Get Herald RSSThe stormy economy may be starting to rain on college students' parade. Today, we reported that graduating seniors sense the job market is getting tight. A new survey of more than 3,100 recruiters shows that feeling is fairly accurate: Fifty-eight percent of employers are looking to hire recent college grads, down from 79 percent a year ago.
At the same time, the state's unemployment rate has hit its highest level in more than a decade, and students nationwide are dealing with mounting credit card debt.
This sort of news makes us nervous, but we're still optimistic. The Career Development Center says last year was its most successful for recruiting in five years, based on metrics like the number of firms that visited Brown, the number of interviews conducted and student participation rates. And, as one labor economist pointed out, even in a shrinking job market, we're fortunate enough to be some of the most competitive students around.
But what steps can the University take to help its graduating scholars more easily start on a career?
As we argued at the beginning of the semester, the University should begin modifying the BRUnet Web site, which connects students seeking employment and alums providing it. That the new Web site restricts access to alumni information and encourages students to send form letters is not a wise use of one of Brown's most fantastic resources, its dedicated alums.
Second, the University should allocate more resources toward graduate and professional school advising. It's still beyond us why the dean of the College consolidated pre-law and pre-med advising in the first place. But if we can infer that the job market may push more people into applying to professional and graduate schools, then the University should move quickly to expand the related advising resources, which are inadequate for a college our size, anyway. Many academic departments provide helpful career advice, including application deadlines and tips on job hunting. The University should increase financial support for departments giving concentrators extra help finding jobs.
Third, the Career Development Center can better use technology to communicate with students. While the Registrar and ResLife seem to understand that a clear, easy-to-use Web site can be a resource for students, CDC's home page is a mess of links that aren't helpful and of databases with different usernames and passwords we can never remember. For confused students starting a job search, a Web site that tells them where to start, rather than providing them a puzzling mass of links, would be most helpful. In addition, while we appreciate CDC's e-mail updates, more than a few hours advance notice on upcoming events would make it easier for us to actually attend.
Our last bit of job-hunting advice is for students, and very much for ourselves. We shouldn't stress, apply for graduate study that doesn't interest us or change career plans based on the latest economic forecast. Plenty of students still find great employment in plenty of fields. But a little bit of help from the University would leave us more time to spend on the academic and creative pursuits that should matter most.
