Posts Tagged Rutgers University

Jobs Picture Grim for Recent High School Grads – Stephanie Czekalinski – NationalJournal.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Employment on June 8, 2012


Jobs Picture Grim for Recent High School Grads

Only three in 10 recent graduates with no college plans are employed.

 

By Stephanie Czekalinski

Updated: June 8, 2012
June 7, 2012

(AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA)

The job market is tough for everyone, but for young people who look for a job after high school graduation rather than going to college, the search can be particularly grim. According to a new report, only three in 10 of these young people have full time jobs. 

 

The prospects are grim these days for high school graduates who look for work instead of enrolling in college, according to a recent study by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

Only three in 10 of these recent grads are employed full time, according to the study, which tracked the employment outcomes of 544 young people who graduated from high schools across the country between 2006 and 2011.

The Great Recession has had an impact on everyone, but for young people without a college degree, the employment picture is crippling.

Only 16 percent of those who graduated during the recession (2009-2011) are employed full time, although nearly half are looking for work. A third are unemployed and 15 percent are working part time. One in six have left the labor market altogether.

Thirty-seven percent of students who graduated pre-recession (2006-2008) are employed full time, according to the report.

It’s a debilitating reality faced by many young people in the nation’s capital every day, says Raymond Bell, founder of the HOPE Project, an IT training and development program in Washington.

“They’re unable to get McDonald’s, Wendy’s, retail,” he said. “Twenty years ago in D.C., you could graduate from high school … and you could go work for the federal government or the Postal Service. Now they’re competing with a kid from George Washington University with a 3.9 GPA.”

The study shows that although employment is better than the alternative, the jobs young high school grads are landing are predominantly low-paying and often are temporary.

Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed said they were paid hourly. The average hourly wage was $7.50, only 25 cents more than the federal minimum wage. Three quarters of the jobs reported were temporary.

“With this combination of temporary, low-wage work, it is likely that few of the recent high school graduates would have been able to earn an annual income of $10,890 to exceed the official federal poverty level for a single household,” wrote the study’s authors.

Of those who worked part time in their first job after college, about 58 percent earned considerably less than a poverty-level income, according to the study.

That has consequences for everyone, Bell said. Young grads without prospects for solid employment are more likely to be teen parents, become homeless, or engage in petty crime, he said.

The Great Recession depressed wages for all young graduates, according to the report. Wages for young high school grads dropped 10 percent from 2007 to 2011. Pay for young college grads dropped by about 5 percent.

In 2011, young college grads earned an average of $16.81 per hour – about $35,000 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The unemployment rate for all workers ages 16-19 was three times the national average — 24.6 percent in May, according to the Labor Department.

 Jobs Picture Grim for Recent High School Grads – Stephanie Czekalinski – NationalJournal.com.

Related articles

, , , , , , ,

Leave a Comment

Outlook Is Bleak Even for Recent College Graduates – NYTimes.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Economy, Editorial, Education, Employment, Jobs, Social, Society on April 26, 2012


Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling

Jessica Hill/Associated Press

Graduates at the University of Michigan commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor in April.

 
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: May 18, 2011

 

The individual stories are familiar. The chemistry major tending bar. The classics major answering phones. The Italian studies major sweeping aisles at Wal-Mart.

 

Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

“I have friends with the same degree as me, from a worse school, but because of who they knew or when they happened to graduate, they’re in much better jobs,” said Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. “It’s more about luck than anything else.”

The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.

Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007. (Some have gone for further education or opted out of the labor force, while many are still pounding the pavement.)

Even these figures understate the damage done to these workers’ careers. Many have taken jobs that do not make use of their skills; about only half of recent college graduates said that their first job required a college degree.

The choice of major is quite important. Certain majors had better luck finding a job that required a college degree, according to an analysis by Andrew M. Sum, an economist at Northeastern University, of 2009 Labor Department data for college graduates under 25.

Young graduates who majored in education and teaching or engineering were most likely to find a job requiring a college degree, while area studies majors — those who majored in Latin American studies, for example — and humanities majors were least likely to do so. Among all recent education graduates, 71.1 percent were in jobs that required a college degree; of all area studies majors, the share was 44.7 percent.

An analysis by The New York Times of Labor Department data about college graduates aged 25 to 34 found that the number of these workers employed in food service, restaurants and bars had risen 17 percent in 2009 from 2008, though the sample size was small. There were similar or bigger employment increases at gas stations and fuel dealers, food and alcohol stores, and taxi and limousine services.

This may be a waste of a college degree, but it also displaces the less-educated workers who would normally take these jobs.

“The less schooling you had, the more likely you were to get thrown out of the labor market altogether,” said Mr. Sum, noting that unemployment rates for high school graduates and dropouts are always much higher than those for college graduates. “There is complete displacement all the way down.”

Meanwhile, college graduates are having trouble paying off student loan debt, which is at a median of $20,000 for graduates of classes 2006 to 2010.

Mr. Bishop, the Pittsburgh graduate, said he is “terrified” of the effects his starter jobs might have on his ultimate career, which he hopes to be in publishing or writing. “It looks bad to have all these short-term jobs on your résumé, but you do have to pay the bills,” he said, adding that right now his student loan debt was over $70,000.

Many graduates will probably take on more student debt. More than 60 percent of those who graduated in the last five years say they will need more formal education to be successful.

“I knew there weren’t going to be many job prospects for me until I got my Ph.D.,” said Travis Patterson, 23, a 2010 graduate of California State University, Fullerton. He is working as an administrative assistant for a property management company and studying psychology in graduate school. While it may not have anything to do with his degree, “it helps pay my rent and tuition, and that’s what matters.”

Going back to school does offer the possibility of joining the labor force when the economy is better. Unemployment rates are also generally lower for people with advanced schooling.

Those who do not go back to school may be on a lower-paying trajectory for years. They start at a lower salary, and they may begin their careers with employers that pay less on average or have less room for growth.

“Their salary history follows them wherever they go,” said Carl Van Horn, a labor economist at Rutgers. “It’s like a parrot on your shoulder, traveling with you everywhere, constantly telling you ‘No, you can’t make that much money.’ ”

And while young people who have weathered a tough job market may shy from risks during their careers, the best way to nullify an unlucky graduation date is to change jobs when you can, says Till von Wachter, an economist at Columbia.

“If you don’t move within five years of graduating, for some reason you get stuck where you are. That’s just an empirical finding,” Mr. von Wachter said. “By your late 20s, you’re often married, and have a family and have a house. You stop the active pattern of moving jobs.”

 Outlook Is Bleak Even for Recent College Graduates – NYTimes.com.

Related articles

, , , , , , ,

Leave a Comment

Chicago school draws scrutiny over student fines – chicagotribune.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Education, Social, Society on February 21, 2012


Chicago school draws scrutiny over student fines

 

CHICAGO— 

A sense of order and decorum prevails at Noble Street College Prep as students move quickly through a hallway adorned with banners from dozens of colleges. Everyone wears a school polo shirt neatly tucked into khaki trousers. There’s plenty of chatter but no jostling, no cellphones and no dawdling.

The reason, administrators say, is that students have learned there is a price to pay — literally — for breaking even the smallest rules.

Noble Network of Charter Schools charges students at its 10 Chicago high schools $5 for detentions stemming from infractions that include chewing gum and having untied shoelaces. Last school year it collected almost $190,000 in discipline “fees” from detentions and behavior classes — a policy drawing fire from some parents, advocacy groups and education experts.

Officials at the rapidly expanding network, heralded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a model for the city, say the fees offset the cost of running the detention program and help keep small problems from becoming big ones. Critics say Noble is nickel-and-diming its mostly low-income students over insignificant, made-up infractions that force out kids administrators don’t want.

“We think this just goes over the line … fining someone for having their shoelaces untied (or) a button unbuttoned goes to harassment, not discipline,” said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, which staged protests last week over the policy after Woestehoff said she was approached by an upset parent

Students at Noble schools receive demerits for various infractions — four for having a cellphone or one for untied shoelaces. Four demerits within a two-week period earn them a detention and $5 fine. Students who get 12 detentions in a year must attend a summer behavior class that costs $140.

Superintendent Michael Milkie said the policy teaches the kids — overwhelmingly poor, minority and often hoping to be the first in their families to attend college — to follow rules and produces in a structured learning environment. He points to the network’s average ACT score of 20.3, which is higher than at the city’s other non-selective public schools, and says more than 90 percent of Noble graduates enroll in college.

While fights can be an almost daily occurrence in some urban high schools, Milkie says there’s only about one a year on each Noble campus.

By “sweating the small stuff … we don’t have issues with the big stuff,” he said.

Milkie said the fines also help defray the cost of administering after-school detention and the salary of the network’s dean of discipline, which otherwise would divert money intended for education.

But Donna Moore said the district is manufacturing problems that lead to unproductive badgering of students, including her 16-year-old son, who had to repeat ninth grade at Noble’s Gary Comer College Prep after racking up 33 detentions and several suspensions.

“It was nothing egregious, but just that the little things added up: a shirt unbuttoned, shoes not tied, not tracking the teacher with his eyes,” said Moore, adding that her son has an attention disorder. “It’s not normal to treat a young adult as a 2-year-old … kids internalize that.”

Woestehoff and Moore said some families have removed their children from Noble schools because they couldn’t keep paying the fees, though Moore said her biggest complaint is the infractions. Milkie said Noble sets up payment plans and on rare occasions waives the fees, and students never would be held back a grade solely because they couldn’t pay.

Even so, Matthew Mayer, a professor in the graduate school of education at Rutgers University, said a monetary fine is “highly inappropriate” because it likely has no bearing on students’ academic performance and disproportionately hurts poor families.

“It’s almost medieval in nature. It’s a form a financial torture, for lack of a better term,” Mayer said.

Emanuel defended the school, saying it gets “incredible” results and parents don’t have to send their children there. Charter schools are exempt from most district policies.

Parent Tammy O’Neal said her two daughters are excelling at Noble’s Muchin College Prep, and only one ever got detention, for not wearing a belt.

“If a kid is prone to getting in trouble and not taking school seriously, then (the fines are) a steep slope,” she said. “But why don’t you tell your kid to straighten up?”

Chadie Morris, 16, a sophomore at Noble Street College Prep, carries a 3.8 grade-point average at Noble Street College Prep, but figures she has paid $45 already this year for such things as talking in class.

“Sometimes it can be about the littlest things and you can still get demerits,” she said. “Demerits are horrible; detentions are horrible.”

But the aspiring lawyer, who struggled with absences until her adviser and principal persuaded her to come back, looks forward to attending a one-week summer college program.

Other charter school operators in Chicago and elsewhere said they don’t fine students but respect Noble’s academic success and its right to adopt its own discipline policy.

Tim King, CEO of Urban Prep Academies, which operates three high schools for boys in some of Chicago’s toughest and poorest neighborhoods, said he believes “very firmly in a more therapeutic or restorative approach vs. punitive toward student conduct.”

Every student in Urban Prep’s first two graduating classes was accepted to a college or university.

At Knowledge is Power Program, a network of 109 charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, middle school students are rewarded for good behavior with a weekly incentive “paycheck” — fake money that can be redeemed at the school store or used to defray the cost of field trip, spokesman Steve Mancini said. The system is phased out by high school because it’s no longer needed.

Milkie, though, doesn’t plan to change a thing.

“It’s a beautiful system,” he said. “I don’t want to brag, but it is. It’s why the kids are so successful.”

 Chicago school draws scrutiny over student fines – chicagotribune.com.

Related articles

, , , , , , ,

Leave a Comment

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 263 other followers

%d bloggers like this: