The problem is just that these services don't work nearly as well as they should, and indeed have to, in the present economy insofar as the actual results of students spending time and effort (and money) on their programs should be full-time, gainful employment. They need a different set of performance metrics, and in fact the ONLY performance metric they should be basing that center on is how many graduates or students affiliated with Georgetown are put into full-time job positions, or at least something with benefits.
In fact, they shouldn't even measure anything besides median/mode income, and the VALUE of EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS DERIVED or PAID FOR vs.BY (out-of-pocket) recent graduates, because I ASSURE you that even worse than not having income (anyone can flip burgers and have a W-2 form to fill out come tax season) is not having stable benefits for health and welfare that were PAID for and ASSUMED services provided by colleges and universities to students.
THAT type of stability, the stability upon which overall fiscal, familial, "defining life change," or any other intangible but no less important basis of welfare, is the dominating purpose of obtaining a career.
(and Phil proves this and his other points after the jump, where you can learn about Employment Benefits and Compensation for Tax Purposes- IRS Jargon 001)
If you read anything about executive/employee compensation plans (much information is available on publicly-traded companies, far less on private firms/parnerships), benefits such as health insurance, retirement savings matching, and the variety of other services employers are obligated by law or otherwise choose to provide to their employees can easily end up as 18-20% of an employee's base salary, which is thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars in (non-monetary) benefits adding up to create the employee's "total compensation."
This value is most relevant for taxation/IRS purposes at the end of the year, but the absence of benefits means even self-employed or un-employed or people employed without benefits are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for basic health and social services in an economically flawed and unsustainable manner. Plus how the f--- would a young student apply for unemployment benefits, having hardly EVER been EMPLOYED before in their lives? If there's one truism in the American economy, it's that unless job/benefit creation and growth matches population and labor growth, we are doomed to spend ourselves into an oblivion as far as the Federal budget is concerned.
In fact, they shouldn't even measure anything besides median/mode income, and the VALUE of EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS DERIVED or PAID FOR vs.BY (out-of-pocket) recent graduates, because I ASSURE you that even worse than not having income (anyone can flip burgers and have a W-2 form to fill out come tax season) is not having stable benefits for health and welfare that were PAID for and ASSUMED services provided by colleges and universities to students.
THAT type of stability, the stability upon which overall fiscal, familial, "defining life change," or any other intangible but no less important basis of welfare, is the dominating purpose of obtaining a career.
(and Phil proves this and his other points after the jump, where you can learn about Employment Benefits and Compensation for Tax Purposes- IRS Jargon 001)
If you read anything about executive/employee compensation plans (much information is available on publicly-traded companies, far less on private firms/parnerships), benefits such as health insurance, retirement savings matching, and the variety of other services employers are obligated by law or otherwise choose to provide to their employees can easily end up as 18-20% of an employee's base salary, which is thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars in (non-monetary) benefits adding up to create the employee's "total compensation."
This value is most relevant for taxation/IRS purposes at the end of the year, but the absence of benefits means even self-employed or un-employed or people employed without benefits are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for basic health and social services in an economically flawed and unsustainable manner. Plus how the f--- would a young student apply for unemployment benefits, having hardly EVER been EMPLOYED before in their lives? If there's one truism in the American economy, it's that unless job/benefit creation and growth matches population and labor growth, we are doomed to spend ourselves into an oblivion as far as the Federal budget is concerned.
Measuring and allowing student-graduates to accrue such "determinants of welfare," along with financial awareness and other "real life skills" (such as filling out tax forms and investing 401(k)'s or in anything other than a savings account, really) should be THE focus of a Career Center. The career center(s) have got to stop equating surveys, "user evaluations," student feedback, and other intangible and at times ridiculously irrelevant criteria with actual performance of undergraduates in the job market relative to students in peer universities.
Again, by "peer universities" I am referring to same sized universities, whose students similarly-minded and motivated, and even pursue some nearly identical majors as Georgetown students. Even from just meeting recent graduates from peer institutions in the workforce, I can definitely tell that they are far better prepared for their career (not even just a job interview or "nailing" one-off tests or phone screens or interviews, but to be quite prepared for a CAREER!) and have been given far better attention and training than Georgetown students can ever hope to expect from our career center.
Again, by "peer universities" I am referring to same sized universities, whose students similarly-minded and motivated, and even pursue some nearly identical majors as Georgetown students. Even from just meeting recent graduates from peer institutions in the workforce, I can definitely tell that they are far better prepared for their career (not even just a job interview or "nailing" one-off tests or phone screens or interviews, but to be quite prepared for a CAREER!) and have been given far better attention and training than Georgetown students can ever hope to expect from our career center.
Here's the bottom line: With the exception of consulting, business/finance, and some pre-law component industries, Georgetown students are being out-classed, out-matched, and out-competed by people in our age group and at our experience levels, with largely the same abilities (at least on paper) and definitely the same stats. Our peers at other universities (see: GW, Williams, some AU, and I haven't even started talking about the Ivy league schools yet) are getting jobs that we aren't, or can't even begin to/don't know how to approach, and the lack of broad-based competitiveness of our career center vis-a-vis other universities is most certainly a major factor.
In that sense, yes, I would like (at least a portion of) my tuition money back, thank you very much, and so should everyone else who goes to a college that can't provide meaningful employment chances or options despite previously deploying targeted advertising campaigns to lure prospective students into "following their passion" through a university degree. And if recent lawsuits filed against certain Law Schools based in the state of New York due to their alleged publishing of "misleading post-graduate employment statistics" are any indication, we are not alone, and this issue is not going anywhere but to a massive stand-off between educational administrators, educators, and the student-parent-alumni nexus that feeds them.
In that sense, yes, I would like (at least a portion of) my tuition money back, thank you very much, and so should everyone else who goes to a college that can't provide meaningful employment chances or options despite previously deploying targeted advertising campaigns to lure prospective students into "following their passion" through a university degree. And if recent lawsuits filed against certain Law Schools based in the state of New York due to their alleged publishing of "misleading post-graduate employment statistics" are any indication, we are not alone, and this issue is not going anywhere but to a massive stand-off between educational administrators, educators, and the student-parent-alumni nexus that feeds them.
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