Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Things Aren’t Looking So Good for the Graduating Class of 2013

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
sad-graduation

Stacey Kalivas should be celebrating her graduation from college later this week. Instead, the 22 year-old is getting ready to move back home with broken dreams and in debt. Kalivas is a member of the class of 2013, the fifth successive wave of students to enter into a stubbornly weak U.S. labor market—marked by high unemployment, a large number of part-time workers, and many who have given up the hunt for jobs. "It's kind of tough to be graduating and not having anything," said Kalivas. The finance major will graduate from Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, on May 18. It has ... Read More

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Talent Retention Subsidies

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
brain-drain

Brain drain is a positive indicator. When an individual leaves her hometown, she benefits. The community did an excellent job educating its children. The best and brightest migrate. Michigan has decided to put a stop to all of this economic development: Michigan is working to keep college graduates in the state, and new legislation seeks to slow the "brain drain" with an additional incentive: A tax credit for student loan payments. "For me, it's kind of a first step in talent retention," said sponsoring state Rep. Andy Schor, D-Lansing, "We have some of the best colleges and universities ... Read More

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Poor Neighborhoods Mean Fewer High School Grads

October 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

"There's a lot of talk about how we live in a post-racial society, but that certainly isn't true," says Geoffrey Wodtke, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies the effects of growing up in the bad part of town. He and two other researchers tracked 2,100 children from age 1 to age 17, and they report that children growing up in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment are much less likely to graduate from high school. While the results may seem expected, much of the previous research in the field had taken only snapshot measurements of such "neighborhood ... Read More

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One Grad Faces Decisions in a Time of Recession

May 9, 2010 • By • 2 Comments

To go or not to go? That is the question. For many recent college grads (myself included), graduate school is an option with ever-increasing appeal. With young people’s unemployment at almost 19 percent in March, hiring of 2010 college graduates down 7 percent from last year’s already dismal numbers and underemployment of 16- to 24-year-olds estimated at a whopping 31.9 percent at the end of last year, career opportunities aren’t exactly plentiful for the bright young minds of the future. Enrollment in graduate school is on the rise; the Higher Education Research Institute’s 2009 ... Read More

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NCAA Hopes to Thwart Academic Blitz

June 11, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

Through the last few years of the NCAA's academic reform movement, President Myles Brand has repeatedly called on the association's critics — shorthand for alienated faculty and sensational media — to "get their facts right." NCAA athletes are graduating at a higher rate than many give them credit for. The majority, Brand says, embody academic success stories that are overshadowed by tales of the few quarterbacks passing on degrees for million-dollar professional contracts. Brand's discussion of facts has intrigued the fact gatherers, the scholars who conduct research on college sport. ... Read More

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