Elizabeth Skovron, a student at the University at Albany, started looking for a paid summer job last winter. This summer, she”™d be back home in Tarrytown and readying for her senior year in college.
The responses didn”™t come, so she sought out unpaid internships, many of which she had to apply for online from campus. In return she received radio silence or short emailed rejections saying the positions were filled.
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is hovering at about 4.3 percent, and 44 percent of young graduates who find work end up in jobs that don”™t require degrees, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study.
“There”™s this shared feeling of fear to graduate,” Skovron told the Business Journal. “The fear I see has been, am I going to be able to get a job? Will I be able to work in a field that matches the degree?”
Skovron will be hosting a meeting to tackle that fear at Greenburgh Town Hall on Tuesday, brainstorming with current students and recent graduates how the next generation of entrepreneurs can carve their place in the business community. Skovron said she has reached out to local colleges to encourage job seekers and interns to attend, and is also seeking input from business owners and corporate professionals who may have insight. More meetings will follow throughout summer, she said.
The idea for the initiative came when Skovron came home and met with Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner to seek to work at Town Hall. Feiner, a Democrat, said, “Instead of sitting home and complaining and waiting to get responses from job prospects, Elizabeth will be heading up a summer internship initiative.”
College-educated millenials are paid better than their counterparts without degrees over the long haul, studies have shown, but recent graduates ”“ particularly those with liberal arts degrees ”“ face stiff competition for jobs and are often underemployed or facing the prospect of multiple unpaid internships with little chance of those opportunities translating into full-time employment.
Adding to the desperate situation is what is quickly becoming a national college debt crisis as tuition continually grows while appropriately-waged job prospects are few and far between. A whopping 71 percent of college graduates enter the job market with some college debt, with $26,000 the average amount of loans to be paid back after college, according to Forbes. Total student loan debt in the U.S. has reached $1.2 trillion, or more than the entire credit debt of the country.
Skovron, who is an honors student and sociology major, said it can be a humbling experience for a college student who has made all the right moves have to come home and face daunting circumstances. It can also be trying on parents, many of whom have contributed to tuition and other educational costs.
“Students are graduating without a job, going back home,” she said. “They”™re going from being independent in college to being dependent back on their parents. It”™s a stress on the parents and it”™s a stress on the children.”
The program will look to find solutions to some of the problems through networking and a strength-in-numbers approach. One of the focuses will be ideas on how to start a business. Part of the effort is identifying concepts for businesses and linking young entrepreneurs with each other, experienced professionals, and linking potential business ideas with resources to get a project off the ground.
“People have this assumption you have to have millions and millions to start something, and a lot of college kids don”™t start with that much money,” she said. “I think an idea is the best way to start something.”
The meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Greenburgh Town Hall. For more information, visit greenburghny.com or email eskovron@albany.edu.
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