Student Sues University Because She's Unemployable 1251
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."
Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
The Entitlement Generation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's hope she gets laughed out of court.
thou shalt get a degree (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What's a C student at Monroe College? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Is she an average or plain-awful student?
It's all about who you know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
ive seen this time and time again. how many people do we know that have some kinda bachelors, and DON'T use it?? or maybe work but have a job in another unrelated field. I think that colleges overstate their utility in some respects. Not to overgeneralize this, but they are in the business of selling degrees to most.
Motivation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
God, the sense of entitlement in the US is making me sick...
Re:Welcome to a harsh world (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't help that, in my case at least, I was told by pretty much everyone from highschool teachers, through careers advisors and university staff that "a Degree will bring me to the top automagically" - I wasn't exactly convinced, but when everyone's telling you that it's easy to buy into the hype.
Then you leave university and end up in the real world where you either a) Realise it was all a load of bollocks and get on with your life or b) Get all bitter about it as this woman appears to have done.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I'm American, but when and how DO you get to your dream job?
In this country, you can do an apprenticeship in just about anything. So I went into IT. I was good in school (top five of the class) and I showed above average skills in whatever I was doing.
I'm at my third job now. Let's skip how good or bad that one is and just get to what's interesting to me at the moment: Looking for a job. Personally, I'm a guy who is honest about what he can and can not do. I somehow convinced myself that good jobs cannot be had through lying because hey, if you had to lie to get it, can you expect an honest work environment? Either they overstated their requirements and you CAN do the job (but then what else are they going to expect from you that is not part of the job?) OR they were serious, you CAN'T do the job and what then?
For all three jobs, I've been working for sub-standard wage (meaning my salary was somewhere between 50% and 75% of what my work was worth), did unpaid overtime and was generally reachable at all times. I did not have the means to get certification and the companies had no interest in me having them.
So now I'm hearing "Well, for someone in IT, you did remarkably little certification". Or what about "Ah, so you wouldn't call yourself a geniusHmm..."?
Fact remains that doing honest and hard work brings you NOTHING. You must be a quack, a liar and just basically leech everything out of the company that you possibly can. Then you go to the next and rinse and repeat. It's what the managers do and it's what is expected of you. Being a carpenter is starting to sound bloody perfect just about now.
Re:It's all about who you know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to a harsh world (Score:3, Insightful)
A degree gets you in the door.
Or at least it does if you do a degree related to a particular profession. There was a time when a degree, any degree, would have put you several rungs up the career ladder but that doesn't seem to be the case now. Especially as the career "ladder" itself is more like an assault course, where the best chance of advancement is usually to move jobs every few years.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem here is that society at large has come to view universities and higher education in general as advanced vocational training. The trouble is, the universities themselves have no such delusion.
In short, it is impossible for universities to provide vocational training for professions. There are too many jobs, too many ways of doing them, and too many changes in practices in every single profession for any one institution to have a ghost of chance of keeping up with all of them.
Now, there is some element of "job training" in higher education, but only in an academic sense. You can be taught about binary trees and methods to search them in a university course, but there simply isn't time to train you in how to use the IDE, language and indeed operating system that you will be asked to implement those searches by your employer. And computer science courses are in fact VERY vocational as courses go. Most engineering course will only be able to teach you how to use a bandsaw and AutoCAD. Small use when you have to use the latest tabletop wonder from Hansvedt.
At the end of the day, final training for a job must be done by employers. Unfortunately, many skimp on this and complain that Universities aren't doing their job. HR departments demand experience not because they believe it will provide quality, but because the company does not want to go to the bother of expense of actually passing on skills. Yes, Graduates do come out of universities will few "real world" skills. But this has always been the case. What has changed is a fickle employment culture in which companies hire and fire at will and thus cannot risk training someone only to see them run off at a moments notice for a higher paid position.
I wouldn't go quite so far. It is true that certain courses can be difficult to get a job out of, but it's also true that not taking any course can make it very difficult to get a well paid, and indeed fulfilling job. A university course should be chosen for two reasons; Interest in the subject, and the prospect of a vocation. Both are important. If people choose wisely and put in the effort, their time spent in university will be far from a waste of time and money, and indeed will be time well spent and very well rewarded. Fours years of good education will allow you to hold your own in your chosen field, and prepare you for a changing world and workplace. This is not guaranteed, but the odds are certainly in your favour.
Re:oh sit down and stfu (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Epic fail (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, while it is tempting to put the blame squarely on her shoulders, it is probably not her own fault that she grew up with such a sense of entitlement.
Her family/school are likely very much to blame though, for not teaching her how the world works.
Re:That will teach them (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing everyone going 'omg she's stupid!' has never heard a college/uni promise to find you a job after you graduate. Of course, I heard the promise and knew it for what it was: Nothing. But I did briefly wonder at the time if there was any recourse after spending 10's of thousands of dollars and having them break their promise.
In fact, I didn't find a job for a year and a half after I graduated. My 'degree' didn't help me get the job -at all-. It ended up being knowledge that I had before I even went to college that got me the job.
I hope she wins.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it means she didn't even learn how to suck up or act properly.
She's been taught to think she knows how to manage (business administration) geeks (IT), and here we all are already laughing at her.
Good grief - I worked at McD's while I was still at university, and it was a powerful incentive to understand the world and that I had to get off my own fat arse to get anywhere better.
Oh yeah - it was a good education in making my own food too, and brewing coffee - a skill that was finally extremely useful when I did enter the corporate world. Maybe an honours IT grad *shouldn't* be making his boss coffee, but doing it right when the need arose raised my visibility instantly.
Miss Thompson - take a fucking number - get a goddam clue, go out and get a REAL job, like serving customers, helping people. You now pour scorn on those secretary chicks that didn't go to uni, but they've got incomes, and boyfriends, and nice clothes, and you just got your own bag of poor-little-me.
Somebody call the waaahmbulance - we got a bad case of memememe needs rehabilitation. Poor little poppet - suck my dick.
2.7 doesn't qualify you for anything EXCEPT MacDonald's these days.
Advertising and expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It Would Be Funny, If Only It Weren't True. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Why take her statements at face value? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to think this is about her sense of entitlement - I'm not so sure. I suspect this is more about her moral character, or lack thereof. While I realize there is a lawyer boogeyman conservatives like to drag out whenever an apparently frivolous lawsuit makes the news, there are definitely a few people whose first thoughts immediately jump to lawsuits and "how much can I get?" at even the slightest hint of perceived wrong (which, in this case, I guess does boil down to a sense of entitlement after all). We can blame the lawyers, and I often do; but for each case like this there's also a willing client who's only thought is one regarding money.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
An inflated sense of entitlement isn't something you can blame on schools, especially not using conservative mythology about how 'libruls' run eduction.
A sense of entitlement is stoked by advertising. Because you're worth it etc. Its stoked by the old 'American dream' lie - that just by putting in hard work you can make it (and thus by extension, anyone who struggles has noone else to blame, making the US a brutally unsympathetic society).
This girl was sold a lie; that she could join the rich and powerful, if only she played along with their game (and voted for millionaires to have tax cuts, of course). She is now being hit with a harsh dose of reality, and seems to think a simple court case will make that reality go away. It will not.
Re:Motivation? (Score:2, Insightful)
shhh... The RIAA doesn't like competition
She even screwed up her excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
"...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..."
She's got it backwards. Aquarium algae can get a 2.0 GPA with a little training. If all the poor, dumb little chit can manage is a 2.7, then she'd be better off claiming she skipped two thirds of her classes and spent the whole last term drunk. At least that way, an employer might think she had brains and a commitment to doing the job right.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, did you try comparing that map of yours to the actual terrain ?
Yeah, unemployment is up here, in that part of europe with the highest education (Scandinavia), why we're at above 2% now, which is a lot more than the comfortable 0.8% we used to enjoy prior to the current crisis.
How high is your unemployment again ?
Nothings new (Score:2, Insightful)
You are generally unemployable coming out of any University. A University teaches you the theory of the subject matter and how to learn. Its up to you to take those learning skills and master its practical application in the real world.
It's only them do you become employable/useful in a commercial environment. Otherwise you don't stand a chance of getting a job over other students who do (unless of course you took a minor in bull-sh*ting).
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
At least certification is a more reliable indicator of actual job knowledge than a degree, these days.
Huh??? Most knowledgeable IT directors that I've worked with have sneered at certifications. The only ones who were impressed where the PHB types. A certification doesn't prove anything other than you studied for the certification. Why do you think there are so many lovely acronyms for them? "Minesweeper and Consultant and Solitaire Expert" It's been my experience that most people who enter the IT world with nothing more than a certification are useless. I'd hire someone with experience over someone with a certification any day of the week.
I'd rather have a degree over a certification any day of the week. A degree equates to more money from almost every employer on the planet. Combine it with job experience and it almost doesn't even matter what the degree is in. Buddy of mine makes $20k more a year than I do doing the exact same job -- his degree is in marketing of all things.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
You bored me. And if that's the face you show to an employer, you bored him, too.
First of all, go ahead and sit for the certifications. If you are at all good at what you do, you'll pass them.
Second, you don't have to lie, but you do have to tell a story; a compelling narrative. I am not interested, as an employer, in whinny stories of how hard you worked, or how you worked for depressed wages and unpaid overtime. In fact, that that does tell me as an employer is that if I need cheap help,you're probably going to be a pushover for the job. What you have to tell me is what you did. What you accomplished.
I was recently unemployed for five months. I learned to get good at telling my story. I went through countless drafts of my c.v. and presentation. I learned to adapt to fit in whatever situation I was in. And I knew my worth. It is possible to succeed, but you have to be diligent and compelling.
And finally, forget about this "dream job" thing. Unless you are in business for yourself and successful. You will never find a "dream job" working for someone else.
Re:The Entitlement Generation. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The applicants are not the only ones who feel "entitled".
Employers, especially larger ones, feel "entitled" to canned labor without job training.
The employer equivalent of your quoted statement is: "I should get skilled labor even though I don't want to invest one cent in training or orientation, and if I don't i'll blame the colleges and call the applicants selfish and 'entitled'"
BA in IT? Ref "IT Croud" TV Show (Score:1, Insightful)
It means she's ready to manage IT people ... er. Yeah.
If you haven't seen "The IT Croud", now is the time. Her degree is what the main woman has.
IMHO, that degree is only useful in very large corporations or government jobs. You know, places were people who don' actually 'do anything' can get a paycheck.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
It's even more frequent in socialist-minded Europe (Russia included), where more than half of population have higher education (because it's mostly free, especially in post-communist countries). Then everyone expects to get an "advanced" job and despises menial labour or "low-level" technical jobs (like say, a car technician).
This is not true, I don't know anyone who fills that description. For example, plumbers are often paid more than people with degrees - there were even stories a few years ago of people dropping out from Computer Science courses at prestigious universities like Cambridge and Oxford to work as plumbers and car mechanics.
US unemployment: 9.5%
UK unemployment: 7.6%
It all results in high unemployment ("advanced" jobs are rare by definition) for European "aborigines", while uneducated (but willing to work everywhere) migrants fill the labour market gap.
How is this different from Mexican immigrants in the US? What is that statistic - one third of Californian jobs is filled by a (legal or illegal) Mexican immigrant, and the economy would collapse if they actually threw out all the illegals? Something like that... There is no European nation that has seen the tide of immigration that the US has - in fact, almost every US citizens is descended from immigrants!
Re:I've no idea either (Score:4, Insightful)
When I graduated (2003'ish), we hadn't yet recovered from the dot.com bubble bursting. I knew people with actually useful academic credentials that took longer than 3 months to get a job. Since the media keeps telling me we're now in a recession, somehow it seems like this idiot's expectations are WAY out of whack. The only way someone like that would get hired so quickly would be in a boom with a serious shortage of people.
Truth in advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
That is really a gross exaggeration. For a start the typical IQ for a university student is 125, 100 or less really don't even get a look in. There is no where in the world that modern marketing does not put down menial jobs and inflate the importance of qualified profession and this is spread through out mass media. Now c'mon how many parents tell their children from the earliest age that they want them to grow up to be labourers, cleaners or junk food professionals.
The reason they bring in 'cheap' labour from overseas, cheap, get it cheap, because the work fucking sucks and nobody wants to do that shitty work for shitty pay (pay people enough and they will be quite happy to do the most disgusting jobs, gonzo porn anyone). Now I have done many jobs, and weirdly enough I did enjoy the physical labour but, seriously fuck you if you think I would do that hard work for minimum wage. I know which were the easier jobs the professional ones with the higher pay versus brickies labourer, soldier, waiter (everyone else eating, drinking and smoking while I'm not, fuck you lazy buggers go find a buffet), production worker, fish cleaner (damn them freezers were cold numb ears, nose and hands were really irritating). I never look down my nose at people doing the crap jobs and yes they are way underpaid for the hard work they do.
It is hard to blame someone for feeling frustrated after running up a massive debt pursuing a career that from the earliest age via every message system possible has been told they must get a higher education and a professional job, otherwise you end up as a menial labourer, with no real hope of a future and it's your fault that you are exploited by the rich and greedy and an uncaring government and, by a whole bunch of stuck up arse holes who do have professional jobs and think menial works should be treated like shit on minimum wage and be thankful for it.
Re:The Fucked Over Generation (Score:4, Insightful)
You think she is entitled simply because she threw $70K of her parent's money down the drain and expects it to get her a job.
The reason university graduates of my generation had no problem getting a job was because the standards were much higher: typically only 5% of the population got a degree.
University is not and shouldn't be for everybody.
So yes, you're right, the standard of graduates has gone downhill since then: which is why so many of them can't get jobs.
They're the unemployable 'me me me' entitlement generation.
Another way of putting it is evolution in action: at least you failures are less likely to reproduce.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
I recommend reading this article: How to do what you love [paulgraham.com]. There is a lot of truth in it. Getting your dream job is a matter of persistence, being willing to apply to companies, building contacts, and realising that you are unlikely to end up in your dream job straight away, it takes years of working towards the goal before it comes within reach:
Fact remains that doing honest and hard work brings you NOTHING. You must be a quack, a liar and just basically leech everything out of the company that you possibly can.
Sounds like you're working for large corporations where that kind of behaviour can go unchecked. In a small company, you'd be thrown out very quickly.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, and IT graduate with ZERO experience. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
I've learned that on my first year in this profession (also IT).
The belief that many of us gifted "techies" have that technical excellence, skill and hard-working will make us stand out from the mediocre crowds, be noticed and promoted is one big fat illusion more often than not kept alive by manipulative managers wanting to get extra free hours from us (so that THEY get fat bonuses).
Even in the technical areas, the professional world out there is never a pure meritocracy based on one's technical excellence.
In truth, non-technical skills are often also important (guess who's more useful: the guy that gets the requirements right from the client and implements them in a competent way or the guy that gets the wrong requirements and implements the wrong thing but with an exceptionally good design and code?) and those that evaluate one's abilities during the selection/bonus-evaluation/promotion-evaluation process are often not technically skilled enough to evaluate technical skills above a certain level (they're management, usually not technical, not-good enough techies or simply too far out from their technical days) or will simply outwit the less negotiation-experience techies into taking a lower pay.
Consider the simple example of two equally good programmers:
- One is quiet and reserved: the kind of guy that finds a critical bug, fixes it and checks it in source control without telling anybody
- The other one is loud and outgoing: he'll tell to whomever is willing to listen that he found a critical bug, proceed to fix it and check the fix in source control and then let everybody know that the issue is fixed.
Guess who will get the next promotion!!!?
Another example would be two equally good programmers, both known in their company for the quality of their work. They both feel that they are being underpaid in their company:
- One starts looking at other opportunities, maybe gets one or two good proposals, goes to management and asks for a salary raise saying that he "likes to work there but feels that he's not being fairly rewarded for the work he's doing there versus other professionals in the same area".
- The other one just accepts its and wallows in the misery of being underpaid.
Guess who will get the (biggest) raise!!!?
In the end, the secret to success in IT is still down to soft-skills such as self-promotion, image management, networking, pro-activeness, a willingness to take risks and others. Just look up the definition of EQ (Emotional Quotient, similar to IQ but measuring something else) - it's much correlated with success than IQ, and you will find that the characteristics that are evaluated to determine EQ are very much the kind of thing that make it easier for one to follow the path to success.
Re:What's a C student at Monroe College? (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to be very careful with those numbers as they are in no way comparable to other universities/"clown colleges" (read Community Colleges). My university's engineering college average is 2.8 (around a B-/C+ range) and has a bell curve distribution, very few courses can be graded straight scale due changing professors from semester to semester.
On top of that, there are some universities that have rampant GPA inflation that makes their graduates looking all the more appealing.
When it comes down to it, are you going to take a 2.7 from a prestigious university or an online university?
Steely Dan must've met her type before (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:What's a C student at Monroe College? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Epic fail (Score:1, Insightful)
she probably will
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Personal finance should be taught in highschool. It's a shame that it's been eliminated many years ago.
as a drop out...... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the course is looking worthless, perhaps it is, and it's not worth wasting more time and money on it. If you spent 3 years of your life doing a worthless course, what does it say about you? You're left 3 years older and still lacking the required skills.
I dropped out of a virtual reality course (name should have been a clue, but I was young and naive) after a year and a half because all my learning was self taught and the course interfered. It was all very disappointing and depressing. Dropping out was like a weight off my shoulders. I spent six months moving my C++ programming from the Acorn to Windows and then got a job doing 3D engine programming. It's nearly a decade later now and I have seen very "qualified" programmers not worth the space they use up. I'm sure some of the good programmers I know are better for having done "good" courses, but I don't think a good course can make a bad programmer good and plenty of good programmers who did "bad" courses have told me it was a waste of time.
Ultimately I think market forces have caused many courses to set the bar too low, and not to raise it high enough during the course (or recruiting of lecturers?). Maybe some come back from people who complete the courses and come out without employable skills is a good thing.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
and sprinkle riddalin on your cornflakes
Let me guess.... theater major?
Ritalin [wikipedia.org]
Didn't it show up with a red line under it in your browser?
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that the economy can always grow?
This sounds like a terrible idea. I don't want to spend my entire career job-hunting.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Frivolous Lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
Her lawyer is supposed to tell her that her case is frivolous, because there's no reasonable argument that the liability is the school's, not hers. But instead her lawyer is suing. They're supposed to protect the court, and thereby the public which funds and depends on the court, from frivolous lawsuits.
Courts should be throwing out a lot more of these cases as frivolous. Opposing lawyers should be arguing that the other lawyer's case is frivolous. When a lawyer brings a case ruled frivolous, they should pay a fine equal to the average judgment award in cases of that type. A second frivolous ruling should suspend the lawyer for six months, and require they pass the bar exam again in that state to continue practicing. A third frivolous ruling should strip them permanently of their license in that state, disbarment. And any frivolous ruling in any state should cause them to go through hearings in every state in which they're licensed to determine whether that strike should count in that state too, towards eventual disbarment there. Not to mention what their insurance policy should charge once they've demonstrated their high risk.
Being a lawyer is a privilege that is equal to easy profits (there's never a shortage of drunk driving cases for money). Abusing the privilege that the public subsidizes at every step, in the delivery of justice essential to a functional society, should see that privilege stripped as soon as it can justly be stripped. Let these frivolous lawyers get jobs in the circus, where clowns are to be laughed at instead of respected.
Re:The Fucked Over Generation (Score:5, Insightful)
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? [slashdot.org]
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
Re:The Fucked Over Generation (Score:3, Insightful)
The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.
Every generation has had trouble finding good jobs. There are always notable exceptions when a particular field is hot, and of course the economy goes up and down. And I'll grant you that it's not your fault how the economy is doing 22 years after you were born. But it's too bad you can't tell my grandparents that they had it easy in the Great Depression. You'd get off their lawns in hurry, and with nothing to console you but your shelf of participation trophies.
Like a lot of people, I graduated into a bad economy. Fortunately my GPA was a little better than a 2.7, so grad school was an option.
Yes, college is considerably more expensive these days, even after inflation. There used to be much more direct and indirect federal support. I sure hope your generation registers to vote and then remembers to vote for its own best interests. Your parents' generation got way too hung up on whatever "values" were being preached at the time, and got skinned alive in the bargain. Probably won't help you, but maybe you can change something for your kids.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, plumbers are often paid more than people with degrees - there were even stories a few years ago of people dropping out from Computer Science courses at prestigious universities like Cambridge and Oxford to work as plumbers and car mechanics.
Well that's okay. I'll take the hit.
It's got to be more pleasant working on algorithms than being elbow deep in somebody's toilet.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Because life is not about work.
Flaky pastry (Score:2, Insightful)
"At Monroe, students take a Liberal Arts core and combine it with their program of choice to ensure a well rounded, comprehensive education. Programs include Accounting, Baking and Pastry, Business Management, Criminal Justice, Culinary Arts, General Business, Health Services Administration, Hospitality Management, Information Technology, Medical Administration, Medical Assisting, Nursing, and Public Health."
This mishmash of subjects doesn't inspire confidence in Monroe's academic focus, and one wonders about the academic rigour of its courses. It doesn't appear to be a traditional degree mill, but there's a disturbing vagueness behind the gushing self-adulatory rhetoric that sounds a warning note.
A mediocre degree from such an institution can't be expected to give its graduates any hope of beating stiff competition from traditional degrees awarded by more substantial institutions.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive, so more wealth is being created than in the society with 15% unemployment (e.g. Detroit, MI). Also, assuming the companies paying "increasingly ridiculous" salaries are reasonably sane, they will only pay those salaries if it will help them increase their revenue or reduce their costs at least as much as the cost of the salary, so there's a limit to how much they are willing to pay.
Also, if you go from the assumption that a society in which people have good salaries, a good amount of time off, good health care, and so forth is better than a society where people work 60 or 70 hours a week for minimum wage and no benefits, you prefer the 2% unemployed society to the 15% unemployed society. It's a question of whether you think that people exist for the economy, or the economy exists for the people.
Greedy universities and lazy employers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
In which european countries have more than half the population received higher education? (This [universityworldnews.com] claims for the EU overall, even among just young people, the figure is a third).
Then everyone expects to get an "advanced" job and despises menial labour or "low-level" technical jobs (like say, a car technician).
I'm not sure we can make that conclusion. In (non-socialist) UK, we used to have fees paid for and grants, but only some people went to University. In the last 10 or so years, there's a push to get more people apply - but at the same time (in order to pay for it), grants have been abolished and tuition fees introduce.
I'd also argue that the sense of entitlement is greater when education is not free: when it's free, I'm going to University for an education, and any job I get out of that is a bonus. It hasn't cost me, so I don't think I'm entitled to anything.
But when suddenly University costs thousands of pounds, I can understand people feeling more entitled to get something out of it. This is especially true when the argument that the UK Government has put forward is that "graduates earn more money, so it's okay to charge them loads of money up front for going to University" - if it turns out that they can't get such a job after all, but they're still left with thousands of pounds of debt, I could understand them feeling cheated (although the problem is with the Government, not the University).
And I have to ask - can you cite a case where in "socialist" Europe, people have been suing their Universities for not getting a good job?
It all results in high unemployment ("advanced" jobs are rare by definition) for European "aborigines", while uneducated (but willing to work everywhere) migrants fill the labour market gap.
Well hang on, surely that's a fix to the problem? If there are lesser educated people who are willing to do the jobs (migrants or otherwise), then that means it's no longer a problem that there aren't people willing to do the jobs. So you have migrants doing the less skilled work, and other people doing the work that requires degree level education.
I don't see education causes unemployment anyhow?
Incidentally, US unemployment seems comparable to EU unemployment ( http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25873672-664,00.html [news.com.au] , http://www.geo.tv/8-1-2009/46892.htm [www.geo.tv] claim 9.5% for both). Your post wasn't an anti-socialism rant in disguise, was it?
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
"In Socialist Europe, higher education causes unemployment!"
(Someone points out a European country with extensive higher education and very low unemployment.)
"But, but - unemployment is good for the economy! In Socialist Europe, higher education causes low unemployment and that's bad!"
Why, I can almost hear the sound of the back peddling.
the rate of inflation would be through the roof as employers paid increasingly ridiculous salaries to try to fill positions
If someone posted a statistic showing that it wasn't through the roof, I look forward to you back peddling to say how inflation is a good thing, and it's bad that inflation isn't through the roof in Scandinavian countries?
Mob torches for sale (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine her expectations were unrealistic, but why is everyone so quick to condemn this girl? Why is it unreasonable to live in the wealthiest country in the world and expect to be able to find gainful employment? When you finish paying out tens of thousands of dollars for a college education, don't you expect to find better work than the local Walmart? If not, then why would you risk carrying so much debt?
Does it help you to sleep better at night telling yourself that ALL the unemployed or underemployed people in this country richly deserve it?
Kind of ironic coming from the crowd that has been working feverishly to develop machines that can replace human labor in a wide variety of jobs.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
But a larger factor was four years of sustained full employment at high wages had transferred quite a bit of wealth and created a robust middle that would only start to be systematically dismantled when Reagan took office.
I would like to say that you missed off the most important part: That an economy with very high employment rates is actually bad for business as it puts to much power in the hands of the workforce and has a nasty habit of leading to increased unionisation.
In the sort of low wage, low skill jobs that dominate labour market a high unemployment rate allows me to just get rid of any trouble makers in the workforce and replace them at the drop of a hat. If you have low unemployment and replacing them is going to be a pain in the arse you have to be more careful.
Also, high unemployment makes it easier to keep wages lower. It allows me to pay less and even hand out pay or overtime cuts as people fear losing their job if they know getting another one will be difficult. If your employer asked you choose between a paycut and 20% of your department being laid off which would you choose? Which would you choose if unemployment rates were lower and getting a job would just be case of asking for one? There is nothing scarier for an employer of low skilled labour than 100% employment.
Also remember that if the low end of the labour market wages rise, this has knock on effect across the board. After all, why do a high stress, high skill job if you can find a less demanding job for the same money? Sure some people will do it for the challenge but the fear of not being able to support your family is a much better motivator than job satisfaction any day.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, when so much of your economy is government pork paid for with debt, it's really hard to take your gdp seriously.
Re:Epic fail (Score:5, Insightful)
So many people claim they have "tried" things. Tried to find a job. Tried to make a marriage work. Tried to resolve family conflicts. Tried, my ass. If you have not actively done something for at least a year, you have not tried it any more than dipping your toes in the water and crying aloud about how cold it is constitutes trying to swim.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they don't. Things only need to get done at the current rate if you insist on your current level of materialism. If we all worked less we'd have slightly less stuff, slightly lower unemployment (people would be hired to work when you're off), and we'd all be happier. If I could take a 20% pay cut to work 20% less, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd take 30%. And the end result- a few less cell phone apps in the world. I think somehow we'd all survive.
For that matter, I'm not sure how much world productivity would really go down. If I had a month or more off a year, I'd devote at least a chunk of it to charity and open source.
Re:thou shalt get a degree (Score:3, Insightful)
"knowledge-based economy"
Spin of the most epic order, isn't it?
"Crippled economy" is more like it. It works out cheaper in the short term, because the increased wealth that comes from technological advancement is concentrated in the hands of relatively few (Tycoons, and to a lesser extent, the citizens of rich Western nations). But then you get to the point where your new, foreign, manufacturing base realises that it has all the real wealth - it has the means of production and the skills to use it. Why would it bother subsidizing your decadent Western lifestyle any more, when it can have some of that for itself? At point, prices rise, your imports dwindle, and you discover that no-one in your nation knows how to make anything with any real value. Or possibly that they are just all owned by China now.
Re:Frivolous Lawyer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Define "healthy economy" - I think 98% of the people in the country can pay their bills and afford food is a pretty good definition myself.
Besides which, your econ101 is pretty much a myth - in reality, low unemployment does not in any way reduce the movement of workers, people move jobs because of ambition, it just means nobody don't spend huge amounts of time starving without the opportunity to work.
Most hires in any economy are inter-company from people already employed, new workforce entrants is always the lowest part of the equation - they lack experience. This is no difference if there is a 2% or a 20% unemployment rate.
In fact most of that 2% will be new entrants to the workforce that lack the experience of their employed counterparts - who get hired next door.
You don't see massive inflation there... since everyone can actually afford to pay for stuff, you see booming business and prices dropping because business can make bigger profits by lowering margins and focussing on bulk.
Some of that 2% will drive new business ventures, some of the employed people will save up and start new companies. What low unemployment actually means is they are more likely to do so ! If you start a company where work is easily available and it fails (as 80% of new companies do) - you can always get a job again.
If you start one where work is hard to find, and it fails - you end up in bankruptcy court.
The massive risk reduction is a major motivation for entrepeneurship, the high employment rate means that businesses have to compete for skilled workers so that those are the only economies where salaries actually go up faster than the inflation rate - meaning normal working people actually have a chance at a comfortable or even wealthy retirement... what is your post-Bush social security worth again ? Oh but that's okay right, cos you invested additional money for your retirement - how is that 401K of yours doing ?
Sorry, but the only country that deems America's economy as the largest and richest in the world is America, the rest of think the economy is supposed to serve more than 1% of the population with "CEO" on their business cards. By practically any metric other than "total money produced" - you are near the bottom of the pile, hell my own African homeland beats you on some of them ! What's the point of making billions if it all goes to the same few people who already *have* billions while the rest of the population is living on the breadline ? Heck recent studies suggest as much as 25% of Americans live below the poverty line - and your drive to go for educated work is largely based on the startling reality that nobody else has a chance at a good life. :)
Every other job, you earn almost nothing, and your job could be outsourced tomorrow because your company decided it's cheaper to use sweatshop labor in another country - thus neatly impoverishing two nations
God ... you're the kind of American who gives the whole country a really bad name... do you have any idea how arrogant and stupid you sound ? The land of the free ? I've got more civil liberties than you do and I live in a poor semi-socialist country in Africa !
(Example: It took one case in the constitutional court to find that not allowing gay marriage is discrimination, which is specifically prohibited by the constitution - and the court had the power to *order* the government to provide the legal means for gay marriage within a year. The government was required to comply, and did so).
Note: no discussion on founding fathers (your version of "oh spirits of the ancients") - the only question that mattered was "are we treating some people differently than others ?", when the answer was "yes we are" - the court had no choice but to rule that as discrimination and the government had no choice but to change the law.
Now *that* is civil liberty.
Okay, enough ranting... just get over yourself... oh - and for the record, I've been to America, nice place to visit - I would definitely not want to live there - and I spent most of my time in San Francisco, the best you have was still too pathetically primitive.
Re:Mob torches for sale (Score:3, Insightful)
She was a C student. That means there are plenty of A and B students vying for the same jobs she is. Who are you going to hire: the git who did a half-assed job getting her degree with a C average or the person who worked hard to get his or her degree with an A average? Which one do you think will work harder and be a better employee?
While we are at it, what has she done to get a job? Is she acting like most spoiled brats with an entitlement mentality, applying for jobs she is not qualified for and expecting to get same because she wants the job? A degree and a few years of experience is more valuable than just a degree, especially a degree earned with a 2.7 GPA. In fact, a lot of experience is often more valuable than a 2.7 GPA degree.
That fact is that this pathetic excuse for a human being is blaming the college and it's placement assistance office because companies are more interested in graduates who have high GPAs rather than her with her half-assed 2.7 GPA.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment...
And morbid obesity is healthier than starving to death. There is a middle ground that is better than both.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mob torches for sale (Score:3, Insightful)
When I finished my B.S. degree in business management and network administration, I didn't have companies knocking down my door to hire me. I stayed with the job I was in for a while, interviewed for (and got) a different position in the company a year or two later later, and eventually left that company to take a position that I felt was a good match for my interests and my degree.
I'm currently in a M.A. program. I know there's no guarantee of a better job. I believe every reasonable person realizes this, and that's why I'm convinced this student's lawsuit will fail. Any reasonable judge will throw this one out before it gets to trial. She paid for an education, and she received an education. BTW--the amount of her student loan debt has much to do with her choice of institutions. I carry less than half that much debt between my B.S. and M.A. programs (I have four courses left).
The only way her suit stands a chance is if the institution published a guarantee of job placement, and I don't know of any institution that will make such a promise. That said, most will tell you their job placement rates. It sounds wonderful when they tell you that they have a 95% job placement rate. Many people forget to consider that such a figure reflects only a small subset of students (those who use the job placement services) and is based on their placement history, not their anticipated success rate (in other words, those placement rates are likely going to be high if they reflect placements during a boom period, but past results are no guarantee of future success).
If anything, this lawsuit--only three months after her graduation--is going to brand her as a whiner with an entitlement attitude. This story is bound to get picked up by other news sites and blogs, and her name will soon be synonymous with what's wrong with some college-educated job seekers. Her story is likely to become part of future management symposiums, hiring seminars, and college case studies. She's seen to it that she will be branded for life as "that girl", and I think it will only harm her employment prospects over the next five to ten years.
Time can heal many wounds, so she may be able to rise above this in time, but this is definately not the way to start a career.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow.
So, higher unemployment rates are good, because they enable management to keep a firm grip on the baseball bat they use on labor to keep them in line, fearful, docile and paid as little as possible. And low unemployment is bad, because labor would have some power in the relationship.
Boy, that sounds like utopia, sign me up. Not.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
id hate working for you, regardless of your industry. management by fear isnt management at all.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes. This is a very good thing.
"Also, high unemployment makes it easier to keep wages lower."
And low unemployment forces you to pay employees enough so that they can survive. Screw you.
"It allows me to pay less and even hand out pay or overtime cuts as people fear losing their job if they know getting another one will be difficult."
Yeah. Again, it is good that you can't do those sorts of things. It is good that you have to treat your employees as, you know, human beings. Your mentality is the one that human kind is struggling to dig out from under and is the cause of almost all the violence and hatred in the world. You feel that just because you and an employer you are entitled to treat employees however badly you want. You do realize that when you pass down that pay cut the employee needs the money a LOT more than you do, right? You might be able to buy another yacht, but that is at the expense of your employees' kids' college money. This mindset is psychopathy, plain and simple. All you see is your own greedy wants and the bottom line in a ledger book, but you are unable to see and feel the human cost of your decisions. I will be glad when the economy turns around and you can't randomly fire people for demanding fair treatment, or randomly cut pay by 20%. I would rather that you did these things on your own, that you would have a soul and a little bit of human decency, but I know that this is too much to ask. I will just be glad that you can be forced into treating people like humans, that is the way it should be.
Funny thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why psychopaths will always get further than honest people. They are the best at lying (in your face, without blinking, cold-blooded) and best at manipulating people. They are also extremely charismatic. Average people have little chance of topping that. Aspies, with their naivety and honesty (and believing that all the others are just as honest) are toast.
Ask her about companies with entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Other than maybe president of the united states, no one has a job that can't be filled in by someone else. Do you know how I know that? Because we all sleep 8 hours a night- either someone else is filling in during those times, or the job is going without an occupant. Either way it doesn't need the same person killing themselves at all hours.
Vacation time fillers are very practical- its what factories, restaurants, retail outlets, etc do all the time. They schedule. They know that they have X hours of work they need to have done. They know each person is worth Y hours per day (or week, month, etc). They therefor know they need to hire X/Y people. They then work the schedules out so that there's always enough coverage. Its not even extra work for the employers- my boss already has to do it with team members for the piddly 3 weeks we all have. "Ok, Aumatar is on vacation Aug 6-15, so I need to push off project completion by two weeks, or I need to bring on another engineer and make the project finish before then".
And Now, The Vocational Gudance Counselor Sketch.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [dailymail.co.uk]
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait - let me get this straight, an uninformed git gives his entire country a bad name, I correct him with simple, factual arguments and put him in his place... and I am the troll ? I guess I know who the mod voted for...
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are somebody that does have the experience and can do the job, why not get certified (hopefully with your current employer paying for it)? It's a resume builder that will get you in the front door and then you can let your real experience do the rest.
Because the time it would take me to do the certification is better spent networking. Every job that I've ever gotten I got through networking. I either knew the person who was doing the hiring or knew somebody who worked for the company with the open position. That's how I get my foot in the door. Do you really think your certification is going to get you the job when you are competing against someone who has had drinks with the HR manager and whom met the IT director years ago at a community/charity function or trade show?
I tend to think that networking is a more valuable use of my time than studying for the latest certification. Besides, I'd rather give my money to the local bar to buy a round of drinks than give it to Microsoft to pay for a MCSE ;)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Entitlement Generation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Too true. There has been a huge bias against recent graduates for a long time (well, except in certain fields where there's never enough students graduating to meet demand, such as Pharmacists). I haven't been out of college too long and unfortunately graduated when the economy was at it's worst. I spent several months apply for jobs and often was told within a week of the job being posted that the position was closed due to budget problems. Eventually, I stopped seing any new job postings on most job sites for anything other than sales (if you were looking for entry level positions).
*Side note* If companies don't hire anyone to MAKE a product / service, why the HELL do they need so many sales people? WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY SELLING?!
I ended up being contacted by my boss from the previous summer where I had done some short term contract work for an IT consulting firm and that's what I'm doing now (even though it's not my ideal job and has nothing to do with my degree). I'm still looking for a job I can actually use my degree in and that's less fickle than IT consulting and every time I see a low level position that there's no reason someone straight out of college can't do say "5-7 years experience required" I want to call up the people at the company and ask them how THEY got a job after college without those 5-7 years of experience. The people running companies are so quick to forget that they were in the same spot not long ago and someone gave them a chance.
I have a feeling that companies will lose this attitude in the next decade as we see a huge number of baby boomers retire and they realize that if they mantain their inflated requirements for an entry level job, they won't be hiring anyone to replace the people who left.
Re:I was in a similar situation recently. (Score:4, Insightful)
The harsh reality that college is a sham at this stage in our country will eventually sink in, you're smart.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a sham. I think each generation shams itself into thinking more and more that they are entitled to good grades and that a degree entitles them to a job, as is certainly the case with the woman in the article. An education at a university says several things to an employer - first, you have a rounded education and you've been able to meet at least some standards and deadlines in your academic career; second, you have at least some basic understanding of the field in which you studied; third, you've demonstrated that you can put out and do unglamorous work to acheive a goal; and fourth, you might possibly be teachable, since you've apparently demonstrated a willingness to learn in school by choice, beyond mandated state K-12 education.
What screws a lot of people up, in my opinion, is how they present themselves on their resume and in their interviews. It takes more than listing your references, past jobs, and education. Your goal in your resume should be to present to each recipient the case that you are the best fit for the position they are trying to fill, you can't farm out a drab, inpersonal list of data and expect to stand out. You have to address the requirements of the job in your resume so the recipient at least knows you can meet some of their desired criteria. You have to elaborate on your job experience, summarizing your responsibilities and pointing out relevant acheivements. You have to include a well written cover letter that introduces you and describes your interest in the position. Between you and Candidate Y, the person that gets the job is the one that describes most aptly that they will fill the role with enthusiasm beyond that of filling a chair. It's painfully obvious to employers who is interested in the job and who is interested in the money the job pays. No one wants an empty shell that pulls a paycheck, they want to hire someone who has a genuine interest in their field that will provide results and improve over time that is worth the investment of that paycheck. A person that goes to school majoring in Business Administration in IT, makes unremarkable grades, sees attendence as some sort of exemplary behavior, and expects an employer to seek out her resume on an e-recruiting site is not enthusiastic about anything, and simply expects to be handed life on a platter, which is why this lady is suing her school and reveals the real reason she is unemployable. She does not want the opportunity of work, she just wants to be paid for going to work.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:1, Insightful)
The US has the largest economy in the world. How exactly are we doing it wrong again?
Re:The Fucked Over Generation (Score:3, Insightful)
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"
That may not actually be a sense of entitlement. In college, when nearing graduation, we were given interview advice. The important parts to remember were "be confident" and "they're not just interviewing you, you're also interviewing them". I can easily see people overdoing it and looking like they have a crippling sense of entitlement.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again _actual_ unemployment is incalculable. In the US it's calculated based on unemployment claims. Once you've exhausted your unemployment insurance, you are no longer on the radar (see below). Meanwhile the people that are no longer counted in the unemployment numbers graduate from unemployed to homeless (or living in their mom's basement).
The BLS makes a "best effort", but they only sample 60000 households which is not such a great sample since in each market that's only a few hundred out of 100's of thousands. This is where the fudging happens.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm [bls.gov]
I'm not sure how that works in Europe.
Remember that unemployment statistics only tell part of the story. Also remember that wikipedia isn't the most reliable source of facts ;-)
-Viz
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
not counting people who've given up on finding a job
I don't really understand why you'd count people that aren't looking to work. Yes, you're talking about someone that lost a job and gave up... but what about the housewife that honestly doesn't WANT to work? Technically yes, she is unemployeed... but that's by her choice, so she's taken herself out of the workforce. Unemployement is supposed to be a measure of the workforce thats not employed. Why do you think lumping everyone not working as unemployed is useful?
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes. This is a very good thing.
Tell that to General Motors.
Yeah. Again, it is good that you can't do those sorts of things. It is good that you have to treat your employees as, you know, human beings.
No one said they're not being treated as human beings. But the fact is businesses are not bottomless pits of money. When the economy is hard, it's hard on businesses just as much as it is individuals. So sometimes *not* doing the extra little things is what is necessary for the business to stay afloat.
Your mentality is the one that human kind is struggling to dig out from under and is the cause of almost all the violence and hatred in the world.
No. No it's not. Let me tell you that there's a lot of people in a lot of countries whose lives would drastically improve given the conditions you're whining about.
Once again, look at the recession. Businesses can all fail(well, at least if they aren't bailed out). We are not trying to "dig out" from that mindset, we're trying to get people jobs at livable wages so they can survive. The frills are going to have to come later. You're part of the problem, not the solution.
You feel that just because you and an employer you are entitled to treat employees however badly you want. You do realize that when you pass down that pay cut the employee needs the money a LOT more than you do, right?
I beg to differ. First off, I treat my employees quite well (disclosure: I don't need too many, so it's not too hard to do so). But secondly, it's my money on the line every day. If I don't have money to take risks, the business doesn't grow. If the business doesn't grow, then no one is going to be making anything, because they'll all be out of the job.
I already give good benefits and wages that top my competitors by quite a bit. If I have to cut that back so the wages are only *slightly* beating my competitors, it's because I literally had to. Anyone that doesn't like it is free to leave.
You might be able to buy another yacht, but that is at the expense of your employees' kids' college money.
Yeah, because all business owners own Yachts. Get out of your dream world where we all make millions.
This mindset is psychopathy, plain and simple. All you see is your own greedy wants and the bottom line in a ledger book, but you are unable to see and feel the human cost of your decisions.
I'm incredibly aware of the human cost of my decisions. But sometimes those decisions are about making it so these people have a job at all a few months down the road. The "faceless corporation" isn't an accident. It's an intentional structure. Why? Because any business, in order to survive has to make decisions that few could make face to face.
I will be glad when the economy turns around and you can't randomly fire people for demanding fair treatment, or randomly cut pay by 20%.
It's not random you idiot. A stable business at it's heart is coldly logical. It's not a hostage situation. Businesses pay employees what they can and what they're worth. If you disagree about what the business can pay you, or what you're worth, leave.
If you're worth more, there will be demand. If not, the market has decided you're not worth more.
I would rather that you did these things on your own, that you would have a soul and a little bit of human decency, but I know that this is too much to ask. I will just be glad that you can be forced into treating people like humans, that is the way it should be.
No one's treating them like dogs.
I once thought exactly like you appear to be thinking here by the way. Then I had to run a business and got some perspective. It's not that it kills off your soul or anything, but you're responsible for something more than yourself. You're respons
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Inflation does not reduce the value of the vast majority of wealth. Anybody with real wealth has it invested in assets which protect against inflation.
The only people who lose from inflation are people with a large percentage of their over all wealth in cash, which is to say poor people lose out from inflation.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Your theories are all very beautiful, but as for me, I prefer to have a safe job so I can pay my mortgage and raise my kids. And I want the same good for everyone else so I can live in peace without the fear of being mugged.
The economists that invent all those beautiful numbers have comfortable lives with plenty of employment, and they don't give a fuck about the people to which they want to apply their theories. So they can all kiss my hairy ass.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
Bull.... If I'd lose my job and coudn't find anything to do in my field, you know what I'd do? Become a bus driver. Actually, I have often cursed myself having done years of University, just to earn a few euros more than a bus driver.... and I'm a well paid IT guy. (IT still is one of the "better paid" white collar jobs)
For the record..... My wife comes from a family of carpenters and metalworkers. They earn much more than me.... If one of my kids wants to pursue such a job, I'm definitely going to encourage them, because, guess what: they may not be as "glamorous", but in the end it's the money in your wallet that counts.
Do not underestimate your earning potential if you're a "Master of $TRADE".
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
God, the sense of entitlement around the world is making me sick...
There, fixed that for you.
Re:I was in a similar situation recently. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. Well stated. I think this may be an Intelligent Slashdot Post of the Year 2009 candidate.
Couldn't agree more. Many other countries are just now entering into this same folly whereby they push college heavily and are facing a glut of unemployed "educated" young people. Everyone is not cut out for technical work, even if they have a degree and middling grades. The world needs unskilled and skilled labor, it is not a dirty reprehensible thing to actually work for a paycheck. A trade would probably fit this girl in question better than a no-name IT degree. She isn't an excellent student, she probably isn't heavily vested and interested in IT, she probably has some skillset that would lend itself to a trade quite well.
We have to stop acting like college is some holy grail. It has been dumbed down to the point that anyone with the money and time (or ability to get a loan) will graduate and with increasingly meaningless areas of study and lack of actual skill.
You're very correct. I'm in the same age group of this person, and I can tell you my generation and probably those that follow us have overall been given the expectation of a college education and through that the expectation of a sexy job with 6 digit salary and benefits. So they find out IT business administration or marketing are high paying fields with no need for actual technical expertise and they flood in. I remember being stupefied at my own graduation that administration and marketing outweighed every other field of study accounting for about about 80% of the graduates. There are so many people flocking to the promise of plenty from administration and marketing, we'll soon have more administrators and marketers than there are people to do the actual work to be administered and marketed, if not already!
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:1, Insightful)
In the fine print: even if you are actively looking for a job, and have been unemployed for six months, you're no longer counted, because they 'assume' you've become "willfully unemployed"--you know, because while you may have a professional skill set, you didn't take the first job opening down a the local Wal Mart.
That's what makes the real unemployment figures so much higher. It should be noted that they regularly change the metric of statistics, to achieve a desired effect, and for that reason alone, they will never ever publish the full data set and formulae they use to achieve their numbers.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
However strong unions result in the same employees abusing management. The business ends up overpaying for employees who have the same sense of entitlement and lack of willingness to work as the idiot in this article, which can have an enormously negative impact on the business & it's profitability.
(Hint: If the business can't survive because of over-inflated labor costs, you're going to be every bit as unemployed as if they had just kept salaries in check and fired the unqualified or non-contributing employees)
A little bit of balance goes a long way - it's too bad unions and management both tend towards the extremes.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive
No, it means more people receive a paycheck. Maybe in this case it means being more productive, too, but that is not adequately supported merely by the fact that they receive a paycheck.
Be careful of this type of reasoning, it's the same thing that's got the US into this education mess. First, they realized that people with HS diplomas are more successful, so they ensured that everyone could get a HS diploma by lowering the standards to essentially nothing (attendance, I suppose). Now, as should be no surprise, a HS diploma is worth close to nothing, so they are doing the same thing to college degrees.
With the lower standards, heavy subsidies, and lots of social encouragement, employers realize that a lot of people are graduating from college that aren't particularly desirable. Then, what, they'll only hire PhDs?
I think we'll see a point where smart people start to opt out of the education system sooner, merely because they don't want to wade through busywork (and spending money like crazy) until graduate school, where they can actually set themselves apart.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
I tend to like the Democrats largely because I believe that one of the things that does need to be funded is education. Oh yes, and I don't like wars.
But I believe in balance.
Put too much control in the hands general population who doesn't understand business, and the idiots will run business into the ground.
Put too much in the hands of business, and they will exploit the population.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
What they really mean is "my business or country will grow, while those people over there, uhhh, grow less."
It is quite simple (Score:4, Insightful)
People like to feel like they have options. They dislike feeling like they are stuck with one option, no matter how unpleasant it becomes.
So, employers like feeling like there is a large talent pool available to them. That way they know that when some worker isn't working out, they can just cut him lose and replace him. Having options gives them the ability to optimize their company's productivity and ultimately achieve good success.
When employers feel like they don't have options, they feel like they are being forced to accept expensive, lazy, and talentless workers. Having a team built out of such people will result in the employer's business failing, or a manager's own productivity metrics being shamefully low.
So, it is every bit as natural for employers to prefer a high-unemployment market as it is for workers to prefer a low-unemployment market.
Workers, after all, don't want to feel like they have no choice but to accept a terrible job where they work long hours doing work they hate for a barely-livable (or sub-livable) wage. They would prefer to feel like they can just quit their job if it starts to suck, and move on to a better one.
Each side sees the other one as the evil side. Employees see the employers as the over demanding cruel slave masters who don't care about the employee's livelihoods, and just want to exploit them. Employers see employees as lazy, unskilled, expensive freeloaders who have no devotion to the company (and hence the employer's livelihood) and are just there to make a buck. So, each side feels the need to protect itself from the other side, and prefers economic conditions that are favorable to that protection.
Where I work, both are simultaneously true. The account reps are looking at a very dry employment market, and are desperate to keep their jobs. So, management is leaning on them. They typically work 50 to 60 hour weeks.
However, the tech side is seeing a still relatively open employment market. Each member of our tech team has talent and certifications, and we all know we could find a better job if we need to. So we get an easy 40 hour work week. When management tries to lean on us, we get to choose whether or not we want to give extra. When we chose not to, management just accepts it, because it would be too hard for them to replace us.
Most people on slashdot are laborers, rather than managers, so most of the posts will maintain that it is objectively obvious that low unemployment is good, and that employers are evil exploitive bastards. I don't know if it is true or not, but I DO know that there are two very clear-and-distinct sides to this issue.
Re:Why are there businesses? (Score:2, Insightful)
And you forget why we allow businesses to exist: to benefit society in the process of enriching the shareholders. It's a social contract, and lately, businesses have been abrogating their responsibility to the society that allows them to exist.
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:3, Insightful)
In a world where unemployment is low or even non-existent, you can raise your prices because there's plenty of people who can afford your product anyway.The people who are most adversely affected by low unemployment are the trult rich who would just spread their money across a wide portfolio and live on the proceeds without actually doing anything for their living.
Pretty much everyone else does fine. You can grow your business because there's a lot of well off consumers out there ready to spend if you offer them anything that they want. Or you can offer something to other businesses who are ready to spend in order to help them get consumers to spend on them. They CAN spend because there's no shortage of consumer cash ready to be spent on them.
An economy where labor is in shortage encourages progress through automation. That automation causes little pain since in a labor short economy, anyone displaced will get a new job rather quickly and painlessly. An economy where labor is plentiful just leaves human beings doing unfulfilling work that can and should be done by machines.
Historically, when unemployment is low, the economy and general prosperity has grown. When it is high, only the top 5 or 10 % prosper and the rest backslide. The economy as a whole tends to slow down.
Consider the current situation for auto makers. Sales are anemic so they are in trouble. Sales are anemic because people can't afford a new car even though they would like one.
You might notice that when consumer confidence is high (that is, when people feel sure that they will continue to have a good income), retail does well and businesses that sell to retail businesses do well in turn. When consumer confidence is low (that is, people are worried they might be laid off or forced to accept a pay cut), retail tanks and so do the businesses that sell to retailers.
My guess is that you run a small to medium sized business. Wouldn't you love to have people with plenty of cash out there ready to pay you?
Consider, if due to a labor shortage you had to double your payroll and nearly double what you pay your suppliers (because they had to double their payroll), raw materials would still cost the same (no more scarce than they are now) and property would be no more expensive (same reason), and so you would have to NEARLY double your prices to tread water. However, your customers have FULLY doubled their buying power. The difference between NEARLY and FULLY is your added prosperity in a labor short economy.
If your business somehow revolves around saving labor or increasing productivity, you're in the money!
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:4, Insightful)
You're absolutely correct. Unfortunately, so many people don't see it that way.
If you are laid off, and make your unemployment claim, you're on the books as "unemployed".
If your claim is denied, you fall off the books.
If your claim is accepted, you are "unemployed" for 6 (now 8) months.
At the end of your unemployment period, you are off the books, because you didn't want to work.
Lets consider myself and a few close friends, for a total of 14 people.
A couple years ago:
9 - Company employed
3 - Self employed (good income, comparable to full time employment)
1 - Unemployed - Medical disability
1 - Unemployed - Retired
Total considered in the official unemployment numbers, 0.
Today:
3 - Company employed
1 - Self employed, comparable to full time employment
1 - Self employed, borderline poverty
1 - Unemployed - Collecting benefits - seeking work
5 - Unemployed - Not able to collect benefits - seeking work
2 - Unemployed - Medical disability
1 - Unemployed - Retired
Total considered in the official unemployment numbers, 1.
A while back, the gainfully employed helped our friends that needed it, and we were all comfortable.
Now, even the employed are struggling, and the rest are pretty much out of luck. I fall into the group of 5, seeking work but not collecting benefits. I'm appealing the benefits decision, but I'd prefer to be working. Beyond the normal routes of job seeking, I ask absolutely everyone I know when I'm talking to them, "is your company hiring?". None of them are hiring. I send off my resume to everyone, "just in case".
Unfortunately, my example isn't the exception these days. None of us hope for it to get better any time soon. We recognize the truth, it's just going to get worse.
Two Things (Score:4, Insightful)
2) "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Wizard of Oz
As an aside, it has fallen to me on more than one occasion to interview prospective candidates for positions on my teams. The more I have done so, the more I've come to realize that a degree also doesn't guarantee that the candidate will know anything or be a good employee. As such, I tend to value the attitude of the candidate to my questions, his work experience and contributions to projects such as open source projects over a piece of paper that tells me he's reasonably good at memorizing facts (or cheating.) I am fairly certain that if anyone approaches the interview with a positive attitude and engages the interviewer rather than just sitting there like a cabbage or something, they will have a very good chance of landing the job. A lot of people come to the interview with the attitude that it's a chore they'd rather not have to do, and trust me on this that attitude comes through very clearly during the interview. And if you're going to be like that during the interview, odds are you're going to be like that on the job as well.
Re:And Now, The Vocational Gudance Counselor Sketc (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from the numerous indirect benefits from even pointless, menial employment, both to them as an individual and to society as a whole. People with a job, however mind-numbingly unproductive it may be, and even if it doesn't really benefit them financially any more than being on the dole, will generally feel better about themselves and so are likely to be healthier. This makes them less of a burden on society from the point of view of providing healthcare, and means they're more likely to play an active and positive role in the lives of their families and communities. They'll also be less likely to commit crime, and I don't really need to spell out to you the numerous benefits resulting from a reduction in crime rate.
At the end of the day, it's all coming out of taxes one way or another. I'd rather have happier, healthier, more active, more productive people doing worthless paper-shuffling in artificial non-jobs than those same people claiming all manner of benefits and feeling sorry for themselves. The difference in bottom-line cost probably isn't much.
Re:And Now, The Vocational Gudance Counselor Sketc (Score:2, Insightful)
Universities are selling a product. As with any merchant, their success is measured by their ability to provide a service that people want at a price they are willing to pay, while making a profit at it.
Diploma mills sell degrees. Universities provide an education and examine degrees. The service they provide is for a much wider community than the students. Even in the US many universities are heavily subsidized by tax payers, and the base of stake holders much wider. The service they provide includes the preservation, creation and transmission of knowledge and these are vital but to the economy and the culture of a country. They also provide a service to employers of producing graduates with some indications in their transcript and references of their suitability for certain types of employment.