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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."
For UK folks, it's equivalent to a low 2:2, and approaches a third.
Someone who attends an honours course and is awarded an ordinary degree: i.e. you didn't fail spectacularly and you showed up to lectures so we'll give you a piece of paper.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
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?
A 'c' encompasses a range of scores - the GPA (Grade Point Average) is more telling.
The highest GPA you can get (with 100% marks on everything) is 4.0.
The national average GPA for college graduates is 3.2 (according to a quick google search)
She got a 2.7, which while not horribly bad, definitely puts her below average.
Never heard of Monroe college.
I doubt that very much I'm British, she's American.
I already get five weeks paid leave and work 37 hour weeks. From what I understand of the US I'd probably be fired for not being present enough. Here, I just go promoted.
America - you're doing it wrong.
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
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to raise their prices faster than inflation is because the government-supplied part of their funding is steadily being withdrawn, and the money has to come from somewhere.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.
1st = 100% Study 0% Party
2:1 = 75% Study 25% Party
2:2 = 50% Study 50% Party
Third = 25% Study 75% Party
Pass = I KANT RITE
Study rate = Employability rate :)
Super Awesome Broadband
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
Get a degree in something useful if you want a job. It's really as simple as that
This is exactly the theory under which community colleges like Monroe name their degrees. This gal has a 2-year associate's degree called "Bachelor of Business Administration" Compare that with a degree in "Computer Technology" or "Industrial Engineering Technology." The names are very similar to four year degrees. A naive 20 year old is susceptible to the line that you can get the skills employers want to work in [impressive field] with salaries up to $50,000, in a business-friendly environment; that by cutting out extraneous classes like English and History, you can graduate in just 2 years rather than 4. If they don't have someone there to point out that "Engineering Technology" is different than "Engineering" or that "Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Information" is different than "Bachelor of Science in Business Administration," they can end up buying something very different than what they expected.
CC can be a good option. An AS or AA can definitely be a step towards a better career, and can provide a useful skill set, but it's a different route than a four year degree, and I don't think that distinction is always made clear to potential students.
Just found this article in which the "Ski Channel" is going to offer her a job:
Wow, I never realised that vacation time in the US was so bad as to make 25 paid leave days per year sound so incredulous...
It's really not uncommon in Europe to have that much annual leave...and yes, every year.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Standard in the US is 10 days, to start. If you're lucky that'll build up to 15-20 in few years.
At a lot of places if you get sick, your sick days come out of your vacation time.
I am sorry, but where are you?
Sorry, many parts of Europe have apprenticeship programs, etc where people still do low-level technical jobs.
I call BS in your argument!
While you might not like socialism, what it does do is give menial jobs a pretty hefty wage. Instead of the scamming that goes on in North America.
I am here in Switzerland and our cleaning lady makes 39 CHF (about 35 USD) per hour! We can't find anything less.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Econ 101? Here's Econ 102: It's far better for ordinary people to live in an economy with full employment and moderate-high inflation than suffer higher unemployment via the IS-LM curve so that a few people with access to "capital" don't see it decline in value so quickly.
Let me say that again: inflation is a good thing so long as it's driven by wages.
That's why our economy in the United States took off like a rocket after World War II: sure, part of it was that everyone else was bombed out. But a larger factor was four years of sustained full employment at high wages had transferred quite a bit of wealth and created a robust middle that would only start to be systematically dismantled when Reagan took office.
Yeah, unemployment is up here, in that part of europe with the highest education (Scandinavia), why we're at above 2% now, which is a lot more than the comfortable 0.8% we used to enjoy prior to the current crisis.
Apparently you have no connection with reality what so ever
Norway ~3%
Sweden ~9%
Denmark ~5%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate How you get this to 2% for "Scandinavia" is beyond me. And remember that Norway has a fairly low unemployment due it that thing called oil.
The Economist's latest figures have the unemployement rate at 9.8% Sweden, 3.8% Denmark and 3.1% Norway. Sweden's rate is not seasonally adjusted.
Where are your 2% figures from?
Anyone wishing to actually do a proper comparison of unemployment and education should probably look at Eurostat's Unemployment rates of the population aged 25-64 by level of education (at least for Europe).
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Usually a 4.0 is in the 100-94 range. Even lower depending on grade scaling. When I took my thermodynamics class I had an A with only an 89 average. Granted the class average was ~60. Getting 100% is impossible for even the best students.
Our 15% unemployment is a fake number. double it for the real number.
the US 15% number is from only those that are collecting unemployment. Those that had it run out are not counted. The numbers are easily double what they are reporting.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you'd read TFA you'd know she has no lawyer, none at all. Find a real case of irresponsible lawyerism to use when making your rant k?
In my years of working in the US, I never had a job with any vacation time in the 1st year other that normal holidays.
Standard in the US is 10 days, to start. If you're lucky that'll build up to 15-20 in few years.
Minimum in the UK is 28 days (that includes the 8 public holidays, so it's 20 days if you aren't required to work on those days).
At a lot of places if you get sick, your sick days come out of your vacation time.
That's illegal here.
A "C" is theoretically average, but whether or not that's true in practice varies widely. Most schools don't fail a high percentage of people, so a C ends up being towards the bottom.
That being said, unless I'm missing something here, a 2.7 is a B-, not a C. Some schools don't have a +/- system, but in that case it's still well above a base-line C.
A: 4.0
A-: 3.7
B+: 3.3
B: 3.0
B-: 2.7
C+: 2.3
C: 2.0
C-: 1.7
D: 1.0
F: 0
If there's no +/- system, it's just 4/3/2/1/0.
As for Monroe College... I live in the area, and I've never heard of it (or at least, know nothing about it). Some local school, I guess. Certainly not a regionally, nationally or internationally known one.
-Daniel
That point would be which one?
Well, last I checked, the US unemployment rate was substantially higher than the 3% of Norway or the 5% of Denmark, both of which are "socialist" countries. And if you use uncooked numbers, it's higher than the 9% of Sweden, too.
The former government loved the term "open unemployment rate", because that number was always substantially lower than the true unemployment rate.
So, at best, I think it's safe to say that at least the US and Sweden are probably about on par as far as unemployment goes (at least, they were... who knows, these days).
Glad to see I was right about the cooked numbers, though. I'm amazed anyone even bothers to look at government unemployment numbers, these days. They're nothing more than propaganda.
And how is your economics?
One thing you'll frequently see is the US complaining about "dumping" of products with the counter claim that the country "dumping" isn't. As it turns out, both claims are true because the cost calculations done by both sides are different.
In order to produce products, you need 3 things that you have to pay for.
Infrastructure - Things like factories, machines.
Employees - The people who perform the work.
Materials - What is converted into the product.
And in order to make money, you need to sell the product.
I'll use the following values for this example:
F = Fixed costs to support Infrastructure.
W = Wages to pay employees
M = Material costs for producing the product.
S = Price of sold product.
The key thing to remember is that firing employees in the US is fairly easy. However, in many Europian countries, it's much harder. So during economic down turns, the unemployment in the US climbs fairly rapidly, while the unemployment in Europe climbs much slower.
So US companies tend to consider the incremental cost of producing a product to be:
W + M
While Europian companies tend to consider the incremental cost of producing a product to be:
M
and if you're attempting to survive an economic downturn, the main priority of a company is to last as long as possible without running out of their cash reserves and going out of business. So they do what they can to reduce their fixed costs and also do what they can to produce income.
In the US, fixed costs can be quickly reduced by firing "excess" employees and only retaining enough to produce the amount of product that can be sold. However, most Europian companies can't fire their employees so what they do is reduce the cost of their product to try to maximize their income.
So when companies in the US see an Europian company selling a product for less than (W + M), they'll accuse that company of "dumping". While the Europian company will claim it's not dumping because the product is being sold for more than M.
This entire point of this whole article is to point out that due to legal reasons, you'll find the unemployment in Europe to be frequently lower than the unemployment in the US. However, that unemployment figure does not mean that your economy is in better shape. It simply means that the legal structure means that different decisions have to be made to deal with the economy.
Grand total is 33 days including public holidays.
I also have the option to "buy" (i.e. take unpaid leave) for up to a further two weeks.
A (now defunct) US based company I used to work for gave us 20 + public holidays, I think because that was the legal minimum. They gave their US employees 12.
That's actually incorrect...
Although I'm sure that their sample size is never big enough to trust their numbers (I've got to believe it's +/- 2% or so personally), but according to this FAQ the numbers you see in the news are based off of a 'monthly sample survey'.
"Is the count of unemployed persons limited to just those people receiving unemployment insurance benefits?
No; the estimate of unemployment is based on a monthly sample survey of households. All persons who are without jobs and are actively seeking and available to work are included among the unemployed. (People on temporary layoff are included even if they do not actively seek work.) There is no requirement or question relating to unemployment insurance benefits in the monthly survey."
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm
At a lot of places if you get sick, your sick days come out of your vacation time.
To clarify this, many companies combine sick time and vacation time so that you can use your time off however you need to. It's a positive for people that rarely get sick, because they get a few more days of vacation, but it's a big problem for people more prone to illness. It also tends to create the mindset of not wanting to stay home when you're sick because you're effectively losing vacation time. You do get the same number of days off total, though; instead of 15 vacation days and 5 sick days, you'd just get 20 days off.
My ancestors arrived in spaceships that looked remarkably like DC9's, I'll have you know!
I think the theoretical minimum is about 3%. That represents people who are piss-poor at finding work, people who are actively transitioning (willing or not) and those just entering the workforce.
Stores in my city are occassionally closed "due to lack of staff".
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
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.