The Promised Land was supposed to await college graduates. After 16 years of nearly nonstop schooling, a college degree was the key to high-paying jobs where potential employers fought among themselves to offer you staggering salaries, mind-boggling signing bonuses, lucrative stock options and titles that would make you the envy of all your friends. Living the good life was but a reward that was well deserved.
Alas, for the class of 2009, things haven't worked out as planned. Many of them will spend the holiday weekend contemplating bleak futures that include moving back into the old bedroom with mom and dad and repaying student loans but does not include any form of meaningful employment. Despite the optimism and hope surrounding President Barack Obama, salvation is not coming in the form of stimulus jobs.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' 2009 Student Survey, less than 20 percent of those graduates who had applied for a job actually had one. Times are so tough that two out of every five graduates aren't even looking for a job. Compare this to the 2007 - a year of bounty for grads - when more than half had jobs by the time of graduation.
The next step is uncertain at best. Everyone who has ever had a job has become an expert more than willing to impart their wisdom, while close friends and family have seemingly come to the conclusion that the secret to finding the employment is to incessantly inquire about how the search is going.
The NACE survey seems to have discovered the secret: internships. Three out of four grads who were offered jobs had completed an internship during their college careers. Thankfully, since Washington is in the grips of another dreaded intern season, it may not be too late for an unemployed grad to join the cadre who crowd the Metro, undertake invaluable tasks in the office that no one else wants to do and provide endless amounts of enjoyment for the rest of us when their antics are written in the blog "Spotted: DC Summer Interns." Unpaid employment may actually be no better (if not worse) than unpaid unemployment, but it will quickly teach one to get over oneself and make any entry-level position immensely attractive. At the very least it will give any grad an excuse to avoid reruns of The Nanny.
If as a college grad you have too much pride to sit around all day linking paper clips, you can follow 26 percent of your fellow classmates to graduate school. During times of stormy recession, graduate schools seem like sanctuaries that shield graduates from a hostile job market. Graduate school may provide more opportunities, particularly if you have settled on a career path, but don't use it as deferral for real life. Finding a job or figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life will get no easier with an extra degree and thousands more dollars of debt.
So what's next? My advice is simple - keep the faith. Hope, an often-maligned and ridiculed idea, can see you through. Thousands of graduates have faced these same perils and have emerged relatively unscathed at the other end. Let this tough market allow you to figure out who you are and where you fit in. Reject the temptation to become cynical and jaded. I look forward to seeing you at the end of the tunnel.
Matthew Verghese is a graduate student in public policy. He can be reached at mmverg@gmail.com
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