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Student Sues University Because She's Unemployable
digitalhermit writes "A C student (not the programming language) has sued her former school because she has been unable to find a job in the three months since her graduation. Yup, some schools are degree mills, but this just seems... bizarre."
As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record. But Monroe's career-services department has put forth insufficient effort to help her secure employment, she claims.
"They're supposed to say, 'I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right -- can you interview this person?' They're not doing that," she said.
Words fail me (briefly).
The best thing to come out of this story is that Ms. Thompson has sent out a nice big red-flag warning to any potential employers not to touch her with a barge pole. After all, if she does this, you can pretty much guarantee she'll sue her employer the moment she gets passed over for a promotion (after all, she shows up for work most days and her last project wasn't a total disaster).
"It doesn't make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald's and Payless. That's not what they planned."
It might not be what they planned, but it is the reality of the job market. The huge expansion in higher education, along with widespread dumbing down of course material and grade inflation, has created a market where many apparently middling graduates just aren't going to have a chance at getting a job that genuinely requires graduate skills. A lot of students who 20 years ago would have been considered middling (but would have gone on to get graduate-level jobs) are now clustered around the top of the class.
At the same time, the self-esteem and all-must-have-prizes philosophies that now pervade much of education have convinced everybody that they deserve to walk right into their dream job, just because they've done nothing more than show up for class and turn in assignments most of the time. The entitlement mentality is right out on show in this story. I do a fair bit of recruitment for my employer and I see plenty more applicants who seem to feel the same way. They don't get very far.
There is an unfortunate side to this. A lot of teens and their parents are still duped into believing that a degree will still lead to a guaranteed "good" job. There's plenty of material out there to counter-act this view and show that in many (possibly even now a majority) of cases, it's a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, this usually gets dismissed as right wing ranting (which I will no doubt get accused of in the replies to this post). The other unfortunate side is that some employers with vacancies that could be filled by a bright high-school graduate seem to feel the need to advertise for a graduate just to "keep up with the Jonses", though I've noticed a slight reversal of this trend recently.
I'd advise Ms. Thompson that with her achievements and attitude, she needs to lower her expectations. She mentions McDonalds sneeringly, but the fact is that they have a general corporate policy of promoting most of their talent internally. If she is as capable as she thinks she is and went to work there with the intention of proving herself (and the attitude to match), she could have a perfectly reasonable career. The same is true of any number of other employers that she probably considers below her social status. Of course, she won't.
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.
I really hope this chick loses the case, and gets saddled with a bunch of court costs to add to her student loans, that way nobody will ever try anything so stupid again. Three month job-hunt? In this economy? College education is no guarantee of a job, and if you can't sell yourself, you're going to be unemployed for a lot longer than that. Your college can't convince employers to give you a job, they can provide some contacts and resources to help you, but that's it.
Oh no... it's the future.
Somehow, many students have the illusion that a degree will bring them to the top automagically. It doesn't work that way. Getting a degree is a good step forward... If they work hard in the university and actually learn. Then they will have to start 3 (or 5) years later in the job market, meaning they will lack many important skills no university teaches and therefor earn less. Even if they learn quickly it takes years to catch up (both in attractiveness on the job market and salary) with those that got into the same field without an university education.
This is true in most fields (including Engineering), but especially true in business administration and management.
The true value of the university education comes after a few years, because many companies have internal rules about giving priority to educated workers. Often there is a hard celing on how far you can get without a master, and it's not unusual for people to go back and get a MBA not only because they need the skills, but also because they need the diploma to continue their career. Some companies even pays for those MBA's to their management.
For UK folks, it's equivalent to a low 2:2, and approaches a third.
This is funny because just the other day I was talking with my mother, a director of hiring at a large telco, and she was talking about how the young people she brings in feel entitled.
I told her I agreed, then asked if I could borrow $25. When she said no I wrote the local paper exposing the BULLSHIT THAT THIS IS!
pretty much all collages help graduates find jobs
Are you serious? Shit! I knew I should have listened to my mom when she told me to save all of my artwork from elementary school.
Someone who attends an honours course and is awarded an ordinary degree: i.e. you didn't fail spectacularly and you showed up to lectures so we'll give you a piece of paper.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
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.
Can anyone explain what is a C in the US in the percentile range? Is this synonymous with miserable failure? What about the reputation of Monroe College?
A 'c' encompasses a range of scores - the GPA (Grade Point Average) is more telling.
The highest GPA you can get (with 100% marks on everything) is 4.0.
The national average GPA for college graduates is 3.2 (according to a quick google search)
She got a 2.7, which while not horribly bad, definitely puts her below average.
Never heard of Monroe college.
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.
Maybe next time they'll think before running a subject called "How to sue people for profit"
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.
For not teaching her about how stupid it is to file frivolous lawsuits.
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.
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.
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
> That she expects to earn a large amount of money by being immediately put into a "management" position and paid vast sums of money solely due to the fact that she is such a wonderful person and "deserves" to be a manager with a large salary.
What are you talking about? Any half-competent career services department should be able to see that anyone that lawsuit-happy who has that big of a sense of entitlement has a bright future at the RIAA (or any of the other MAFIAA franchises).
This is just a simple matter of matching up the person's personality and skill set to the right organization...
Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.
Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
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
Just found this article in which the "Ski Channel" is going to offer her a job:
Whenever I read a headline like this I think to myself, "Alright, some jackass is trying to get a bunch of attention. Surely there must be more to this story."
Imagine my surprise when I realized that, no, the title is 100% accurate. Amazing.
-William Brendel
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
If you'd read TFA you'd know she has no lawyer, none at all. Find a real case of irresponsible lawyerism to use when making your rant k?
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