The Wall Street Journal appeared to confirm many Mount Holyoke students’ fears when it published its national ranking of colleges that recruiters favor in its Sept. 13 edition. The highest ranking schools on the list were Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—big public state universities with undergraduate enrollments of over 30,000 students.
According to the article accompanying the rankings, “recruiters say graduates of top public universities are often among the most prepared and well-rounded academically, and companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures and over time have the best track record in their firms.” With tight budgets and time constraints, recruiters preferred to visit schools with big student populations to maximize efficiency during the student recruiting process. “We’re all accountable to the bottom line,” Diane Borhani, campus recruiting leader at Deloitte LLP, was quoted saying in the article, after recently narrowing her roster to about 400 schools, down from 500.
In 2009, 436 recruiting companies came to Penn State, with some recruiters commenting that students had “core competencies that we desire.”
For students at a liberal arts college like Mount Holyoke, the survey is unsettling especially for seniors looking for employment in the current difficult economic climate. Many schools that rank highly for their academic excellence did not appear in the top tier, with Cornell University being the only Ivy league school in the top 25. Overall, elite liberal arts colleges did not rank well.
However, the survey may not accurately reflect a student’s prospects at being employed after graduation. Professor of Economics and Chair of Economics Satyananda Gabriel dispelled possible anxiety created by the survey. “The fact that certain large corporations recruit at a subset of universities does not imply the greater probability that a student attending such universities will find the plum jobs, so to speak. These schools tend to have very large graduating classes and only a fraction of these classes will go to those corporations.”
Statistics compiled by the Office of Institutional Research found that six months after graduation, 47 percent of the class of 2009 was employed and 21 percent in graduate school studying full time. 84 percent of students who had planned on full time employment after graduation were successful in finding employment. The national unemployment rate for college graduates under 25 in 2010 was 8 percent, up from 6.8 percent in April 2009 and 3.7 percent in April 2007.
Steve Koppi, director of the Career Development Center, was positive about student employment. “Despite the Great Recession we have experienced over the past two years, our recent graduates have done well.”
He continued, “Our students have the critical thinking skills, the communication skills, the ability to understand, the ability to communicate across cultures — the things that employers really look for. You’ll see that over and over again, employers looking for the kinds of skills a liberal education produces.”
Professor of Politics Christopher Pyle is confident in the benefits of a liberal arts education. “If liberal arts colleges do their jobs well, most of their graduates will seek callings that are more challenging, and more socially useful, than the entry-level jobs that most corporate recruiters offer.”
Pyle’s message to recruiters is clear. “If they really want employees who are more likely to think up creative solutions to complex problems…then they would do better recruiting at liberal arts colleges.” Koppi similarly confirmed. “It’s a myth that liberal learning is somehow impractical. The skills you learn here, communication skills —writing, speaking, analytical skills, critical thinking skills, all these things are what employers want desperately in new graduates.”
Similarly, senior Anh Le ’10 is optimistic during her search for employment in the finance industry. “Liberal arts is tailor-made for financial companies, in which everything is constantly changing. Recruiters look for learning skills, not a fixed set of knowledge in a candidate.”
Alumni Maya Pillai ’07, who has had experience being on the job market, said that it is mistaken to assume “that liberal arts colleges don’t offer the necessary skills.”
“With regard to actual training and quality of students, from my experience applying for jobs, employers love liberal arts students for the flexibility in approach and easy adaptability to all kinds of jobs; and with the reputation MHC students have, employability rarely depends on just liberal arts vs. the regular schools,” she said.
After having many past successful Mount Holyoke students flourish at major Wall Street firms, Gabriel is confident in the quality of Mount Holyoke’s economic major.
“One year Goldman Sachs sent out four recruiters to the Valley and three of them were former students of mine. These former students, now serving as recruiters, have certainly proven to be favorable to hiring other Mount Holyoke graduates,” Gabriel stated in an e-mail.
Perhaps things are not as bleak as they seem. Koppi offered some words of advice to students.
“It’s really important to not believe the media hype…there are opportunities out there,” Koppi affirmed. “I think it’s important for students to continue to pursue their dreams in a very practical way. And that’s really what we’re all about, we want to connect liberal learning with long-term career success.”
Koppi cited the NACE’s Job Outlook 2009 survey. According to the survey, the top five personal qualities employers look for are: communication skills (verbal and written) strong work ethic, teamwork skills (works well with others), initiative, and analytical skills.
“All skills and abilities developed through a liberal education, like we offer at MHC,” Koppi said.
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I’m tired of looking for jobs, I hope I can get a job Already !
I think the chief cause for the apparent growing sense of anger, hopelessness and despair among those who are coping with this issue is that the long run unemployed are not a unified voting force. In fact, We are comprised of an entire mixture of the complete working class. This recession didn’t simply effect blue collar or white collar workers. Both Republicans and Democrats have both been hit hard. It just about equally effected us all.
I graduated from a top-tier university in 2000 with a liberal-arts degree. In the first month of college, we had to listen to a presentation by an upperclassmen about getting a job after graduation. She encouraged us to pursue our interests in college, because “companies are going to train you” to do your jobs. So I majored in a liberal arts discipline of interest to me, thinking my good grades, reputation of the college I attended, and GMAT of 740 would get me hired somewhere.
Ten years later, I have never worked a real job.
I once had a temp job for a few months working next to people who only had a HS eduation and a few other part-time jobs. I am broke (but no debt due to the merit scholarship I was on in college). This had meant that many areas of my life have fallen apart, or are doing so.
I’d like to think I learn quickly, as the article says employers value liberal arts majors because they can do so, but it hasn’t benefited me.
Ten years out of a college people jump to get into, I am living in pretty close to poverty.
My advice: major in business. I’d hate it, but it’s better than being broke with no prospects.