got out of college and pounded the pavement for a job, we didn't wait for the college to find a job (we also started looking for a job BEFORE graduation). While in high school, not everyone got a trophy for sports, not everyone got an award. Everyone didn't make the team; hell I was cut from basketball tryouts and it didn't crush my ambitions, I just tried harder the next year. The current generation is handed everything, they're coddled and praises for waking up in the morning. I've noticed it a lot over the years, where the new guy on the job expects praise for showing up to the job and expects everyone to hold his hand. When I got into IT, they pointed at the datacenter said "The file servers run NT4 and half of the print servers run Solaris 8... one of the print servers is down and two file servers need to be bounced, go fix it". You can't do that with these new people, you have to hold their hand for at least a month before they're ready to do something on their own.
We need to stop coddling these kids and teach them the reality of the world. Not everyone makes the team, and you need to get up off your lazy asses and do for self.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
People like to feel like they have options. They dislike feeling like they are stuck with one option, no matter how unpleasant it becomes.
So, employers like feeling like there is a large talent pool available to them. That way they know that when some worker isn't working out, they can just cut him lose and replace him. Having options gives them the ability to optimize their company's productivity and ultimately achieve good success.
When employers feel like they don't have options, they feel like they are being forced to accept expensive, lazy, and talentless workers. Having a team built out of such people will result in the employer's business failing, or a manager's own productivity metrics being shamefully low.
So, it is every bit as natural for employers to prefer a high-unemployment market as it is for workers to prefer a low-unemployment market.
Workers, after all, don't want to feel like they have no choice but to accept a terrible job where they work long hours doing work they hate for a barely-livable (or sub-livable) wage. They would prefer to feel like they can just quit their job if it starts to suck, and move on to a better one.
Each side sees the other one as the evil side. Employees see the employers as the over demanding cruel slave masters who don't care about the employee's livelihoods, and just want to exploit them. Employers see employees as lazy, unskilled, expensive freeloaders who have no devotion to the company (and hence the employer's livelihood) and are just there to make a buck. So, each side feels the need to protect itself from the other side, and prefers economic conditions that are favorable to that protection.
Where I work, both are simultaneously true. The account reps are looking at a very dry employment market, and are desperate to keep their jobs. So, management is leaning on them. They typically work 50 to 60 hour weeks.
However, the tech side is seeing a still relatively open employment market. Each member of our tech team has talent and certifications, and we all know we could find a better job if we need to. So we get an easy 40 hour work week. When management tries to lean on us, we get to choose whether or not we want to give extra. When we chose not to, management just accepts it, because it would be too hard for them to replace us.
Most people on slashdot are laborers, rather than managers, so most of the posts will maintain that it is objectively obvious that low unemployment is good, and that employers are evil exploitive bastards. I don't know if it is true or not, but I DO know that there are two very clear-and-distinct sides to this issue.
...student's expectations do not match with reality. Story at 11...
An education is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to get a job. The lawyer who she hired should also be disbarred for preying on the stupid.
The largest problem I've seen, is that the interviewer has either a firm grasp of interview techniques (to determine personality, quirks, responsibility, motivation, etc..) or they have the technical knowledge to evaluate the person's technical skill...but rarely does the interviewer have both those skill sets.
Companies often have multiple people interview one candidate, but what is often lacking in that process, is an effective way to combine the results from those multiple interviews into a complete picture.
A person is in many ways, more than the sum of their parts. Unexpected outcomes can be produced when all those parts are working as a whole. Interviewing seems to be about evaluate each part, but rarely the whole.
as shown in comments above. What I'm wondering is if she could've gotten a job outside of NY and just chose not to move [either didn't like the area, didn't want to pay moving expenses, etc]. When I finished college, I had the luxury of picking if I wanted to stay in the area or go elsewhere. If I was unemployed now, I don't think I would've had the choice. Wonder if she was hoping to stay local to the area instead of moving to Wisconsin or North Dakota [or somewhere else she might not want to move to].
That would negate the lawsuit, I would think. Wonder if she'll take the ski channel job. In case y'all didn't see it, here's the link to the job offer she got.
Hey there, welcome to reality! If you didn't apply yourself in college, why does an employer think you will do so afterward...? Life's not always fair, and with the great majority of young people getting degrees, having one doesn't just gaurantee somebody a job like it did 30 years ago. Wake up a little. Just go out there, apply yourself, hit the streets, and find yourself something new! Like everything else, you'll get out what you put in (cliche I know but makes sense)
"I don't agree with the grade inflation hype.
it happens in grade school, it does not happen in college."
Quite possibly the funniest thing I've read lately. I mean, I assume it was meant to be funny.
Or to paraphrase an excellent professor at a branch campus of Ohio State "If they can't get a 'B' here...."
Grade inflation is common. Makes it easier on the parties that are involved. Sucks if you are trying to figure out what grades mean, though.
Whatever her GPA is, she has worked hard for four years
With a 2.7 GPA, I'm less inclined to believe she worked hard for four years.
spent $70k on it
So what? She wasted her money if she was planning on getting just a 2.7 GPA. Not my problem.
and is very willing and able to work
What?! Seriously?! She's not even willing to work to FIND a job, let alone work once she has a job. Her solution is to blame others and sue people, not to work.
I don't know how many bachelor degree holders there is
Oh god, the irony.
And for the record, I'm only two years out of college. I'm not old and I don't have a lawn to tell you to get off of.
I worked harder than my peers, plain & simple. I got a 3.7 GPA instead of just slacking and drinking (both of which likely led to her 2.7 GPA), and now I have a fantastic job. Part of my landing this job was luck, but I had to get the 3.7 GPA to even be eligible for suck luck.
Congratulation Trina Thompson, you have just made yourself completely unemployable.
That outstanding GPA of you're is only applicable to the first job. But your impatience in this job market and desire to sue instead of taking taking personal responsibility has just made you unemployable; perhaps for the rest of your life.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Except no one actually wants that job. This is his point. This is a job that offers the minimum possilbe salary for fairly awful work; a job that no one who could get anything better (read as nearly any job which does not actively involve picking fruit on a pay by the pound basis) would want. Yet there were 500 applicants. Implying that somewhere in the nighborhood of 480-490 people who would not normally have considered such crummy work for such awful pay applied anyway (I'm basing that number on the fact that when I worked in fast food in high school we usually got between 10 and 20 applications for open positions, perhaps we were unusual in our small applicant numbers, but I doubt it). You're obsfrucating the issue. GGP implied that people are too picky about jobs, and they could get a job if they only lowered their standards. GP presented a job which is pretty nearly at the bottom of "standards" and showed that it was still difficult to get. You then came along and acted like the huge applicant pool for this piss poor job was a sign of how really desirable it was, as opposed to a sign of how bad the situation is that it could possibly seem desirable.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Who would want to hire this hot head. Wouldn't you be scared she could just easily sue you for something? I wouldn't want her anywhere near me.
The underlying issue: College is for academics. Trade schools are for workers. The EU accepted system of apprenticeships does not exist in the USA and that is a big problem (well it does a little bit within the few union trades.) Nearly all computer jobs should be in the apprenticeship model not in the college model. What we essentially have is the job market bucking the conventional "wisdom" and hiring experienced computer people regardless of education - which is an organic movement trying to mimic the apprenticeship model (but selfishly because they don't want people to train people, not loyal, ignorant etc.)
I know a few MBAs and HR people and their education was useless; there are so many experienced uneducated people who are far wiser at those professions...
Amazing how the public became anti union and thinks the way their corporate masters want them to.
Corporations want everything for nothing and that is not really a new thing; except now they get what they wanted.
Capitalism capitalizes on human flaws for the benefit of society - too many believers forget the society part is PRIMARY purpose.
Propaganda (soft science) is mightier than Nukes (hard science.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I can only theorise, but is a C average in America equivalent to a 3rd Class Honours or normal Degree in Britain? You wouldn't get touched with a bargepole over better grads here for that qualification. I have some sympathy for her. After all, I spent over 4 years searching for an IT job after I graduated (graduated in 2003, funnily enough I didn't try suing my Uni, or Osama for that matter). After a LOT of searching and hard work doing a job that neither enriched me or gave me any satisfaction, I finally found one. I had a much better degree than her. Sometimes life is like that. Live with it or shuffle of the mortal coil, your choice. The fact that she thinks she is owed a good job after studying for 4 years is a pattern I've come across more and more often these days. More and more grads are coming into jobs expecting top level pay and not to have to do the menial tasks that everyone has to do when they first start. Universities and Colleges are partly to blame for this shift in expectations, however the people most to blame are the grads themselves. I don't believe this is a uniquely American problem.
Making yourself out to be a big cry baby because you didn't get a job within 3 months on your average degree in a shitty economic climate.
If I were an employer I'd think she's clearly not that bright and she's a trouble maker.
People need to realise that having a degree doesn't guarantee anything and it guarantees less and less as more people get them. It used to be you had to go the extra mile by getting a degree to have a good job. But as a degree comes closer to being a high school diploma then you're going to have to do more work on top of that degree with personal projects, volunteering or whatever. A lot of people who don't really need degrees need to realise this and quit getting them so they don't ruin the value of degrees for people who take it seriously.
She should sue her family for never getting her to read Heinlein's 'To sail beyond the sunset'.
It's called marketing.
Sometimes its pardonable, sometimes objectionable and in a certain cases unforgivable.
One such case is telling kids that they are special when they are not and making them complacent as a tradition.
That is the perfect way of destroying the work ethos of your nation's next generation.
Sorry. Out of college I worked at a call center. It was a high stress job that reeked. I also worked retail. A few years later I got a job in the field I wanted. Welcome to reality. It sucks, so try to enjoy the parts you can.
Whatever her GPA is, she has worked hard for four years
Negative.
She's got a 2.7 GPA. That isn't outstanding, that's average. That isn't hard work, that's showing up to class and doing what you're told. I'd accept that she'd worked hard if she walked out of there with a 3.0+ GPA. A 2.7? Nope.
I don't think it's fair to pass that sort of judgement without looking at her circumstances first. While I agree that she was more than likely lazy, but there are situations where a poor GPA can be the result of considerable hard work. I myself blew off the first two years of college and ended up getting booted out for my failing GPA. However, I was readmitted the following semester and worked my ass off to make honors all of my remaining semesters, achieving a 4.0 GPA in my new (CS) major. Despite all of this, I still couldn't pull my cumulative GPA above a 3.0 because of the sheer number of failing grades I had accumulated prior to my wakeup call.
Did I make a mistake? Sure. Is anyone else to blame? Certainly not. But I DID work my ass off despite having a GPA that is very close to this girl's.
I see one issue that is not covered by posters here: Job Hype. Every so often Engineering Bodies come out stating that there is a "shortage of engineers" in the market. Then they use that premise to hire workers from other (cheaper) countries. Finally after 5 years of study, the new Engineer faces a shortage of jobs. This said, you cannot blame the university for your life decision. In my opinion, you shouldn't go to a University purely for a job. If its a job you want, there are often other ways around it (unless it is a Professional job, of course). I don't regret my University education at all and this student will come to regret her action when she matures enough to realise that the ultimate decision was made by her. Influenced by the university propoganda for sure, but still ultimately done by her own hands.
It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over.
Well stop complaining and start breaking things, for Christ's sake.
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
That's ridiculous; minimum wage jobs are difficult to find right now. Have you been out there lately?
Seriously talk about side discussions!
900+ posts about global economics and the merits or waste of college.
I'm guessing I'm the first person (including the poster) who actually read the whole article??
She is specifically suing the office of career advancement, she is not suing because they didn't educate her well enough.
She is only saying that the office actively works to employ graduates with higher GPAs, and basically ignores those with lower GPAs.
I still think the lawsuit is ridiculous, and will probably be thrown out since discrimination based on your GPA is not illegal.
It could be that the career office is a bunch of jerks who laugh and throw away any resume they get that is under 3.9, but that doesn't make it illegal.
At the risk of sounding prematurely old (Get off my lawn!), I'd suggest that most of the problems these days stem from kids feeling entitled and being unwilling to actually work for anything. But, I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about my generation too...
I despise being considered part of "that generation" simply because I was born near in time to some sycophantic whiners. The truth is, the term "entitled generation" is a farce. There is no age group that is through and through filled with a sense of "entitlement", there are just people who have been raised as such.
Honestly, being grouped with them infuriates me in such a way...if we were to be speaking person to person, I would gladly punch you square in the jaw. Truly, that would reflect a certain way on me, my character, my person.
Why then do you extrapolate that the actions of a few people are in fact the framework for an entire generation...? To believe in such a way, in and of itself reflects poorly upon you, sir.
I mean honestly, where would one such as yourself believe the "sense of entitlement" comes from? Entirely from the environment? From the parents? Nature vs. Nurture? Or possibly, both! Seeing as the current environment and the state of overall parenting lies solely upon older shoulders. (Not necessarily you or any one "age group", but the "entitled" children certainly couldn't have taught themselves to be "entitled" could they?)
2) "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Wizard of Oz
As an aside, it has fallen to me on more than one occasion to interview prospective candidates for positions on my teams. The more I have done so, the more I've come to realize that a degree also doesn't guarantee that the candidate will know anything or be a good employee. As such, I tend to value the attitude of the candidate to my questions, his work experience and contributions to projects such as open source projects over a piece of paper that tells me he's reasonably good at memorizing facts (or cheating.) I am fairly certain that if anyone approaches the interview with a positive attitude and engages the interviewer rather than just sitting there like a cabbage or something, they will have a very good chance of landing the job. A lot of people come to the interview with the attitude that it's a chore they'd rather not have to do, and trust me on this that attitude comes through very clearly during the interview. And if you're going to be like that during the interview, odds are you're going to be like that on the job as well.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So your complaint is that a system not originally designed for something is not quickly adapting to fulfill the role left vacant by the closure of most vocational schools? (In the US anyways.) Or that their is a trend of pushing any student through college even though their aren't enough jobs for all those students? Not to mention many of these students shouldn't have even gone to a college or university? Are you seriously complaining that they should change how they work because the "market" demands someone fulfill this role? It is being fulfilled, albeit imperfectly. If it's such an issue then more vocation style schools would appear, oh wait we have those too (ex: ITT Tech)! Plenty of us succeed by using the "old" college/university system, however passing through one of these establishments is by no means a guarantee of future success. To sum it up: most of the time, it's your own dam fault.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
There are people that make HONORS with a REAL DEGREE, even with MASTER'S DEGREES that still have trouble finding jobs. Welcome to the real world. I am not condemning her for not being able to find a job--me and my fiancee were in the same boat for a while. But you don't just go around suing people because things don't go your way. You suck it up, take a deep breath, and move on. Either apply to more jobs, apply to jobs slightly outside of the scope of your degree in order to get an in, consider additional training, or consider moving to an area with more opportunities. You don't use the legal system as your primary source of income, that's just ridiculous (and stupid). She is going to red flag herself if she keeps it up (if she hasn't already).
I wish somebody would have held my hand while I looked for a job. It's just another spoiled brat that thinks they are entitled to something because they put for the minimum effort required.
A very large, very complex system. Far beyond our intellectual capacity to understand.
There is no possibility of a control system for the economy: we can't write the equations, we don't have sensors to collect conditions with enough resolution, nor enough computer power to compute a future state, nor effectors to change the current state to a desired future state.
The idea that we can separate people from the economy, or make one or the other dominant, is not based in reality.
I never finished university, but have secure self-employment and even employ six people.
I'd be more than happy to consider the plaintiff's resume for about 0.03 seconds before tossing it for her unreasonable princess attitude.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
This is what's wrong with the Entitlement Generation. You identify a shortcoming in yourself, but somehow see it as a shortcoming in someone else. This is what leads to the sense of entitlement. As you see it, you've done no wrong, you're only the product of your upbringing, so you shouldn't be held accountable for that.
You are the product of yourself. No matter what you were educated as you can always rise above it. Maybe someone did you a disservice by teaching you these lessons that way, but it's not too late to change yourself and become a well-adjusted adult. Doing so will even come with a substantial competitive advantage; people who take ownership of their own faults even when they didn't know otherwise are the sort of people you can trust with responsibility.
When you become an adult, the only person you have to blame for falling short in any way is yourself, and you should not delude yourself otherwise. Take ownership of your person and make out of yourself who you wish to be. If you wish to be the person who's more interested in assigning blame than in correcting the problem, then don't bitch if employers don't want to hire you.
This wont go far... Their answer: "You should have gotten better grades to begin with" Hell even good grades don't guarantee a job This person will fit right in with the image a lot of Americans have of "Sue everyone" ...and yes its not everyone by any means but most of the weird suing going on seems to be in the US. I hope the unemployed bum is the one paying for all the legal fees and not the government (your pockets). If the government helps foot the bill I would sue her for wasting tax payer money.
"They're supposed to say, 'I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right -- can you interview this person?' They're not doing that," she said.
I mean I supposed some university could advertise that as a service but as an employee of an educational institution. I can attest that this is not the norm. It doesn't sound very feasible either.
I find the good headhunters tend not to stay in the business long. Strangely the clueless make-a-pile-of-CVs-and-shovel-it-over guys stay forever.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Parents look at their kids and think they're ruining the world. Everyone's convinced that the world is in a downward spiral.
Well, every generation has its candle burners and its lazy souls. The good ones are selected to succeed, and the lazy ones get fired or demoted to lesser companies or positions. Unfortunately, twenty years later the ones who have succeeded have a tendency to look around, see the incoming generation with its unselected mix of the hardworking and the lazy, and then prophesy the end of the world.
She'll go far I can assure you. Her's is the level of mediocrity that triumphs nowadays, partly because she's so narrow-minded and stubborn that she'll define her success on this:
"I told those guys I'd amount to something. guess who's the NEW McDonalds CEO"
I predict I'll end up working for her. And, she'll have a pink plastic phone, and and biatch attitude problem.
She's got a 2.7 GPA. That isn't outstanding, that's average. That isn't hard work, that's showing up to class and doing what you're told. I'd accept that she'd worked hard if she walked out of there with a 3.0+ GPA. A 2.7? Nope.
This is not really true anymore. In the United States, an average GPA is closer to 3.5.
What is worse in when your history professor has been poorly schooled about Charlemagne. I've run into that one personally and can tell you the professors don't like being corrected concerning the nature of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.
Maybe someone has suggested this already, but the college should give her back her money and take away her degree. Her association with the college does the college more harm than good.
Actually, politicians tend to say "EVERYONE deserves all the schooling they can get, even if we have to bleed every working man and woman dry to subsidize it."
That's only the Republicans, and only when it's about school vouchers. The universities got a big boost after WWII when it was seen as a place to buffer GIs from flooding the workforce too hard. The percent of income has steadily dropped since then. It's getting small in comparison now, and the increases in tuition are almost always related to decreases in funding from the government, not increases in cost (or at least increases in cost with inflation that used to be matched in government funding that no longer are). Or, to put it a little more succinctly, you are completely wrong and both parties are abandoning education (and third parties like the Libertarians are waiting with torches to burn the schools), so no one is fighting for them.
Learn to love Alaska
The number of comments on this posting makes a statement about how important this issue is.
I believe we need to attend to possible mental disability issues the same way we attend to physical disability issues. Of course, we know some people use this sort of thing as an excuse, but it might be valid in some cases.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
And here is all I needed to know. Thanks!
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
After 6 years at the University of Wisconsin studying Computer Architecture, 3 years of that time working with James Smith, an Eckert-Mauchley award winner (the Nobel Prize of the computer architecture community), I spent three years looking for work.
I ended up driving a cab for the Union Cab Company of Madison. Thank God for them, otherwise I would have been on the street.
I do not know how to deal with situations like this. I do know that 100s of H-1B people are doing jobs which I could do, but there is no way to establish the situation. Other than this, I know of no other way to help anyone like myself or this student.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
I have no college degree. I have been working in IT for over 15 years and eventually worked my way up to the management level , pulling down a minimum of 70K or so annually.
A piece of paper does not mean much compared to effort, experience, and a willingness to learn.
I have hired people with no college education, based on their personality and perceived ability and willingness to learn. So far, it's worked for me.
I have some kick ass people working under me now. They got that way by learning both on their own and on the job, not by whining.
Three months?! You haven't even really started job hunting in earnest yet.
How many resumes are you sending out?
I am not moved by your whining... at all.
He who fights fair wants to lose...
On July 24, she filed suit against the college in Bronx Supreme Court, alleging that Monroe's "Office of Career Advancement did not help me with a full-time job placement. I am also suing them because of the stress I have been going through."
Her complaint is that the college advertises full-time job placement help and she is not receiving that service. That's not the same as claiming that she is suing because she does not have a job. The fact that she doesn't have a job yet given her "outstanding credentials" is evidence cited to support her claim that the college is not providing the services they advertised.
From a strictly legal standpoint false advertisement is a legitimate reason to sue. I just don't think she has much of a case.
Personally, though I understand her frustration, I think her attitude stinks. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA from a top three engineering school (the public one that doesn't inflate grades) with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. During my studies many people commented that I would have no problem finding a job right out of college which I thought was great but also unimportant since there wasn't anything else I really liked studying or doing. Unfortunately, for me I graduated in 2001 right after the dot com bubble burst. *Soup Nazi voice* No job for YOU!!! I had to work my ass off to get an unpaid internship then bust my butt to move up from there to better companies and better jobs. It took me almost 7 years to finally get my career where I want it to be. In my experience, if you want results you're better off improving the things you can (yourself) then trying to change things you can't control.
University education isn't for everyone, contrary to the notion that everyone needs a college education. What everyone needs is to be literate. Those going into specific professions, such as physicians or lawyers, need an education. Outside of those for whom an education is actually necessary, a person who wants to work gets a job. In the current economy, it is more difficult, but prior to this, people who wanted to work worked. People who didn't need an education and wanted to avoid work went to college.
I wonder how many geeks got that way by going to school for it. Bill Gates dropped out, because he really had better things to do and larger fish to fry. When people in general get good at something, I usually observe that it is something they did on their own. Talent can't be taught. Skills can be acquired, but to excel, you've got to have it in you in the first place.
Unfortunately, I'd argue that that's far from the truth.
Anecdotal example - both my fiancé and I are quite well educated, and from top tier schools. We're well traveled, well read and in our mid/late twenties. We are not planning on having kids anytime soon because of a variety of reasons (she'd like to go to med school/grad school, I'd like to go to b-school, we'd like to buy a house and settle down before having a family etc).
Contrast this with her sister, who dropped out of college, got knocked up and has 3 kids, lives with her parents and is married to an equally useless guy collecting unemployment benefits -- and tax benefits because she has kids.
I, on the other hand, pay ridiculously high taxes because I was smart enough to make money in a down market. The price that I pay for being intelligent and hard working is high taxes. And the idiots who got knocked up as teenagers and make babies like there's no tomorrow (and their lousy ass boyfriends who flip burgers) use my tax money for being bums.
I think there's something fundamentally wrong with such a system.
Take it from a Detroit native.
There was a SIGNATURE here, but it's gone now.
Four years ago, a former chemistry major from the University of Chicago decided that the university was to blame for her inability to find a job. However, seeing as UChicago breeds an unusual variety of nerd, the woman decided to set fire to our math, chemistry, and divinity school buildings.
It's probably indicative that none of her fires actually got going very well, and that she was caught soon after because she was walking around campus smelling like gasoline. What a terrible chemistry major, if she can't even commit arson properly.
School newpaper article at maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2005/11/22/alumna-is-charged-with-four-counts-of-arson/
She should have went to DeVry instead!!!
I have a sneaking suspicion she's also got a diploma in "Generation Y should I get off my ass", along with a certification in "The world revolves around me"
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
This is why I lie about my GPA on my resume. I had trouble finding a job back when I listed the 2.3 GPA. Then the phone calls and offers rang in as soon as I changed it to 3.2 and re-published it.
Don't whine. Be proactive. And no, this isn't unethical, for you crybabies out there.
Have you considered that "having a well-rounded liberal arts education" is critical to employability? It is. If you can cogently discuss the Byzantine Empire, perhaps do Calculus, deliberate the nature of political systems, and can craft a decent metaphor, it says something about your adaptability. That's what employers want, and it's why they considered a real education to be a marker for career-material. While the "customer" sees university as a gateway to employment, they apparently fail to realize why it ever was a gateway.
This fact is lost on people like Ms. Thompson. It is apparently lost on you as well. I'm sorry that you feel that employers are demanding that you have evidenced an ability to adapt functionally to a wide array of subjects. I'm sorry that you don't like that they are more concerned with their studying their subjects than justifying why you want to pay to take a class. Bottom line, you want to pay because your employer wants you to learn something there. If you don't like that, don't get a job. If you want to understand why, ask the employers.
This reminds me of the demotivational poster for Consultants. It states "If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made prolonging the problem." The watering down of education is precisely a matter of extracting value from the reputation of the institution. It's literally about capitalizing on the fact that you don't understand why universities are valuable, and it similarly capitalizes on the fact that you don't want to. Yeah consumer! Go ahead, shoot yourself in the foot. It's what Ms. Thompson did.
When universities become trade schools, it's no wonder that you have less chance of getting a job with that degree. Laud the productizing of education as being "what the customer wants". This article clearly shows that this particular segment is only good for taking their money and hopefully redirecting it into something useful. Something that actually generates some educated citizens. Something reinforces the benefits that they provide to our economy. Something that preserves and advances the knowledge of mankind. You know, a *university*.
I just hope that the people in charge of universities don't forget that's what they're doing.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Are we educational institutions or placement agencies?
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Universities are selling a product. As with any merchant, their success is measured by their ability to provide a service that people want at a price they are willing to pay, while making a profit at it.
Diploma mills sell degrees. Universities provide an education and examine degrees. The service they provide is for a much wider community than the students. Even in the US many universities are heavily subsidized by tax payers, and the base of stake holders much wider. The service they provide includes the preservation, creation and transmission of knowledge and these are vital but to the economy and the culture of a country. They also provide a service to employers of producing graduates with some indications in their transcript and references of their suitability for certain types of employment.
Yes, but non-dictators would not have done such a terrible job of implementing socialism. Lenin was completely out of touch. He supported getting Russia out of WWI and that was enough to bring him to power. He had no idea how people lived, what economics was, nothing. He purged most of the people who could have let him know. Then he acted as though he was god. Stalin pretty much followed. They could have chosen any economic model and botched it.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
She's probably a black or Hispanic girl from the Bronx, the poorest part of the NYC metro area(the Ghetto). She likely doesn't come from much financially. She probably worked at crappy jobs at least part time and picked Monroe because they'd let her take classes at flexible times while she juggled work and even perhaps child care responsibilities. This is not a privileged princess who got drunk every night and didn't do anything. Young minorities have been told for years, well focus on your education and get a degree you'll get a foothold in the middle class and be able succeed. Well, she did that the best she knew freaking how, and got burned. Come out of your white middle-class suburbia world view for a second walk a minute in this girl shoes.
What exactly does any of this have to do with a college/university degree? I'm sorry, but I've met so many dummies out of supposedly 'good' schools that these degrees hold no weight to me. On top of that, I know plenty of people that can do the things you describe with only a high school diploma or less.
Yes, this is all anecdotal, but in my experience a degree does not necessarily make someone employable on its own.
Bullish Machine Tzar
Hi,
This is your parents. we did NOT cause the crash of 87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
if anything the aftermath of the crash of 87 was 13 years of growth.
She's surprised that the companies prefer 4.0 gpa students to 2.6 gpa ones. Well, that's because they are at least 1.3 times as smart, regardless of how well they attended all classes. Attendance, when you don't get paid for it, doesn't count. Results (such as a GPA) are what counts. But this argument only makes cents for people who can count.
Universities are selling a product. As with any merchant, their success is measured by their ability to provide a service that people want at a price they are willing to pay, while making a profit at it.
With attitudes like this so commonplace, it's no wonder our higher education system is so screwed up.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I wasn't complaining about anything. I think that universities by and large have been adapting just fine, and I agree that plenty of us have succeeded with the system.
My post was simply intended to make a general point, which was to refute the parent post's idea that utility of an education was unrelated to its value. I was simply pointing out that most people go to college precisely to gain marketable skills, which means a practical education (compared with the parent post's example of learning about Charlemagne) is important. That's true not just for vocational training, but also the professionals being educated in traditional 4-year universities and even graduate schools.
Now, more to the point of the main article... obviously the buyer has to have some sense. Job markets change. Job opportunities are a function not only of the market, and the education, but also the quality of the individual. If the student gets a low GPA (as the girl in the article did), it's not a surprise she's having a hard time finding a job. Maybe she should have studied harder instead of suing her school.
I think you misunderstood me.
I know the value of being adaptable. I understand that a well-rounded liberal arts education can help you develop that flexibility. In fact, I very much enjoyed receiving a well-rounded education during my college years, and it's served me well in engineering and in life.
I also do not see a conflict between receiving such an education, and obtaining a body of knowledge that one can use professionally.
All I was asking is that proponents of liberal education make their case for it, as you just did very well, rather than condescend to those who might not understand its full value at first glance.
Because when you're 17 years old, and trying to figure out why you should spend more money than you've ever seen in your life on an education, it's not an unreasonable question to ask how studying Charlemagne is of any benefit. You answered it well - I just wish more people would.
last I checked, the US higher education system was the envy of the world.
It's the K-12 system that's screwed up.
The history of the period that I last read was written by a Reaganite republican, so lots of aspects (especially the ones relating to the '80s) were biased and some were completely wrong, but I had the impression that he tended to get what he wanted and kill the people who opposed him. He did not kill off as many people as Stalin, but I don't think the decisions were collegian, or at least not peacefully collegian. People thought very hard before opposing Lenin (or at least they did after he killed the ones who did not take him seriously).
With Stalin it did not matter, he ended up killing everyone he interacted with.
Neither paid a lot of attention to what life was really like in Russia or to what was going on outside of their power grabs.
Dictators can do capitalism (e.g. Singapore), no one has tried communism (dictatorships say they are communist, none of them are, Russia, China, Burma, Cuba, etc. are incompetentist dictatorships) outside of a few American hippies, and levels of socialism tend to make more difference to the people than to the economy. Regulatory structure makes a huge economic impact (Germany and Japan had good ones imposed on them and they used them to outcompete America while being fairly socialist), socialism makes a minor one.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
a whole lot of money being spent on the non-academic parts of colleges.
Sounds like a bubble economy at work. Gotta get those warm bodies signed up, to keep the tuition flowing in.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The biggest mistake I made was take part in research rather doing a co-op. Everyone was looking for experience when I graduated in 2005. It did not matter my college was in the 50 in the nation and the electronic arts program was ranked 8th in the nation for 3 of the years I was there. Experience is usually key unless you have connections. As for the research. We were working on ergogenic gaming (combination of exercise and gaming) and could not get funding to further our research after graduation. Big mistake for them because now look at the Wii.
Every Corporation implicitly/indirectly operates on Ponzi principles.
Slashdot = Sarcasm