Some graduates are confused.
I was up until 4 a.m. a few nights ago talking with a distraught friend who’s about to graduate but who hasn’t, at no fault of her own, been able to find a professional job. She’s understandably upset that there are no jobs.
Her position is common. There are a lot of graduates, I presume, in the same spot. Some might take time off. Some will move home. Some will travel. Some might get a job, either in their field or in retail or food service. Graduating from a university in this job market forces a person to ask: What will I do with my life once I realize my hopes and dreams were gimmicky and unrealistic? Some students will keep their fantasies and imagine, despite a subpar brand of education, that they’ll someday be the editor of the New York Times or a Supreme Court justice or the President of the United States.
And that’s too bad.
The U.S. is classed, and the class control is much worse than at ASU. One might assume there’s no use applying for internships or entry-level jobs or making connections on LinkedIn. Class mechanisms are set — if your parents make $36,000, you’ll make $36,000. I must know a dozen students who want to be university deans someday. I think they’re blinded by the salaries of ASU’s deans. There are maybe 20 deans for 70,000 students. The odds are slight and it’s a chummy crowd who votes in their own kind.
It’s time to get serious.
The presidential election is being dominated by rich candidates with wealthier backers. Courageous and dutiful privates in Iraq make $13,000 a year, yet Halliburton contractors make $14,000 a month. Banks are getting rich off taxpayer money. Prisons are overcrowded and rights for prisoners are eroding. Rights of U.S. citizens are eroding. Teenage workers in Apple’s factories in China are being killed by overwork and toxic fumes. Companies dump waste in rivers. British Petroleum is still laughing from the oil spill in the Gulf. Staff is abusing people in nursing homes. Doctors are out to make a buck instead of help. And meanwhile, college students are taking out more and more loans to get jobs that pay $10 an hour.
It’s a sick world, much sicker than at ASU. Professors who don’t respond to emails or grade unfairly are nothing compared to employers who lay off staff to balance budgets. Michael Crow’s salary is pathetic compared to that of CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein, who has yet to be punished for his role in the market crash. Criticism of ASU will get you nasty looks. Criticism of your paying boss will get you fired.
Because the world is so sick it seems to me somewhat of a blessing there are no jobs. The world doesn’t need more aspirational class consumers using credit to buy flat-screen TVs, bourgeois wine and overpriced jeans. The world needs fighters, whether by pen or by progressive action. It’s time to break out of the comfortable and fight injustice.
Confusion solved.
Reach the columnist at whamilt@asu.edu
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