The New Ivy League Career Path

I’ve blogged The Big Reset, but looking at the microcosm of individual human beings facing life in impaired economic times – infused with hope and a traditional liberal arts or undergraduate business education at some of America’s finest academic institutions – they step onto the precipice of what was once an easy path to a reasonably-lucrative job market. Instead, where they find opportunities today, it is in the wonderful world of being an underemployment statistic: Ivy-educated waiters, baristas, secretaries, gofers, sales clerks, bartenders, nannies and messengers.

Oh, it’s not as if such work were part of “paying your dues” as a stepping stone to potential greatness – where aspiring theatrical agents start in the mailrooms of prestigious agencies like Creative Artists or William Morris Endeavor or as television network pages hope to become executives and producers one day. It’s a job. It helps pay for those student loans that are likely to linger for well over a decade (the current average is over 15 years), and it may even help move you out of living with mommy and daddy. But it’s not what you hoped for, why you went to school or a path to anything worthy of the time spent getting ready for life.

In an article entitled Generation Limbo: Waiting it Out, the New York Times (August 31^st) drilled down into the lives of several recent graduates of prestigious Ivies and other fine universities of note:

Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 – is waiting tables at the Chart House ($2.17/hour plus tips) until she finally found a paralegal job.

Stephanie Kelly, a 2009 graduate of the University of Florida – serves as a part-time secretary at a local museum supplemented with occasional freelance writing assignments.

Benjamin Shore, 23, a 2010 graduate from the University of Maryland – works in a university call center in Baltimore.

Geo Wyeth, 27, a 2007 graduate from Yale – worked at an Apple Store in New York as a salesclerk and trainer, while furthering his music career in an experimental rock band.

Sarah Weinstein, 25, a 2008 graduate of Boston University – manages a bar in Austin, Texas.

At least they’re working. “The numbers are not encouraging. About 14 percent of those who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 are looking for full-time jobs, either because they are unemployed or have only part-time jobs, according to a survey of 571 recent college graduates released in May by the Heldrich Center at Rutgers… ‘They are a postponed generation,’ said Cliff Zukin, an author of the Heldrich Center study. He noted that recent graduates seemed to be living with parents longer and taking longer to become financially secure. The journey on the life path, for many, is essentially stalled.

“The Heldrich survey also found that the portion of graduates who described their first job as a ‘career’ fell from 30 percent, if they graduated before the 2008 economic downturn (in 2006 and 2007), to 22 percent, if they graduated after the downturn (in 2009 and 2010)… In an ominous sign, those figures didn’t change much for second jobs, Dr. Zukin added, suggesting that recent graduates were stumbling from field to field. Indeed, Till Marco von Wachter, an economics professor at Columbia University who has studied the impact of recessions on young workers, said the effect on earnings took about a decade to fade.” NY Times.

The hope in all of this remains the minds and entrepreneurial spirit that seems to define America. These young people are no worse-prepared to create, invent and devise than the stars of generations past. They have not suffered from the cutbacks in public primary and secondary schools currently sweeping the nation. Somewhere deep in my gut, I trust they can do it. Truthfully, I have to say I trust them a whole lot more than the idiots in my generation that handed these younger citizens the mess we created.

I’m Peter Dekom, and good minds are still good minds.