Community organizers need not apply

Oregon college graduates struggle to launch careers in grim job market:

After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.

She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.

“It has gotten me pretty much nowhere,” she said.

When she graduated, Mroz figured she would quickly land a job with an international nonprofit. After two months, she took on a catering job as she broadened her search. Still living with her parents in Oregon City, she sent out more than 70 carefully prepared job applications and resumes.

“I never got a single interview, except for the catering company,” she said.

By March, she had added three more catering jobs.

“I have gone through weeks when I completely doubted myself,” she said. “What am I doing wrong? It is a question I ask everyday. ....After a year of getting basically no response, you start giving up.”

Mroz recently drove cross-country for a 3-month unpaid internship that she started last week with a nonprofit agency in Baltimore. The agency helps refugee immigrants settle in the United States. After that internship ends, she will pay her way to Kenya for a community development internship through the San Francisco-based Foundation for Sustainable Development.

If those experiences don’t lead to jobs, Mroz said, she’ll consider graduate school.

Of course some graduates are landing jobs, particularly those with specific technical skills such as John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He’s the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering , which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.
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The Oregon Employment Department’s job bank lists 14,373 job openings, but they are most prevalent in low-paying occupations that don’t require college degrees such as retail sales, trucking and housekeeping.

Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria’s Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon. Now, a year after graduating in 2009 and applying for more than 100 jobs, she’s still working part time for the store while hoping to get a job with the American Cancer Society.

“I have a bachelor’s degree, and I’m making $8.50 an hour,” she said. “It is pretty depressing."

It must be depressing when you've just borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to study how three-legged lesbian tree frogs in inner cities living on welfare masturbate and can't find a job.

Is a college degree still worth it?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of the 10 employment sectors that will see the largest gains over the next decade won't require much more than some on-the-job training.

In other words the whole article can be summed up in one word: "No!"

This is nothing new. The same thing applied to me nearly 50 years ago. I wanted to study history and English literature but went into pharmacy because it had job prospects and because I realized that the real world rated English literature majors on the same level as hair-dressers and whores - but paid them less. With hindsight, I think I should have chosen plumbing.