Slashdot Mirror
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.
That will teach them for advertising that they help everyone find a job :-)
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
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.
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 doesn't help that, in my case at least, I was told by pretty much everyone from highschool teachers, through careers advisors and university staff that "a Degree will bring me to the top automagically" - I wasn't exactly convinced, but when everyone's telling you that it's easy to buy into the hype.
Then you leave university and end up in the real world where you either a) Realise it was all a load of bollocks and get on with your life or b) Get all bitter about it as this woman appears to have done.
I'm curious how you even know you have found a good C programmer to begin with.
What do you look for?
Nobody knows.
Seriously.
That's the biggest thing that department managers the world over don't want to admit. Nobody has yet found a reliable way to interview people that will consistently result in hiring people you can work with that meet all your requirements.
Oh sure, companies ask technical questions, try and build a rapport and all that. Some even make the interview process last a full day with in-depth technical, HR, stress interviews. But there is always some little thing you don't think to check for in the interview process. If you're lucky, that little thing never matters. If you're unlucky - well, anyone who's been out of college more than a couple of years knows exactly what happens.
To be fair, while it is tempting to put the blame squarely on her shoulders, it is probably not her own fault that she grew up with such a sense of entitlement.
Her family/school are likely very much to blame though, for not teaching her how the world works.
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
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.
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.
When I graduated (2003'ish), we hadn't yet recovered from the dot.com bubble bursting. I knew people with actually useful academic credentials that took longer than 3 months to get a job. Since the media keeps telling me we're now in a recession, somehow it seems like this idiot's expectations are WAY out of whack. The only way someone like that would get hired so quickly would be in a boom with a serious shortage of people.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Agreed. Three months of searching for a job is nothing. When I got my C.Sci degree, I spent 3 months searching for a job across 2 states. Finding none, I moved across the country and searched another 3 months. I finally found a job doing IT for a bank and took it, spending all available downtime looking for a better job for the next 9 months. After 15 months of unsuccessful pavement-pounding, I had a decision to make: I could either wait out the economy a bit in my shitty IT job or I could change my career path.
So many people claim they have "tried" things. Tried to find a job. Tried to make a marriage work. Tried to resolve family conflicts. Tried, my ass. If you have not actively done something for at least a year, you have not tried it any more than dipping your toes in the water and crying aloud about how cold it is constitutes trying to swim.
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.
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
The harsh reality that college is a sham at this stage in our country will eventually sink in, you're smart.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a sham. I think each generation shams itself into thinking more and more that they are entitled to good grades and that a degree entitles them to a job, as is certainly the case with the woman in the article. An education at a university says several things to an employer - first, you have a rounded education and you've been able to meet at least some standards and deadlines in your academic career; second, you have at least some basic understanding of the field in which you studied; third, you've demonstrated that you can put out and do unglamorous work to acheive a goal; and fourth, you might possibly be teachable, since you've apparently demonstrated a willingness to learn in school by choice, beyond mandated state K-12 education.
What screws a lot of people up, in my opinion, is how they present themselves on their resume and in their interviews. It takes more than listing your references, past jobs, and education. Your goal in your resume should be to present to each recipient the case that you are the best fit for the position they are trying to fill, you can't farm out a drab, inpersonal list of data and expect to stand out. You have to address the requirements of the job in your resume so the recipient at least knows you can meet some of their desired criteria. You have to elaborate on your job experience, summarizing your responsibilities and pointing out relevant acheivements. You have to include a well written cover letter that introduces you and describes your interest in the position. Between you and Candidate Y, the person that gets the job is the one that describes most aptly that they will fill the role with enthusiasm beyond that of filling a chair. It's painfully obvious to employers who is interested in the job and who is interested in the money the job pays. No one wants an empty shell that pulls a paycheck, they want to hire someone who has a genuine interest in their field that will provide results and improve over time that is worth the investment of that paycheck. A person that goes to school majoring in Business Administration in IT, makes unremarkable grades, sees attendence as some sort of exemplary behavior, and expects an employer to seek out her resume on an e-recruiting site is not enthusiastic about anything, and simply expects to be handed life on a platter, which is why this lady is suing her school and reveals the real reason she is unemployable. She does not want the opportunity of work, she just wants to be paid for going to work.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
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.
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!"