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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."
I can understand her anger at not being able to find a job,
and yeah, pretty much all collages help graduates find jobs, but FFS, she should have picked a better major.
I'm a geek, and I wont even go into a computer sciences or information tech, field, there are 10 times as many
applicants than their are job openings in that field. 10 years ago, anyone with an IT or Comp Sci degree would
get hired on the spot, these days, you might as well have a liberal arts degree.
I really hope this chick loses the case, and gets saddled with a bunch of court costs to add to her student loans, that way nobody will ever try anything so stupid again. Three month job-hunt? In this economy? College education is no guarantee of a job, and if you can't sell yourself, you're going to be unemployed for a lot longer than that. Your college can't convince employers to give you a job, they can provide some contacts and resources to help you, but that's it.
Oh no... it's the future.
"just because they've done nothing more than show up for class and turn in assignments most of the time."
That was what I did.
But then I have natural wit and charm, a willingness to admit I slacked off at university, plus I did computer science. Little miss entitlement got a "Bachelor of Business Administration" in "IT". What the hell does that even mean?
Somehow, many students have the illusion that a degree will bring them to the top automagically. It doesn't work that way. Getting a degree is a good step forward... If they work hard in the university and actually learn. Then they will have to start 3 (or 5) years later in the job market, meaning they will lack many important skills no university teaches and therefor earn less. Even if they learn quickly it takes years to catch up (both in attractiveness on the job market and salary) with those that got into the same field without an university education.
This is true in most fields (including Engineering), but especially true in business administration and management.
The true value of the university education comes after a few years, because many companies have internal rules about giving priority to educated workers. Often there is a hard celing on how far you can get without a master, and it's not unusual for people to go back and get a MBA not only because they need the skills, but also because they need the diploma to continue their career. Some companies even pays for those MBA's to their management.
Don't be silly. Right wing ranting? I'm as left wing as they come, barring communists, and I think that makes perfect sense. Get a degree in something useful if you want a job. It's really as simple as that.
That said, I do take issue with the "2.7 GPA" part of this. GPAs are overrated. Anyone who interviews with me (I do interviews, I don't own the place) is going to get no brownie points for "perfect attendance", but I don't give a damn what her GPA is. If she can answer my questions well, she'll get a job. If she can't, she won't.
This idea that some (many?) students have that a degree is all they should need to be the ideal candidate. Ummmm, no, not so much. You ought to be smart enough to notice that what you are being taught is highly theoretical in nature. Universities aren't tech schools, they aren't teaching you specific skills needed for specific jobs, they are institutions of higher education and research. They deal heavily in the theoretical. This is quite noticeable if you pay any attention in class at all.
Thus, you should take something away from this: The university isn't giving me all I need to be an ideal job candidate. Practical experience is something you need to go and get on your own. My recommendation, especially for IT, is to get a job on campus doing just that. Now I'm a little biased, I work professionally doing IT on campus so we hire students. However, it is a good way to get some extra money and a great way to get some practical experience. All in all, it seems to work out ok for our students. They seem to go on to get jobs. Heck one guy got his bachelors in computer engineering, went on to another school and got his masters, then decided "Know what? I don't really want to be an engineer, I want to do support," and went to work as a support guy. While they appreciated the masters degree, they cared more about his time spent as a support guy.
For tech stuff I recommend university jobs since there seem to be plenty of them, and they have no problem hiring students, of course. A student position must, by definition, be filled by a student of the university. Universities also like student positions since they are cheap. However there's other places you can look at, or internships, or perhaps even just working on projects on your own time. Whatever, the point is to try and get some real, practical experience, not just a good theoretical education.
Also it really annoys me the idea that some graduates have that they should get a "high level" position. Ummmm, no. You have little experience, that is the definition of entry level. The idea that you'd start out in a higher level job is rather silly. After all, if a BS did that, then the majority of people would be starting out in high level jobs, making them not high level. If you are a new graduate, well then accept the fact that you are at the "entry level" of the work force. Goes double if this is your first job period.
I had a 4.0 GPA from a top 10 university, but couldn't land a Deloitte internship. Ultimately, I got a job by reference. As any worthy nerd would imagine, this does not land well with one's ego. The job market is currently in a situation which can irrevocably steal your sense of self worth. What this student has done is an simply an act of exasperation and desperation.
I felt like I should share my story here.
I got my degree in interdisciplinary studies (Mathematics and IT) and have a fair GPA (I had chronic health issues through college) and have now submitted my 234th application+resume for jobs going from traders joe's to small it companies to IT healthcare to government jobs requiring clearance. Unfortunately most retail/wage jobs are not available due to the shrinking economy and you can only get them if you know people. Where I live you can only get a entry level job by getting security clearance. Problem: I've applied and the fact that I was hospitalized for a mental disorder twice precludes me from that. I am not unable to work and have maintained the problems stemming from a, admittedly severe, case of Type I bipolar disorder and PTSD unusually well. The auditors, despite letters from my all my doctors saying that I was fit for work and capable of handling state secrets didn't want to risk it. At this point I make an odd buck singing as I'm an operatic tenor (full-lyric/spinto) and will probably be able to reenter school under a scholarship for music (tenors who can be heard above a full orchestra and actually have a nice voice are rare). I'm also strongly considering going to cosmetology school as I've got an interest in make-up artistry and hair styling and it's a skill you can take anywhere. Until I get to the point, where I can foster my other talents, I'm applying for disability and SSI.
In the time I've spent now stuck in the house alone in the basement, I've found out that most of what I thought I knew from my college courses was actually watered down shit. I've essentially begun to reteach myself what I thought I knew through old math books that I've gathered from grad students that gave them to a book exchange program. Without projects in programming to work on I can notice my skills eroding and I'm not sure I'd be able to jump right into a job requiring that atm. I would contribute to some open source projects but the bar for the one's I'd like to work on (generally computer algebra systems and numerical computing) is so so high. I would go to grad school only I lack the courses (real analysis mainly) as my college did not provide any of the upper level coursework (at least not seriously [our numerical analysis was done by someone with their MA in math education and she had never touched matlab till two months prior and was technophobic, a complete joke]) necessary for that. I've learned that my degree is essentially worthless in almost every regard.
I was essentially forced to choose this particular school by my parents, who choose it because it's in biking distance and because the school has billboards (I shit you not) advertising that they get students jobs. They boast a 97% employment rate. They also host career fairs and have services for resume counseling and do hound you to use them. However, most of the fairs center around the schools most successful areas: nursing and accounting. They were once an all women 2-year school about a decade and some years ago, so this come as no surprise. They are also lead by a president who has amazing capabilities in manipulating figures. It took me a long while to realize that our ratings were mostly manufactured and overstated.
Now, however, after looking around at my graduating peers and listening to their stories, I realize that my school was not the only offender. In fact, there are a number of schools just like mine that have become, as one slashdotter here put it, 'degree manufactures'. They essentially live by manufacturing mediocre graduates, and taking their savings in the process, and consequentially flooding the workforce and devaluing degrees of talented people. I am at odds to decide though which category I fall in here. My degree is worthless in consideration of the fact that it failed to help me get a job and I learned little of my actual knowledge in the classes taken in pursuit of it. However I am (and I say this with the utmost confidence) more capable in what it prescribes then
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.
Damn straight. The university helps what they percieve to be good students find jobs in preference to percieved bad students. Your university is not altruistic, and wants to spread the message that it has good people.
In her complaint, Thompson says she seeks $70,000 in reimbursement for her tuition and $2,000 to compensate for the stress of her three-month job search.
... And she is also sueing them because 'life is hard'. COME ON.
Her resume says "I have no internship or experience".
Her GPA says that she got more C's than D's, and more D's than B's.
One of these is okay (C student because of a 30+ hour/week intership, or an A student that neglected experience is a okay hire).
If she can answer my questions well, she'll get a job. If she can't, she won't.
She can't, she ain't getting a job, and she is SUEING the university for it.
Really?
Not that I'm American, but when and how DO you get to your dream job?
In high school I wanted to be a programmer, but F'ed off too much and couldn't get a scholarship. When I went to the community college, they didn't have a programming degree. It was either a general IT degree or a Network Admin and Support degree, so I was like F it and took the latter. Turns out I really enjoyed it. Nt4, cushion chair administration and all that, and routing and switching. So I delivered pizza's for 3 years to a 2 year degree, and also got my A+ and MCP
After that my cousin, who works the drive through line at the bank, was talking to a customer who ran a mom and pop computer shop, and they were looking for help. So he told them about me, I got the interview, and got hired. Like $7.50 an hour or something, back in 2001/2002 I think. So I did that for 2 years, and then moved to another state because thats where the girl I liked lived. I worked through a temp agency doind shite jobs until a job opened up for a "helpdesk", where the full time employee was out on medical leave. They temped me for $11 an hour, and then 3 or 4 weeks later bumped it to $13 when they saw what I could do. Turns out the full time employee wasn't going to be coming back, so they hired me full time. A year or 2 later they made me salaried at $35,000 a year and promoted me from "helpdesk coordinator" to "network technician" (more like jr. systems admin, except the sys admin didn't like that title). After a total of ~4 years working there, I was making $41,000 +bonuses, and had aquired my Network+, MCDST, and MCSA, but no room for growth until the current system admin stepped out of the way.
At this point I started applying for jobs in the MD area, and after about 3 months and 3 interviews, I was offered a Systems Admin job for $45,000 which I took. I've been here 4 months and they just raised me to $47,000.
So it took me almost 10 years to get here, including college, but I'm pretty close to my dream job. Sure, I'd like to make more money, but that will come down the road when I can put a few years exp as a system admin on my resume. A 27 year old bringing home $600 a week after taxes, insurance, etc, all for what feels like dicking around on computers all day? Yes sir.
Well, pay in the U.S. has gone all haywire. My grandfather's best friend was a professional baseball player in his youth (quite a long time ago) -- and he was a plumber most of the time because pro ball didn't pay enough to live on. Imagine that.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Some years back, I was working I.T. at a midsize college in New York. The local supermarket was almost entirely staffed by people with Bachelor's and Master's degrees -- the clerks and stockboys were are "highly educated" and only working there until they could find a better job. They were relatively transient, of course, which is why the store management never changed: they only had high school degrees, but they lived locally.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
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.
Which is why he says America is doing it wrong. And as an American, I fully agree. That's why I chose to work at a place that gives me 22 vacation days a year, plus 12 sick days, plus every other Friday off during the summer. And you know what? I absolutely love my job! Sure, the pay is a little lower than what it could be, but the quality of life I get out of it more than makes up for the modest pay cut.
This guy's the limit!
anyone not born in the Mesopotamia region is likely descended from immigrants
Actually, the Mesopotamians probably walked there from Africa.
The resentment of management is so thick in this forum you could cut it with a knife.
The mid-level manager gains from promoting successful people up the corporate ladder. Managers are graded on their ability to build an effective team and recruit/develop high performing talent. An effective manager knows to provide the top people with the tools and environment they need to do their best. While it is true that the promotion carrot is often dangled to push someone harder, only a lousy manager believes they can dangle carrots without coming through on their end. We have an engineer on the team right now who was told he'd get a promotion if he took the role of lead engineer on a recent project and succeeded. He worked hard, impressed his teammates with his skill and ethic, and earned the promotion. That is no illusion. He was given an opportunity and he took it.
You've observed that outgoing type A's get noticed and are promoted more frequently than technical experts. I do agree with this (to some extent) having seen that the road to "Staff Engineer" is longer than the road to "Engineering Manager". There are basically two career paths for engineers: technical and management. The technical path is ascended by demonstrating technical expertise, the ability to guide large scale projects from the technical side, and the ability to mentor less experienced engineers. The quiet and reserved person can and will ascend through this path by demonstrating their technical ability, and accomplishing this takes years of good work. A quiet and reserved person who is also skilled at mentoring young engineers is perhaps more promotable due to the high demand and greater contribution a mentor can bring to the organization. On the management path, outgoing individuals tend to be noticed more for their management potential. A large part of a manager's job is working with other managers and reporting to executives, the majority of which are themselves open and outgoing. Likewise, a successful manager needs to be able to effectively work with people of varied personalities, some of which reserved people find reprehensible. On a similar note, negotiating for pay also demonstrates a skill a manager needs to have. The manager is graded on their ability to negotiate to get the best value for the company and not having the ability to negotiate will hurt their chances of being successful managers. For these reasons, outgoing people shining a light on their work are showing skills of a different sort, and may be promotable based partly on that display which you regard as purely superficial.
When a person earns a senior technical position, it is reasonably certain that they will succeed in this appointment. They can succeed in these positions for many years and have great careers all the way up to retirement, all the while mentoring the next batch of experts. On the other hand, when a person earns a management position, there is no guarantee that they will succeed, and most of them will probably fail (perhaps by committing the ills you've indicated in your post). Then they will either leave or be canned, opening positions for the next batch of potential managers. This is one driving reason for outgoing people to be more frequently promoted.
My advice would be for a person to examine what it is they want out of their career. "Success" doesn't equate to happiness, and if you've sacrificed your personality in efforts to gain pay, you have little chance at happiness in your career. If you aren't going to claim credit for everything based on your principles and your personality, then by all means stick with your principles a go about quietly getting the job done. In a well-functioning organization, real accomplishments do not go unnoticed, and there will always be a place for unassuming technical experts.
I'm old enough to have worked when the minimum wage was $1.65/hr, and immigrants were NOT taking those kind of jobs because IT WAS ACTUALLY ENOUGH TO LIVE ON. You were poor, but 40 hrs/week kept a roof over your head and kept you fed. It wasn't until Reagan/Bush froze the minimum wage for over a decade while inflation roared merrily along that a minimum wage job became a different proposition entirely.
"There are plenty of CEO's and managers who started out as dishwashers."
Bullshit, at least for CEOs. Competent employees haven't risen through the ranks to eventually become executives since at least the mid-'70s. Look at the car companies for example. Did anyone in their executive suites ever screw on lug nuts on the assembly line? No. Look at retailers. Did any of their execs ever work the sales floor? Except for the soon-to-retire CEO of Target the answer is 'No' again. Did any of the banking executives start out as a teller or counting change? Nope.
It's what I call "The MBA Disease", and it has infected American business for over three decades now. Companies hire these idiots directly out of college, with no real-world experience, as managers and promote those who are best at internal company politics. This, more than anything else, is the reason for our current economic state.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin