A meeting at Greenburgh Town Hall on Tuesday will be the second in a series of meetings with college students and recent graduates looking to carve their place in the business community.
The initiative was spearheaded by Elizabeth Skovron, a Greenburgh resident who will be starting her senior year at the University of Albany this fall. Skovron, who took an internship at Town Hall this summer, has named the program “Millennials Transitioning: Not Entitled ”“ Empowered.”
“We, the millennials, are by no means entitled,” she said. “We have worked hard for an opportunity, but the opportunity is very unclear so we are empowered to do something about the issue.”
At the first meeting in June, there was a shared frustration among participants about taking the right steps, such as getting a college-level degree, but then finding few opportunities available upon graduation.
“There”™s this shared feeling of fear to graduate,” Skovron, a sociology major, said. “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 said the good news is there are opportunities available for young people with an entrepreneurial spirit looking to find them. Paul Feiner, Greenbrugh”™s town supervisor, said the group looks to link ambitious youths with resources and networking opportunities with working professionals. “Can”™t find a meaningful job like you expected?” he said in an email. “Create one.”
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 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. College-educated millennials 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 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.
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.
