S P R I N G 2012
I went through all of that in the era of relatively inexpensive tui‐ tion. Thanks to scholarships and help from the parents, I escaped with very little debt. For the average Occupy protester, student debt is a very substantial part of the grievance. There is an indictment to be delivered on those of us in the college game. Generally speaking, we don’t prepare students mentally for the end of the escalator. We need to impress upon them that getting the credential of a bachelor’s degree and completing a program of study is just the base level in the process of getting a job. Very few people come out of college ready to do the jobs they plan to get. Col‐ lege does not train most students for a job in the way a trade school might. Instead, college signals employers that a particular student has a certain degree of competence, can receive and complete as‐ signments, and is used to showing up at a given place at a given time in some kind of routine way. The college program is a foundation. But during college, the student needs to be looking well beyond just passing classes. Throughout, a young person should be thinking in the manner of the old Evangelism Explosion which queried individuals as to what they would say when God asked them, “Why should I let you in my heaven?” Except, in our scenario, the question from the employer is, “Why should I give you a job with my company?” If your only an‐ swer is that you have completed a course of study at a university and have no experience or no special skill to offer, then you are not a very attractive candidate. You need to have completed your course of study and know how to write really well and be able to analyze prob‐ lems and come up with good solutions and have some basic quantita‐ tive skills and be computer literate and have cultivated habits of life‐ time learning and have reasonably good social skills and be opportunistic about finding work and delivering results. Until a young person starts to understand just how steep the wall is that they face before they become attractive to an employer, they will mostly be bewildered as to why things aren’t working out. But think about it from the employer’s side of things. They can either pay you a salary or spend that money on facilities, technology, profit for inves‐ tors, making a product better for customers, or any number of other items other than hiring an inexperienced young person. Being a warm body with a nice credential doesn’t work well unless the econ‐ omy is smoking hot, as with the dot‐com boom. 107