I comprehend (understatement) your speculation that your alma mater may as well adopt the ‘Have a nice day’ motto. It seems appropriate (just superficial, unrealistic, escapist, and catchy enough) for most of our institutions of higher (?) learning today. I may even write Carnegie-Mellon and suggest that they grab it, too.
P.S. to this thread:
The latest government jobs report was issued moments ago. As usual, it is laughable (if you are an American …. and a masochist).
The number of manufacturing jobs is down, but the unemployment rate has fallen, too.
Note: Government methods of calculating unemployment are real scientific. If you recently graduated from college and can’t find employment, you are not considered unemployed. If you have been unemployed longer that your unemployment compensation lasts (i.e., your government-provided safety net expires), you are no longer considered unemployed. If you are working part time because you have given up hope of finding a real job, you are no longer considered unemployed.
(etc.)
The real unemployment rate is closer to ten percent than the six percent the government claims.
Note, today (one in the latest list of warm and fuzzy economic announcements): Sun Microsystems has announced that it is doubling the size of its software development center (which employs 300+ engineers, and is the main design center for the Netscape browser, among other things) in Beijing.
I’m so happy for China.
~ joanie 
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JULY 2003 Payroll employment has declined for the past 6 months. Job losses continued in manufacturing, while temporary help and other administrative services added workers. The unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in July; the number of unemployed persons was 9.1 million....
There were 2.0 million unemployed persons who had been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, about the same level as in June. They represented 21.7 percent of the total unemployed.
The civilian labor force decreased by 556,000 in July to 146.5 million. This decline follows an increase of a similar magnitude in June. The labor force participation rate fell to 66.2 percent. This matches the recent low for the series, previously reached in March. In July, total employment was down slightly to 137.5 million, and the employment-population ratio declined to 62.1 percent...
In July, about 1.6 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force, little changed from a year earlier. These individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Of the 1.6 million, 470,000 were discouraged workers who were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them. The other 1.1 million marginally attached had not searched for work for reasons such as child-care or transportation problems.