Many college graduates these days are having a great deal of trouble finding a job in this economy -- just like everyone else. In an interesting, yet ridiculous, twist a young woman has decided to blame her college for her employment troubles. CNN reports that Trina Thompson is suing her college because she did not get a job after graduating. It reports:
Trina Thompson, 27, of the Bronx, graduated from New York's Monroe College in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology.
On July 24, she filed suit against the college in Bronx Supreme Court, alleging that Monroe's "Office of Career Advancement did not help me with a full-time job placement. I am also suing them because of the stress I have been going through."
And this is perhaps my favorite part of the article:
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.
Oh yes, who wouldn't hire a 2.7 GPA (B- average) from the renowned Monroe College? Especially when those credentials include the attitude of someone who would sue her college. I'm sure I don't need to point out how absurd this entire episode is. But if this girl had a 4.0 from Harvard, her frustration could be more easily understood. She doesn't.
The college has a predictable and obvious response: nobody can guarantee employment at a time like this. I can still remember struggling to find a job when I came out of college. The economy was bad then as well. The economy was not as bad as it is now, but it was still a nasty recession that specifically affected the region where and industry in which I hoped to work. It took me six months to find a job, with a much higher GPA out of a much more highly ranked university. I hated having to move home for six months, but ultimately I was patient and found something.
This story illuminates a larger problem in the generation of instant gratification.
Many young people in their 20s today are having trouble in employment due to short attention spans and the need for immediate recognition and advancement. Unfortunately, that's not how the real world works. Getting a job has never been easy and getting promoted quickly is not guaranteed by coming in each day with a steady pulse.
Finally, I hope that she does not manage to find a lawyer out there who would take a case like this one. Thompson filed herself, saying she could not afford a lawyer. Obviously, she will lose. But not before she (or a lawyer if she finds one) forces Monroe College to waste thousands of dollars in legal fees if a judge decides to hear the case. With any luck, it will not even get that far.
(hat tip: my brother)
I had a good laugh about this when I saw it yesterday. And then I let out a sigh for the future of humanity.
According to news reports, she had to file herself. So -- no lawyer.
well, that's something.
Thanks for pointing that out. Just edited the post. Let's hope she doesn't find one who's willing to take it for free. I'd hate to see the college settle.
Great article and very good points.
Here's a great quote from Trina Thompson about the career center at Montrol..."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.
Wow, not only bad grammar, but no recruiter would take someone like that seriously.
Another person going through the motions without actually working and they want everything handed to them on a silver platter.
She seriously shot herself it the foot when she sued...no company is going to want someone that sues their college for career placement...what's next, suing the company you work for because you didn't get the promotion?
The press has not explained to people what Monroe College is. It is not your typical "college". It was a trade school that used to teach girls things like typing, and other clerical skills. Then they simply reinvented themselves as a "college". They are nothing like their fully accredited neighbors such as Fordham, Manhattan and Lehman. There are any number of other former trade schools around NY that have simply renamed themselves "college" and decided to grant "degrees".
if your breathing, you'll be accepted. There are NO standards for acceptance. They have "assistant registrars" that are basically salesmen - telling these girls how much they'll "succeed" after plunking down a bunch of money - usually borrowed. This "college" has ads all over the subways -all directed at low income, ill educated young ladies who would like to get ahead. This "college" has no credibility with employers, except at lower levels like bank teller (Chase used to hire some of their "graduates" as tellers). Realize that this kid got taken for 70 grand
This kid could have gone to Lehman and gotten a 4 year degree for $26,000 (or from any of the other CUNY schools). With a little aid, she could have gotten a degree from Fordham or Manhattan for about that 70 grand. She could have gotten a first rate engineering degree from SUNY Maritime for 36 grand - and been just about guaranteed employment with a starting salary of over 70 grand. The schools I've mentioned are all Bronx based, like Monroe.
She most likely could not be accepted in any of those schools. She was not smart enough to eve look around. Instead, some "assistant registrar" promised her the world and she got nothing.
When I mentioned this story to an acquaintance who had done some work for this "college", her response was; "Good. Those people that run that place should be in jail."
The press has not explained to people what Monroe College is. It is not your typical "college". It was a trade school that used to teach girls things like typing, and other clerical skills. Then they simply reinvented themselves as a "college". They are nothing like their fully accredited neighbors such as Fordham, Manhattan and Lehman. There are any number of other former trade schools around NY that have simply renamed themselves "college" and decided to grant "degrees".
if your breathing, you'll be accepted. There are NO standards for acceptance. They have "assistant registrars" that are basically salesmen - telling these girls how much they'll "succeed" after plunking down a bunch of money - usually borrowed. This "college" has ads all over the subways -all directed at low income, ill educated young ladies who would like to get ahead. This "college" has no credibility with employers, except at lower levels like bank teller (Chase used to hire some of their "graduates" as tellers). Realize that this kid got taken for 70 grand
This kid could have gone to Lehman and gotten a 4 year degree for $26,000 (or from any of the other CUNY schools). With a little aid, she could have gotten a degree from Fordham or Manhattan for about that 70 grand. She could have gotten a first rate engineering degree from SUNY Maritime for 36 grand - and been just about guaranteed employment with a starting salary of over 70 grand. The schools I've mentioned are all Bronx based, like Monroe.
She most likely could not be accepted in any of those schools. She was not smart enough to eve look around. Instead, some "assistant registrar" promised her the world and she got nothing.
She is not smart because she has a 2.7 GPA? There are way more intelligent people out there with a lower GPA than anybody with a 4.0 GPA who studied just to pass an exam and after leaving the classroom... poof!, everything was forgotten. I understand that in times like these, finding a job is difficult. I graduated a year ago and I still can't find a job, I'm overqualified, have lots of experience,not so great GPA, and I haven't got a job. So that little comment about her GPA it's ridiculous.
I think that her frustration is over the situation with young professionals. I have seen it personally and when it comes to hiring people, sometimes they just don't hire new college grads because they don't have experience and they prefer older people that either have been working at the company for years, are friends of friends who work there, etc. But is also unfair to say "hey give jobs to the young people and leave the oldies behind". I guess is a lack of objectivity, but there is nothing else to do but to keep looking.
You're right: I should have explained that assertion better. I've observed the attitude I describe being very prevalent among 20-somethings these days. They've grown up with the belief that they can do anything, be anything, etc. and have little patience in "paying their dues" to do so. I think this story presents an extreme example of that, but I've witnessed this attitude throughout this generation.
I'm sorry - I can't help but weigh in on this generational observation, because it galls me every time I hear it.
The fact is, every generation has had roughly the same opinion of every succeeding generation going back to the days of Cicero (and probably earlier). Punks, slackers, hippies, wearing their long-sleeved togas and listening to their rock-n-roll. No respect for authority, no work ethic, they're lazy, et cetera ad infinitum.
I'm 29, one foot in Gen X, the other in Gen Y, according to whose definition you read. I've been in the workplace long enough to see that idiocy, greed, immorality, impatience and poor attention spans are pretty evenly distributed across generations. And I've also been fortunate to have a handful of coworkers near my own age who are among the sharpest, most self-motivated, selfless, get-it-done and get-it-done-well people I know.
It's just that the idiots and whiners tend to make the most noise.
Ms. Thompson's foolish lawsuit aside. I think that you are SERIOUSLY missing a generational point here if that is what you are trying to make. I'm astonished that anyone who is versed in this current economic situation could possibly decry the "instant gratification" attitude of the new generation when quite frankly the situation we are in was caused mainly by the desire for instant gratification of the PREVIOUS generation. Have we so quickly forgotten how over the last fifteen years how we've dealt with a situation where banks, government regulators, and real estate brokers essentially jury rigged a ticking economic timebomb for the purpose of quick and easy money. Some might call that reckless pusuit of "instant gratification" but hey what would I know I haven't "paid my dues". But don't worry, I will be paying and paying big becuase my generation will be paying off the debt from this idiocy for a long time to come.
I've observed an attitude to be very prevalent among 30, 40, and 50-somethings these days. In the workplace, among my parents friends, and in the media, I hear Gen-Xers and Boomers complaining that young people today have grown up with a sense of entitlement, that they expect to be given great jobs with lots of responsibility without earning it. Almost always, this complaint is accompanied by an anecdote about a surplus of participation trophies at soccer games.
The rhetoric exhausts and disappoints me. I'm in my late 20's, I have a good but thankless job. I have a small mountain of student loans. I rent a small, rundown apartment in a questionable neighborhood with a quiet but lazy roommate. I often work incredibly long hours, and weekends. I put on a good attitude at work even when the situation doesn't merit it, because I know you have to earn your breaks in life. And all my friends are just like me. And I have a lot of friends - check out my Facebook account. What I don't have a lot of are participation trophies. But then, I never played soccer.
So if you could, do me and my friends a favor. If you want to cast my generation as lazy and entitled, fine. But first, I insist you find more than anecdotal evidence. The frivolous lawsuit of one recent graduate is not enough. Your observations are also not enough, especially if your encounters with 20-somethings are limited to a narrow group of highly educated and privileged individuals most likely to interact with a journalist at a publication like the Atlantic. I want concrete evidence. I want to know who these entitled brats are and what exactly they're doing and saying. Because honestly, I've only met a handful in my life. I rolled my eyes and moved on, because I'm too busy earning my breaks to deal with people like that.
But until such evidence is forthcoming, a moratorium please. It's hard enough dealing with a roommate who won't take out the recycling, and a boss who thinks nothing of dumping her presentation on me at 7pm the night before it's due, and parents who are so obviously disappointed that I'm not yet arguing cases before the Supreme Court or selling my startup to Google for several million dollars or otherwise securing their retirement now that their 401Ks have been decimated. I don't really need these off handed and unfounded comments heaped upon me as well.
"I've observed the attitude I describe being very prevalent among 20-somethings these days. They've grown up with the belief that they can do anything, be anything, etc. and have little patience in "paying their dues" to do so...I've witnessed this attitude throughout this generation."
Daniel - the generational argument (particularly the "Damned Kids" one) is the refuge of a writer who can't even come up with a witty argument ad hominem.
You seem to remember the halcyon days when every white male was guaranteed a job that would train him and allow him to "work his way up from the mail room." Those days are gone. The employer's commitment to the employees is non-existent. So what do you expect from "20-somethings these days"? That they all work dead-end jobs, say "Sir, yes, sir," and love it?
"20-somethings" don't run the world, their parents do. And their parents created a working world that's more competitive and requires more education while simultaneously offering less security and less training than when they were young. And "20-somethings" have responded to this challenge. Now it's time for the people who are actually in charge to take responsibility for what they've done.
A lot of people are complaining about my view that many 20-somethings need instant gratification in their careers, and I guess that's not surprising. I basically went out on a limb and generalized an entire generation. But I don't mean to say that every 20-something behaves in the way I describe. Obviously, that's not the case.
Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence is all I have to offer. I've done some searching for studies on this topic and found nothing. So if anyone has something good stats to offer, I'd love to see them. That's why I present this as an opinion. I don't mean to claim this as scientific fact, just what I've observed. In my experience, I have witnessed 20-somethings exhibit very high job turnover rates (often lasting less than a year), frustration with advancement being too slow (what? no promotion after six months?!?), and a strange need for lavish praise for doing merely what's expected in a job.
Another part of the problem has to do with not feeling satisfied in one's career. Many feel that the need to be "changing the world" or "making a difference." Of course, very, very few jobs out there really provide that kind of satisfaction. I think this has to do with the unrealistic expectations that the media places on young adults today.
What I think many annoyed commenters are right about is that the baby boomers are not necessarily much better. The difference I've found, however, has to do with attention span. Maybe when they were younger workers, baby boomers were the same. But in my experience, the culture of attention deficit disorder totally infects the employment attitudes of many younger workers. Even baby boomers have often worked at a company for 10 to 20 years. I think for younger generations, that's going to become rarer and rarer.
I'm going to ignore your request to seek out statistics that fit your anecdotal opinion. That's not how you approach an issue like this.
You write: "Another part of the problem [is] not feeling satisfied in one's career. Many feel...the need to be "changing the world" or "making a difference." Of course, very, very few jobs out there really provide that kind of satisfaction. I think this has to do with the unrealistic expectations that the media places on young adults today."
So your fundamental beef with young people is that they are *insufficiently* cynical about work? That, when disillusioned by their job, they seek to "make a difference"? Instead of sucking it up and mailing it in for 30 years like you would have?
The media doesn't place unrealistic expectations on "young people." They are merely reacting to changes in the working work - back when employees were more than spare parts, a fresh college graduate could see a merit-based path to a leadership position in an organization that would spend time and money training them - with an eye to a multi-decade career in the company.
All of that's gone now - job security, training, advancement opportunities - and you attack people entering this job market for struggling to find something of consequence at work?
Daniel - finding hard evidence for something so subjective is in part a fool's errand, but I highly recommend you look into the works of William Strauss and Neil Howe. They've done some fascinating research into generational archetypes, and have some pretty compelling statistics (and more anecdotal macrotrends) to back their assertions up. And one of their assertions is that Gen Y may well emerge as the next "heroic" generation - the same archetype as the GI Generation. Here's a basic description from Wikipedia:
"They grow up as the increasingly protected children of an Unraveling, come of age as the Heroic, team-working youth of a Crisis, become energetic and hubristic mid-lifers during a High and become the powerful elders who are attacked in the next Awakening. The G.I. Generation that fought World War II is an example of a Hero generation. Millennials are expected to emerge as the next generation of this example."
Regarding turnover...sadly that's the way the world works these days. Hell, even my dad used to advise me that you get better pay and better opportunities by going somewhere new. He's a living, breathing example of that, as is one of my brothers, as am I (I jumped companies about a year and a half ago with a nearly 50% pay increase and far better opportunities). I'd love nothing more than to have a long career at one place, but that reciprocal trust is a thing of the past. After graduating during the dot com bust and seeing dozens of friends get the axe this time around (not to mention the rampant cronyism during the good times), I have very little faith in any company's commitment to its employees. And I know I'm not alone in that.
Not feeling satisfied in one's career - so? Isn't that the eternal characteristic of the young? The dream to do great things? A little more than 2,000 years ago, a 30-something Julius Caesar came upon a statue of Alexander the Great and lamented that he'd done so little with his life, compared to what Alexander had accomplished by the same age.
I'll own up to it. I want to make a difference. I want my life to mean something, in some small way, and I hope I never give up on that, because it drives me to give my all.
Lastly, the culture of attention deficit disorder. First, I think you may be falling for the media hype. You say even baby boomers have worked at a company for 10 to 20 years. Well, a lot of pro athletes used to spend their entire careers playing for one or maybe two teams. That changed when I was a kid, and today it's an absolute rarity. The same is true in the business world, but that's an environment and an attitude that Gen X and Gen Y came into, not one they created for themselves.
Another little tidbit that (I believe) speaks against the whole cultural ADD idea - divorce rates in the U.S. have been declining over the last decade, in 2007 reached their lowest level since 1970, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
I appreciate the response and I'm interested in your expanded description of the entitled behavior you have observed in 20-somethings. I'd like to take them one at a time.
First, high turn-over rates. Doogs makes an excellent point here. Often, workers leave jobs quickly not because they are bored or they don't find the work meaningful, but because of an ever-present pressure to increase one's earning potential. It may seem absurd for a 23 or 24-year-old to worry about her earning potential. And in a lot of ways it is. But when you have education loans on your back and you look forward to increasing costs for health care, retirement, and raising children, it doesn't take long in the workforce before you're looking for ways to make as much money as you can. And unfortunately, one's current employer rarely has much to offer, especially someone they hired into an entry-level role. Many young workers take that 1-2 years of experience in order to get a job at a company that will now be viewing them as a full-fledged employee instead of a trainee. That may seem entitled, but in most cases it's just smart.
Second, you say that you have observed 20-somethings complaining about a slow rate of advancement or requiring lavish praise. As I mentioned before, I'd like more details about these particular 20-somethings. It is common for kids right out of college to experience the jolting revelation that work life is not like it appears in the movies. It seems dumb to the rest of us. Most of us realized long ago that advancement and appreciation at work can never be taken for granted, and often aren't offered even when earned. But newly minted workers have been complaining about this since the birth of the workplace. I would find this more persuasive if you have encountered 20-somethings with at least one or two years on the job who took this attitude. And I would be more inclined to wring my hands over the poor work ethic of Generation Y if someone could show me that whining of this kind led to lazy or entitled workers later on. My suspicion base on my own personal experience is that this is a phase most people go through and most people get over.
Third, the search for "meaningful" work. As others have mentioned, I don't even understand why this is bothersome. It may seem "entitled" to you that young people want to derive meaning from their work, but it seems natural, if somewhat naive, to me. My mother once told me that this was the question of her generation (she's a Boomer): find fulfillment in work OR make money to fund fulfillment elsewhere. Work/life balance. Etc. This is not an idea invented by Generation Y. It was developed and refined by their parents. Sure, most people discover that work will eventually just be work. But should we really discourage young people from trying out teaching, or humanitarian work, or other so-called "meaningful" jobs just because they will probably have to give it up to make a real living when they have families? I certainly hope not. I think your cynicism has gotten the best of you here.
As for your final point about attention deficit disorder, I can only offer to anecdotes of my own. First, my father (age 60) is the most ADD person I know. He is excellent at starting projects, but must hire others to finish them. He is a fantastically successful business man. And he's been a frequent channel changer since the advent of television. And he barely uses the internet. On the other hand, his daughter (age 29) will doggedly pursue a point or a project until it has been beaten twice to death. Which explains both the length of this comment and its very existence.
Doogs - in total agreement, except for one point:
"Well, a lot of pro athletes used to spend their entire careers playing for one or maybe two teams. That changed when I was a kid, and today it's an absolute rarity."
Bill James showed that there are actually more players today who stick with one team for their entire careers. What greater labor mobility did was force teams to lock up good/popular players for their entire careers instead of having absolute control over them and dumping them when management thought the player was done.
Companies (outside of baseball) would be well-advised to treat their own good employees the same way. But they don't...