As a college student I worry about occupation after I graduate. Because I am studying to be a high school english teacher I am not torn about what career I will end up doing. I think I'll probably go into teaching.
But when somebody majors in psychology or history or (especially) theatre, then what will they do?
Well, the Nebraska College Recruiting Consortium (NCRC) tries to answer that question. They have career fairs all over Nebraska where students meet employers and they get to ask, "Where can my history degree be used to pay my bills?"
And a big round of applause to UNL for opening up their career fair to the liberal arts colleges around Nebraska. Huge industries will be flocking to Lincoln to whisper into the ears of thousands of potential employees. And bringing a resume to one of these things is an easy way to make sure your resume is seen.
So, with all of this to-do made about getting a job out of your college degree, I have to wonder, how big of an issue is this? How many college grads just go into the real world and keep getting hired into jobs they were qualified for out of high school because they don't know where to apply? Does anybody have any information about this?
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I don't know about how many grads don't get a job that matches their educational level and potential because they don't know where to look. But the stakes are high, especially now. Here's an excerpt from a recent article in the Atlantic:
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“Graduates’ first jobs have an inordinate impact on their career path and [lifetime earnings],” wrote Austan Goolsbee, now a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, in The New York Times in 2006. “People essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy. While they may work their way up, the people who started above them do, too. They don’t catch up.” Recent research suggests that as much as two-thirds of real lifetime wage growth typically occurs in the first 10 years of a career. After that, as people start families and their career paths lengthen and solidify, jumping the tracks becomes harder.
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So those first few years of employment after graduation can be very important, and presumably for college grads success will mean leveraging your degree in some way. But it seems likelier to me that those who take a job below their ability level or salary goal does so now because of the state of the economy, not because they don't know where to look.