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."

Comments

Depressing, but not uncommon

[RogueyWon]

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.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[antifoidulus]

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.

God, the sense of entitlement in the US is making me sick...

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Kokuyo]

Not that I'm American, but when and how DO you get to your dream job?

In this country, you can do an apprenticeship in just about anything. So I went into IT. I was good in school (top five of the class) and I showed above average skills in whatever I was doing.

I'm at my third job now. Let's skip how good or bad that one is and just get to what's interesting to me at the moment: Looking for a job. Personally, I'm a guy who is honest about what he can and can not do. I somehow convinced myself that good jobs cannot be had through lying because hey, if you had to lie to get it, can you expect an honest work environment? Either they overstated their requirements and you CAN do the job (but then what else are they going to expect from you that is not part of the job?) OR they were serious, you CAN'T do the job and what then?

For all three jobs, I've been working for sub-standard wage (meaning my salary was somewhere between 50% and 75% of what my work was worth), did unpaid overtime and was generally reachable at all times. I did not have the means to get certification and the companies had no interest in me having them.

So now I'm hearing "Well, for someone in IT, you did remarkably little certification". Or what about "Ah, so you wouldn't call yourself a geniusHmm..."?

Fact remains that doing honest and hard work brings you NOTHING. You must be a quack, a liar and just basically leech everything out of the company that you possibly can. Then you go to the next and rinse and repeat. It's what the managers do and it's what is expected of you. Being a carpenter is starting to sound bloody perfect just about now.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

A lot of teens and their parents are still duped into believing that a degree will still lead to a guaranteed "good" job.

The big problem here is that society at large has come to view universities and higher education in general as advanced vocational training. The trouble is, the universities themselves have no such delusion.

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.

Now, there is some element of "job training" in higher education, but only in an academic sense. You can be taught about binary trees and methods to search them in a university course, but there simply isn't time to train you in how to use the IDE, language and indeed operating system that you will be asked to implement those searches by your employer. And computer science courses are in fact VERY vocational as courses go. Most engineering course will only be able to teach you how to use a bandsaw and AutoCAD. Small use when you have to use the latest tabletop wonder from Hansvedt.

At the end of the day, final training for a job must be done by employers. Unfortunately, many skimp on this and complain that Universities aren't doing their job. HR departments demand experience not because they believe it will provide quality, but because the company does not want to go to the bother of expense of actually passing on skills. Yes, Graduates do come out of universities will few "real world" skills. But this has always been the case. What has changed is a fickle employment culture in which companies hire and fire at will and thus cannot risk training someone only to see them run off at a moments notice for a higher paid position.

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.

I wouldn't go quite so far. It is true that certain courses can be difficult to get a job out of, but it's also true that not taking any course can make it very difficult to get a well paid, and indeed fulfilling job. A university course should be chosen for two reasons; Interest in the subject, and the prospect of a vocation. Both are important. If people choose wisely and put in the effort, their time spent in university will be far from a waste of time and money, and indeed will be time well spent and very well rewarded. Fours years of good education will allow you to hold your own in your chosen field, and prepare you for a changing world and workplace. This is not guaranteed, but the odds are certainly in your favour.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Eivind]

Uhm, did you try comparing that map of yours to the actual terrain ?

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.

How high is your unemployment again ?

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Shakrai]

At least certification is a more reliable indicator of actual job knowledge than a degree, these days.

Huh??? Most knowledgeable IT directors that I've worked with have sneered at certifications. The only ones who were impressed where the PHB types. A certification doesn't prove anything other than you studied for the certification. Why do you think there are so many lovely acronyms for them? "Minesweeper and Consultant and Solitaire Expert" It's been my experience that most people who enter the IT world with nothing more than a certification are useless. I'd hire someone with experience over someone with a certification any day of the week.

I'd rather have a degree over a certification any day of the week. A degree equates to more money from almost every employer on the planet. Combine it with job experience and it almost doesn't even matter what the degree is in. Buddy of mine makes $20k more a year than I do doing the exact same job -- his degree is in marketing of all things.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[beringreenbear]

You bored me. And if that's the face you show to an employer, you bored him, too.

First of all, go ahead and sit for the certifications. If you are at all good at what you do, you'll pass them.

Second, you don't have to lie, but you do have to tell a story; a compelling narrative. I am not interested, as an employer, in whinny stories of how hard you worked, or how you worked for depressed wages and unpaid overtime. In fact, that that does tell me as an employer is that if I need cheap help,you're probably going to be a pushover for the job. What you have to tell me is what you did. What you accomplished.

I was recently unemployed for five months. I learned to get good at telling my story. I went through countless drafts of my c.v. and presentation. I learned to adapt to fit in whatever situation I was in. And I knew my worth. It is possible to succeed, but you have to be diligent and compelling.

And finally, forget about this "dream job" thing. Unless you are in business for yourself and successful. You will never find a "dream job" working for someone else.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[chrb]

I recommend reading this article: How to do what you love. There is a lot of truth in it. Getting your dream job is a matter of persistence, being willing to apply to companies, building contacts, and realising that you are unlikely to end up in your dream job straight away, it takes years of working towards the goal before it comes within reach:

• I know lots of people who are not willing to relocate - this is a big problem, because their dream jobs generally aren't in the place they currently live. I know a handful of people who've actually been willing to relocate their entire lives for their career, whether it is moving across the country, or to another (off the top of my head, I have friends who relocated to Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Switzerland, Singapore, New York..). In every case, relocating brought them a slightly better job initially, and a hugely better job 5 years later. In contrast, I know a lot of people who graduated in their home cities, stayed there, and complain constantly about their jobs.
• I know one guy who always wanted to work in Formula 1. He got an engineering degree, but there are tens of thousands of people with those who want to work in F1, and who have more experience. He then worked for a standard engineering company for a few years, whilst writing applications to any company involved in the automotive trade. He also travelled, met some guys who ran their own small teams, made contacts, offered to work for free during his summers, etc. Eventually he got taken on by a tier 1 automotive company, and from that point he managed to work his way from an engineer up to senior management within 8 years. Now, he still isn't doing what he wants to do, but he still has his goal, he has better contacts than he's ever had, and he has years of experience to call on. He isn't there yet, and may never get there, but at least he has maximised the probability that his goal will be achieved. How many of the rest of us can say that?

Fact remains that doing honest and hard work brings you NOTHING. You must be a quack, a liar and just basically leech everything out of the company that you possibly can.

Sounds like you're working for large corporations where that kind of behaviour can go unchecked. In a small company, you'd be thrown out very quickly.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Hubbell]

When damn near everyone works for the government simply to say 'they have a job', they might as well be on unemployment benefits.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Aceticon]

Fact remains that doing honest and hard work brings you NOTHING. You must be a quack, a liar and just basically leech everything out of the company that you possibly can. Then you go to the next and rinse and repeat. It's what the managers do and it's what is expected of you. Being a carpenter is starting to sound bloody perfect just about now.

I've learned that on my first year in this profession (also IT).

The belief that many of us gifted "techies" have that technical excellence, skill and hard-working will make us stand out from the mediocre crowds, be noticed and promoted is one big fat illusion more often than not kept alive by manipulative managers wanting to get extra free hours from us (so that THEY get fat bonuses).

Even in the technical areas, the professional world out there is never a pure meritocracy based on one's technical excellence.

In truth, non-technical skills are often also important (guess who's more useful: the guy that gets the requirements right from the client and implements them in a competent way or the guy that gets the wrong requirements and implements the wrong thing but with an exceptionally good design and code?) and those that evaluate one's abilities during the selection/bonus-evaluation/promotion-evaluation process are often not technically skilled enough to evaluate technical skills above a certain level (they're management, usually not technical, not-good enough techies or simply too far out from their technical days) or will simply outwit the less negotiation-experience techies into taking a lower pay.

Consider the simple example of two equally good programmers:
- One is quiet and reserved: the kind of guy that finds a critical bug, fixes it and checks it in source control without telling anybody
- The other one is loud and outgoing: he'll tell to whomever is willing to listen that he found a critical bug, proceed to fix it and check the fix in source control and then let everybody know that the issue is fixed.

Guess who will get the next promotion!!!?

Another example would be two equally good programmers, both known in their company for the quality of their work. They both feel that they are being underpaid in their company:
- One starts looking at other opportunities, maybe gets one or two good proposals, goes to management and asks for a salary raise saying that he "likes to work there but feels that he's not being fairly rewarded for the work he's doing there versus other professionals in the same area".
- The other one just accepts its and wallows in the misery of being underpaid.

Guess who will get the (biggest) raise!!!?

In the end, the secret to success in IT is still down to soft-skills such as self-promotion, image management, networking, pro-activeness, a willingness to take risks and others. Just look up the definition of EQ (Emotional Quotient, similar to IQ but measuring something else) - it's much correlated with success than IQ, and you will find that the characteristics that are evaluated to determine EQ are very much the kind of thing that make it easier for one to follow the path to success.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[limaxray]

0.8% unemployment? 2%? Really? I know that sounds great, but that's no more healthy than 15% unemployment. In fact, if you really had that low of an unemployment rate, the rate of inflation would be through the roof as employers paid increasingly ridiculous salaries to try to fill positions. Such a low unemployment rate simply means you're lacking an employable workforce. You want there to constantly be people in transition otherwise the economy has no where to grow. That's just ECON 101.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[dkleinsc]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive, so more wealth is being created than in the society with 15% unemployment (e.g. Detroit, MI). Also, assuming the companies paying "increasingly ridiculous" salaries are reasonably sane, they will only pay those salaries if it will help them increase their revenue or reduce their costs at least as much as the cost of the salary, so there's a limit to how much they are willing to pay.

Also, if you go from the assumption that a society in which people have good salaries, a good amount of time off, good health care, and so forth is better than a society where people work 60 or 70 hours a week for minimum wage and no benefits, you prefer the 2% unemployed society to the 15% unemployed society. It's a question of whether you think that people exist for the economy, or the economy exists for the people.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[mdwh2]

"In Socialist Europe, higher education causes unemployment!"

(Someone points out a European country with extensive higher education and very low unemployment.)

"But, but - unemployment is good for the economy! In Socialist Europe, higher education causes low unemployment and that's bad!"

Why, I can almost hear the sound of the back peddling.

the rate of inflation would be through the roof as employers paid increasingly ridiculous salaries to try to fill positions

If someone posted a statistic showing that it wasn't through the roof, I look forward to you back peddling to say how inflation is a good thing, and it's bad that inflation isn't through the roof in Scandinavian countries?

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[AuMatar]

No, they don't. Things only need to get done at the current rate if you insist on your current level of materialism. If we all worked less we'd have slightly less stuff, slightly lower unemployment (people would be hired to work when you're off), and we'd all be happier. If I could take a 20% pay cut to work 20% less, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd take 30%. And the end result- a few less cell phone apps in the world. I think somehow we'd all survive.

For that matter, I'm not sure how much world productivity would really go down. If I had a month or more off a year, I'd devote at least a chunk of it to charity and open source.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Duhavid]

Wow.

So, higher unemployment rates are good, because they enable management to keep a firm grip on the baseball bat they use on labor to keep them in line, fearful, docile and paid as little as possible. And low unemployment is bad, because labor would have some power in the relationship.

Boy, that sounds like utopia, sign me up. Not.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[rel4x]

"Yes. This is a very good thing.

Tell that to General Motors.

Yeah. Again, it is good that you can't do those sorts of things. It is good that you have to treat your employees as, you know, human beings.

No one said they're not being treated as human beings. But the fact is businesses are not bottomless pits of money. When the economy is hard, it's hard on businesses just as much as it is individuals. So sometimes *not* doing the extra little things is what is necessary for the business to stay afloat.

Your mentality is the one that human kind is struggling to dig out from under and is the cause of almost all the violence and hatred in the world.

No. No it's not. Let me tell you that there's a lot of people in a lot of countries whose lives would drastically improve given the conditions you're whining about.
Once again, look at the recession. Businesses can all fail(well, at least if they aren't bailed out). We are not trying to "dig out" from that mindset, we're trying to get people jobs at livable wages so they can survive. The frills are going to have to come later. You're part of the problem, not the solution.

You feel that just because you and an employer you are entitled to treat employees however badly you want. You do realize that when you pass down that pay cut the employee needs the money a LOT more than you do, right?

I beg to differ. First off, I treat my employees quite well (disclosure: I don't need too many, so it's not too hard to do so). But secondly, it's my money on the line every day. If I don't have money to take risks, the business doesn't grow. If the business doesn't grow, then no one is going to be making anything, because they'll all be out of the job.
I already give good benefits and wages that top my competitors by quite a bit. If I have to cut that back so the wages are only *slightly* beating my competitors, it's because I literally had to. Anyone that doesn't like it is free to leave.

You might be able to buy another yacht, but that is at the expense of your employees' kids' college money.

Yeah, because all business owners own Yachts. Get out of your dream world where we all make millions.

This mindset is psychopathy, plain and simple. All you see is your own greedy wants and the bottom line in a ledger book, but you are unable to see and feel the human cost of your decisions.

I'm incredibly aware of the human cost of my decisions. But sometimes those decisions are about making it so these people have a job at all a few months down the road. The "faceless corporation" isn't an accident. It's an intentional structure. Why? Because any business, in order to survive has to make decisions that few could make face to face.

I will be glad when the economy turns around and you can't randomly fire people for demanding fair treatment, or randomly cut pay by 20%.

It's not random you idiot. A stable business at it's heart is coldly logical. It's not a hostage situation. Businesses pay employees what they can and what they're worth. If you disagree about what the business can pay you, or what you're worth, leave.
If you're worth more, there will be demand. If not, the market has decided you're not worth more.

I would rather that you did these things on your own, that you would have a soul and a little bit of human decency, but I know that this is too much to ask. I will just be glad that you can be forced into treating people like humans, that is the way it should be.

No one's treating them like dogs.

I once thought exactly like you appear to be thinking here by the way. Then I had to run a business and got some perspective. It's not that it kills off your soul or anything, but you're responsible for something more than yourself. You're respons

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[phantomcircuit]

Inflation does not reduce the value of the vast majority of wealth. Anybody with real wealth has it invested in assets which protect against inflation.

The only people who lose from inflation are people with a large percentage of their over all wealth in cash, which is to say poor people lose out from inflation.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[harp2812]

Allowing either side to have too much power is bad - management gets too much power & they abuse the employees with the threat of unemployment. Take a look at the 1920's to see how bad it can get.

However strong unions result in the same employees abusing management. The business ends up overpaying for employees who have the same sense of entitlement and lack of willingness to work as the idiot in this article, which can have an enormously negative impact on the business & it's profitability.
(Hint: If the business can't survive because of over-inflated labor costs, you're going to be every bit as unemployed as if they had just kept salaries in check and fired the unqualified or non-contributing employees)

A little bit of balance goes a long way - it's too bad unions and management both tend towards the extremes.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[jadavis]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive

No, it means more people receive a paycheck. Maybe in this case it means being more productive, too, but that is not adequately supported merely by the fact that they receive a paycheck.

Be careful of this type of reasoning, it's the same thing that's got the US into this education mess. First, they realized that people with HS diplomas are more successful, so they ensured that everyone could get a HS diploma by lowering the standards to essentially nothing (attendance, I suppose). Now, as should be no surprise, a HS diploma is worth close to nothing, so they are doing the same thing to college degrees.

With the lower standards, heavy subsidies, and lots of social encouragement, employers realize that a lot of people are graduating from college that aren't particularly desirable. Then, what, they'll only hire PhDs?

I think we'll see a point where smart people start to opt out of the education system sooner, merely because they don't want to wade through busywork (and spending money like crazy) until graduate school, where they can actually set themselves apart.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[rel4x]

I'm not a liberal actually, but I know what he was getting at(which is why I posted the picture). Think fiscally conservative Democrat
I tend to like the Democrats largely because I believe that one of the things that does need to be funded is education. Oh yes, and I don't like wars.
But I believe in balance.
Put too much control in the hands general population who doesn't understand business, and the idiots will run business into the ground.
Put too much in the hands of business, and they will exploit the population.

Re:Depressing, but not uncommon

[Bertie]

Apart from the numerous indirect benefits from even pointless, menial employment, both to them as an individual and to society as a whole. People with a job, however mind-numbingly unproductive it may be, and even if it doesn't really benefit them financially any more than being on the dole, will generally feel better about themselves and so are likely to be healthier. This makes them less of a burden on society from the point of view of providing healthcare, and means they're more likely to play an active and positive role in the lives of their families and communities. They'll also be less likely to commit crime, and I don't really need to spell out to you the numerous benefits resulting from a reduction in crime rate.

At the end of the day, it's all coming out of taxes one way or another. I'd rather have happier, healthier, more active, more productive people doing worthless paper-shuffling in artificial non-jobs than those same people claiming all manner of benefits and feeling sorry for themselves. The difference in bottom-line cost probably isn't much.

That will teach them

[justcauseisjustthat]

That will teach them for advertising that they help everyone find a job :-)

The Entitlement Generation.

[CountBrass]

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.

Re:The Entitlement Generation.

[plasmacutter]

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.

The applicants are not the only ones who feel "entitled".

Employers, especially larger ones, feel "entitled" to canned labor without job training.

The employer equivalent of your quoted statement is: "I should get skilled labor even though I don't want to invest one cent in training or orientation, and if I don't i'll blame the colleges and call the applicants selfish and 'entitled'"

thou shalt get a degree

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's all about who you know..

[hopopee]

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.

Re:It's all about who you know..

[kafka47]

This reminds me of a good quote : "It's not who you know... it's who knows you".

Motivation?

[Capt James McCarthy]

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.

Re:Welcome to a harsh world

[Spad]

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.

Re:oh sit down and stfu

[jimicus]

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.

Re:Epic fail

[quadrox]

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.

Advertising and expectations

[catsidhe]

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.

It Would Be Funny, If Only It Weren't True.

[Pantero Blanco]

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.

Truth in advertising

[thisnamestoolong]

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.

Wow, and IT graduate with ZERO experience.

[geekmux]

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.

Steely Dan must've met her type before

[hardihoot]

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

Re:The Fucked Over Generation

[Ephemeriis]

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

Re:Epic fail

[ari_j]

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.

Ask her about companies with entitlement

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And Now, The Vocational Gudance Counselor Sketch..

[Philip K Dickhead]

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