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Oregon graduates (with irrelevant degrees in liberal minors) struggle to launch careers
Oregonian ^ | June 13, 2010 | Bill Graves

Posted 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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: beavers; brainwashing; ducks; education; liberalism; oregon
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To: nwrep

Career plan:

Fill your head full of liberal claptrap while pursuing a degree in some kind of worthless leftist psuedo-science.

Graduate and whine that the Mickey Mouse degree you wasted your money on isn’t opening any doors for you.

Get an entry level part time job at minimum wage, scrounge off Mom and Dad a few more years and wait until 2011 so you can vote for Obama The Wetback again.


61 posted on 06/12/2010 5:54:21 PM PDT by Iron Munro (Win the War On Poverty - Stop bringing in foreign reinforcements for the other side.)
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To: tflabo
will be prime candidates for future conversions into believers of conservatism upon eye-opening discovery.

I bless you for your optimism, my American friend. However, in my cerusty cynicism, I will just pray that 10% see that light. The tattooed and pierced "Liberal Arts" graduates are largely very ignorant people, apparently from some other planet, most of whom could not have gotten their 8th grade certificate from a Maine Public School of the 1940's. Of course, there is a sensible and intelligent minority of people among them, but unfortunately, they too have very few factual bits in their "hard drives."

It ain't George Bush's fault. It's ours. They are our children and grandchildren after all.

But once that kool-aid of Karl and the Socialists has been drunk, the drinkers tend to stay drunk. They voted for hope and change. I hope the Chinese don't change them too harshly. Or the Muslims. Or the Russians. Ignorance + sweeping demographic changes could very well wipe out what you and I think of as the "United States of America,"

62 posted on 06/12/2010 5:56:02 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Obama: Reviving States' Rights.)
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To: Nervous Tick

With a degree available on rolls in any toilet, what a surprise that they can’t get jobs that pay them what THEY think they’re worth.

Anyone who got a degree in engineering or a hard science can make a comfortable living on that single degree.


63 posted on 06/12/2010 6:01:56 PM PDT by Ouderkirk (Democrats...the party of Slavery, Segregation, Sodomy, and Sedition)
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To: Dilbert San Diego
How many job ads have you ever seen for African Studiers, requiring a degree in African Studies?

The perfect qualification for Government Work, which soon, ala Greece, will be the ONLY work.

The "African Studies Programs" (Majored in by Michelle Obama at PRINCETON,) are laughable and almost without any academic merit.

In a word, they are the application of a very watered down version of the Marxist dialectic to race relations. I recommend this field be renamed "Obamstudies." This is what Barak Hussein Obama Junior Studied and why he knows absolutely nothing about anything and has mastered only the reading of his masters' words from two teleprompters, twitching his gaze from one to the other, as a boa constrictor viewing his next meal.

64 posted on 06/12/2010 6:05:17 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Obama: Reviving States' Rights.)
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To: tflabo

yep, one must seek an “education” on one’s own. Training is the only value out there these days. The philosophy, literature and history courses I loved have been utterly perverted by the Marxists. Sometimes I wish I had gone into academia just to oppose them. We have ceded way too much to the fools.


65 posted on 06/12/2010 6:05:31 PM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: tflabo
Science and Math courses are taught now by Chinese and other foreign teaching assistants who would have a very hard time ordering a Big Mac in English.

This means that today's techies have to learn stuff pretty much for themselves, ironically making them tougher and better disciplined people.

One must admire the grit of these foreign grad students, too. Mastering technical subjects without any knowledge of or cognizance of the Western canon and languages from which they spring is mighty tough. Too gd many of them here, though/

66 posted on 06/12/2010 6:11:47 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Obama: Reviving States' Rights.)
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To: rlmorel
Hard? Physical Chemistry nearly gave me a nervous breakdown, it was so close to the edge of what I was able to comprehend.

Same here. PC was almost my downfall, but then, so was invertebrate embryology. Pushed me to my limits. I had some incredibly smart profs that knew their stuff and made sure I learned it.

67 posted on 06/12/2010 6:14:05 PM PDT by OregonRancher (Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints)
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To: nwrep

Ok, everyone say after me:

“You want fries with that?”


68 posted on 06/12/2010 6:15:55 PM PDT by Oceander (The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance -- Thos. Jefferson)
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To: Tijeras_Slim

You got that right!


69 posted on 06/12/2010 6:16:09 PM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: nwrep

my boss is a P.E. major, I am an English major. Our company makes a product that has nothing to do with either. He’s out of shape, I still read a lot. He thought he would be a high school football coach, and I thought I would be a lawyer (was for a decade). He makes more money than any high school coach, and I make about as much as I did lawyering (and have time to read, and can sleep at night) and am a lot happier. These kids should get a job, work at it, learn, and be on the lookout for ways to advance. Getting a degree in x,y or z doesn’t guarantee anything, and might mean you wasted four years listening to and reading a bunch of garbage.


70 posted on 06/12/2010 6:17:31 PM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: Kenny Bunk

that was problem in those fields 25 years ago. Some things never change. Teaching assistants. Ugh.


71 posted on 06/12/2010 6:20:53 PM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: muawiyah

Quite probable that they haven’t. Even more prosperous areas don’t update it yearly, usually.


72 posted on 06/12/2010 6:21:26 PM PDT by The Grammarian
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To: Tolsti2
What happened to the law business? Overloaded cause it got too popular for awhile?

Nowadays, a lot of the grunt work that in the past was done by recent law school graduates can be offshored cheaply to India. Not as much need now to hire fresh law school grads.

73 posted on 06/12/2010 6:22:49 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Kenny Bunk
This means that today's techies have to learn stuff pretty much for themselves, ironically making them tougher and better disciplined people.

One of the reasons I enjoy being in tech. Constantly changing, yes I have to study to keep up, but I actually find that aspect enjoyable. Learning new things should be fun.

74 posted on 06/12/2010 6:24:29 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: cdcdawg
Hey, I ain't no lacist!

In fact I rearned Carcurus from one of those Chinese guys (I think) although I am still puzzled over ramda function you put ova he. But I am a master of argolithms, yoo razy boy!

75 posted on 06/12/2010 6:29:46 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Obama: Reviving States' Rights.)
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To: muawiyah

“Urban Planning” why not Architecture...there’s nothing wrong with architecture-—George Castanza


76 posted on 06/12/2010 6:32:43 PM PDT by gman992
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To: gman992

I don’t know why these people are whining...we have the greatest economy since the Founding Fathers ever founded something....

Kelly Ripa ping!


77 posted on 06/12/2010 6:33:56 PM PDT by gman992
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To: Kenny Bunk

I am so glad I took A.P. calculus in high school. There was a movement to require English proficiency tests for TAs at my university. The idea was shot down by the administration and student paper as ...... wait for it....... you know it’s coming....... racist.


78 posted on 06/12/2010 6:43:16 PM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: rlmorel

I turned in the same paper for Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, and got an “A” every time. I think that with a couple of pages of edits, I could have done it again with Political Science.


79 posted on 06/12/2010 6:47:45 PM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: cdcdawg

I knewed it. Yoo ah lacist! Yoo wir frunk my carcurus coaws fo shoe. I no cay if ramda function is OK!


80 posted on 06/12/2010 6:49:16 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Obama: Reviving States' Rights.)
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