Liberals discuss non-existent job prospects for irrelevant majorsPosted on 06/12/2010 2:01:06 PM PDT by nwrep
Liberals discuss non-existent job prospects for irrelevant majors
Many from the Class of 2009 are living with their parents and working part-time retail jobs they could have landed without a degree. Others are taking more college classes to put off paying back student loans, which average more than $20,000. Many say they’ve lost self-confidence. Still, none of the 18 students from the Classes of 2009 and 2010 interviewed by The Oregonian expressed regret about going to college.
After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.
She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.
“It has gotten me pretty much nowhere,” she said.
Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria’s Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon. Now, a year after graduating in 2009 and applying for more than 100 jobs, she’s still working part time for the store while hoping to get a job with the American Cancer Society.
Malcolm Staudinger, 22, a 2009 graduate in environmental science from Portland State University, lives at home with his parents in Vancouver, Wash., and is now looking to Montana and Alaska for a job related to geographic information systems.
Matt Petryni, 24, a 2009 UO graduate, said the seminar has helped him regain hope after a discouraging year of rejections from the world of urban planning where he hopes to work.
Of course some graduates are landing jobs, particularly those with specific technical skills such as John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He’s the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering , which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.
Yep, P-Chem is tough. As a mathematician myself, I don't fuss so much about whether something's not immediately applicable but I loathe this pseudointellectual tripe that infests academia.
On the bright side, there are plenty of graduates from Oregon’s Colleges of Agriculture and Botany that are out making a killing growing medicinal marijuana...
I think there are three choices:
1. Nothing (at least nothing related to one’s degree)
2. Get another degree (in African studies or some real academic discipline with which African studies has a parasitic relation) and becomes a professor
or
3. Get work in Africa (probably for an NGO, but maybe for an actually productive company that has interests there, or maybe as an adviser to one of the kleptarchs that run the place).
Somehow if one is hanging around Oregon looking for work, rather than going to grad school, 2. is out by definition, and 3. seem unlikely.
It seems that lots of these college kids who have been sold a hugely unproductive and expensive bill of goods by their $$$ sucking liberal educational system will be prime candidates for future conversions into believers of conservatism upon eye-opening discovery.
It starts with High Schools offering pages of meaningless electives. Their job is to equip kids with basic building block skills. Public High Schools have been failing at this basic mission for at least 20 years.
It was a bear and a half, and all the people in the course worked for Air Force intelligence ~ except me!
New Graduates: You voted for change. You got it. This pain — yours and ours — is what happens when you give up freedom for security, when you swap the rough-and-tumble capitalist world of risks and rewards for the equally distributed misery of socialism. Now we can only hope that you will learn from you mistakes and help bring our formerly great republic back to its previous place as a shining light on a hill. Turn off the TV, ignore the Marxist/Socialist/Communist propaganda, and start thinking for yourselves. You can get a job, but it’s not going to be your dream career. So what! Rent a room, start earning a living, and get your pride back. Job are all around: McDonald’s is hiring, Detroit is short 700 policemen, and the Marines can always use a few good men. Godspeed!
Way to go Dux...from an educated Beaver - ‘73 and ‘90
The importance of an excellent professor/instructor who loves the topic and can teach it is huge. Teachers who can successfully convey the learning of the concepts of mathematical formulas goes a long way for students to comprehend and enjoy the material. Students often fail or drop those courses often because the instructor simply sucks at teaching.
The only thing he'll be able to do in his field is to create more philosophy majors... Even bacteria has mastered replication. (Slim: BA philosophy '81)
This is a quote from a Mark Steyn article posted here and I think it is appropriate to this article in that the 'victim group' studies programs in colleges these days reflect the "multicultural pose" Steyn refers to. A degree in Wymyn's Studies doesn't get anyone a job unless it is inflicting more Wymyn's Studies on those brains of mush that follow. Most college students would be better off getting a degree in Philosophy than any of the victim studies.
That, BTW, is a complete set of knowledge, just like engineering, or arts & sciences.
"Environmental Management", as it is euphemistically known, has a place in Planning.
Nothing like a town that has no plans in place to deal with garbage, trash and abandoned cars and industrial sites.
Today was her first class to get a certificate that would allow her to teach English overseas.
So, young college-aged people, how's that hope and change working out for you. And, no, its not all GW's fault.
CHUCK!
That was the fun stuff. And a BS in electronics in 82. Will that satisfy you? Oh, and Econ does not really go down very well. If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.
Exactly my point, on urban planning. As for the environmental sciences grad, she wasn't going into environmental sciences as a career field. She was looking into geographic information systems--which is not exactly a "fluff" field either.
They are the ones who draw up maps of cities and counties for emergency services and the like, to show "best/quickest routes" for fire/ambulance/police first-responders.
They also do disaster evacuation planning for cities and counties. My in-laws do this for Pierce County in Washington state. During flood season, they've had to draw up computer models for how the area is likely to flood, and show the best routes for evacuation should the river in the area exceed its banks by X amount.
Jogs are few and far between for experienced workers.
No picnic for good students in tech fields.
So job opps are very few for students with no job experience and a non-useful degree (i.e. Women’s Studies or Black Studies, etc)
16 dead and 20 missing and it's dollars to doughnuts the flood danger areas hadn't been marked in 21 years.
I am glad that I am not looking for a job in today’s environment where Government policy has mowed many manufacturing jobs offshore. That being said, I always found (and still do) Calculas interesting and useful. Look at it this way. if you can apply calculus with a little bit of probramming you will have a leg up on a lot of people.
I pefer to do my own probramming with my legs in the air and a gluten free Redbridge beer in my hand, TV clicker in the other.
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