The Great Recession is taking its toll. Let us count the (two) ways.
First, if you’re graduating, you probably won’t be able to find a job. Cue The Chronicle of Higher Education:
The good news: Hiring for new college graduates is expected to hold steady in 2010. The bad: Hiring for new college graduates is expected to hold steady in 2010. That’s after plummeting in 2009 by about 35 to 40 percent, according to a major annual survey of companies.
“It’s going to be competitive, no doubt about it,” says Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute, which conducts the survey.
Only 27 percent of employers have definite plans to hire college graduates this year.
But if you’re an underclassmen, don’t think things are going to be much better. You’re likely going to have deal with a few more years of budget cuts as the fiscal crisis continues to decimate state budgets. From The Chronicle yet again:
“The strains on state and local budgets stay with us even if we get a better economy,” Mr. Strauss said. He predicts that the domestic economy will start to strengthen early next year, and that state and local revenues will improve six to 12 months after that. “It is going to be a tough couple of years for state revenues coming into higher education.”
Quick Hits
- Very Important Washington Post Metro Columnist Robert McCartney visited the campus last week and after looking at controversies over diversity and the Wooded Hillock, declares that the administration shouldn’t sacrifice its ideals in hard times.
- The weekly newspaper for D.C.’s gay community, The Washington Blade, has shut its doors. But staffers say they plan to start a new venture soon.
- Graduate assistants are striking at the University of Illinois, Inside Higher Ed reports, leading to empty classrooms across the Urbana-Champaign campus. Here, they are still struggling for their union to be recognized.
- And while officials here are considering a controversial move to merge different diversity departments, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is taking an even more extreme step: he is proposing merging three universities. Inside Higher Ed reports that the historically black universities Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State may soon become one.