Minority-Serving Schools Report Working Harder To Connect Students With Jobs: When college placement officers talk of helping students and alumni find jobs today, they cite many new hurdles and challenges stemming from the nation’s economic slump and dramatically changed job market.
Gone are the days when even the best candidates at the best schools can be picky. College job fairs and career days, popular recruiting tools since the 1980s, are having a hard time drawing recruiters as their ranks thin. Signing bonuses and relocation allowances are now few and far between, if offered at all. Generous vacations and attractive employer-paid health and savings plans are a thing of the past.
“It’s a difficult market this year,” says Dr. Edwin Koc, director of strategic and foundation research at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which surveys some 1,800 colleges and more than 900 employers for its Job Outlook survey. The outlook for 2010 graduates, says Koc, is about the same as that for 2009 graduates. There are some signs the jobs slump may be bottoming out, he says, hastening to add, “If we’re going to turn around, it’s going to be relatively slow.”
