In a couple months many CSUN graduates will be struggling to survive because of the current state of our economy.’ All across the country people are cutting back on their expenses and spending less on luxury items and leisure activities. Companies are downsizing their work force and individuals who once had stable jobs often find themselves being laid off from careers they had invested their lives in.
In such a diminishing job market where veterans of specific fields are not even safe from financial hardships, how are college students who are planning to graduate at the end of the spring semester supposed to find jobs?
As of the beginning of March, the CSUN Commencement Office recorded 9,328 students expected to graduate in May. This is still not a set number as graduation evaluations are still in progress, leaving many more students to be approved to walk before the actual graduation ceremonies take place.
The dismal picture of employment opportunities leave many soon-to-be graduates wondering what their plans will be after graduation.
Graduates who have always been at the head of their class are not only competing against each other, but against professionals who have lost their stability and are now searching for means of income elsewhere. With a vast majority of people all scrambling towards similar territories, many other students are left to wonder how the large number of college students with perhaps little to no ‘real world’ experience in careers of their major will be able to pay their rent.
As a result of the lack of accessible occupations, students are deferring graduation and opting for longer educational careers instead. Some are changing their majors from their ideal careers to what seem to be more stable options, such as healthcare. Others are simply taking filler classes to learn new skills to keep them occupied until the job market improves.
These so-called solutions are only temporary answers to a larger problem. The longer a student stays in school, the more debt they incur from student loans. When these students do finally graduate, they will spend a chunk of their salaries paying for the education years after they received it, and only if the job market has improved.
For students inevitably facing their approaching graduations, many are forced to take jobs that are in no way related to the courses they took during their collegiate years. For those who refuse to give up their original career path, internships are becoming more of a feasible option. The Career Center is being flooded with students interested in obtaining internships that can perhaps help them work their way up to their dream job. From an employer’s standpoint, internships are more appealing because they can cut down on expenses by letting go of the more expensive, older employees and hire younger individuals to do the job.
This leaves many graduating students to make crucial decisions on how they plan to make a living. At one time in our society college seniors were supposed to look forward to moving on from school towards their career. Graduates planned to leave their dorm halls, cramped apartments and their parent’s homes for their own residences and bigger and better things.
The current job market has left students on the brink of graduation more stressed out and even more unsure of the opportunities that lay ahead. We have little choice in either accepting that internship that doesn’t pay, but can maybe help us move up the ranks, or we are being forced to settle for careers that may be of no interest to us in order to survive.
