CommenTATE

Students mill about at a Wharton career fair last year.

If you’re in Wharton, Engineering or Nursing you’re probably not worried about a job. Well, at least you don’t act like it.

We in the College feel a lot of anxiety about getting a job because we think our degree is dismissed by those in Wharton and doubted by those in Engineering. They try to make us think a College degree is for novices and that a more “advanced” degree is essential. Throw out the doubt. It’s not.

Career Link 2007, the annual career fair at Penn, happened this past week. Patricia Rose, Director of Career Services, told me over the phone that students in the College are “sought after” by many employers there. Rose e-mailed me some very handy Class of 2006 raw data, which surveyed roughly half the Class of 2006. Over-half of those reported full-time employment with salaries in the range of $20,000 to $85,000.

Okay, so the statistic sounds great. However, the concern of becoming a College graduate struggling to find employment isn’t unfounded. Recently, I glanced at a New York Times article pointing out that the number of students in a master’s program had doubled since 1980. It featured people who claimed they wouldn’t have their job without a master’s degree. It surprised me because there’s also a reverse trend - I had just read a different article about people forgoing an M.B.A. because it’s “a waste of money and time - time that could be spent making money.”

Nevertheless, the question still burned: Is a College degree enough to carry me into a first job? Yes it is. Don’t let others discourage or dilute the value of a College education when solid evidence reveals we are entering the workforce successfully. Take that, Whartonites and Engineers!

CommenTATE appears every Monday and Friday.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.