“Poor economy drives many to graduate school” |
| Poor economy drives many to graduate school Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:54 AM PST The most dreaded questions for the majority of seniors to hear as they near the end of their undergraduate careers are: "Do you have a job?" or "What do you plan to do when you graduate?" As they struggle to find an answer to these questions, a popular path is to look outside of the corporate world for alternative means of continuing their education. The most popular option for Santa Clara students is to apply to graduate school. According to the 2009 Outlook Survey published by Santa Clara's Career Center, 14 percent of the 2010 Santa Clara graduates who responded said they were attending graduate school. Although this percentage has been consistent within the graduating classes from 2005 to 2009, the number of graduate school applicants nation-wide has not been as constant during that time period. "Generally the national trend is for more students to go to grad school during hard economic times," said Elizabeth Thompson, the Assistant Director of Arts & Sciences at Santa Clara's Career Center. Her comments were substantiated by the recent statistics found in the Nathan E. Bell Report on Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 1999-2009. Bell, the Director of Research and Policy Analysis for the Council of Graduate Schools, found that the applications to graduate school between fall 1999 and fall 2008 increased at an annual rate of 4.8 percent per year. However, between fall 2008 and fall 2009, applications to US graduate programs increased by 8.3 percent, almost double the average for the past ten years. There are many reasons that students choose to attend graduate school after their undergraduate experience. Some students are sure about what they want to do after they graduate, and they have been planning their experiences to help reach their goal of attending a specific law school, according to Thompson. Megan Mahan, a 2010 graduate of Santa Clara, became interested in the field of psychology during her undergraduate experience, which led to her interest in graduate school. "During undergraduate I became engaged in behavioral research which sparked my interest in psychology," said Mahan. "Much of the psychology field demands higher degrees to continue research in academia, which is where I was interested in heading, so I had to endure the GRE and graduate applications." Another common theme Thompson sees among graduates applying to graduate schools is their desire for financial and job security in the future. "Some students coming out of undergraduate experience don't know what else to do so graduate school is something to avoid the inevitable job search," she said. According to Julia Yaffee, the senior assistant dean for external affairs of Santa Clara Law School, this year the applicants to law school might actually decrease, despite the economic hardships of the time. Luckily for students, graduate school is not the only option for them to continue their education after their undergraduate experience. According to the 2009 Outlook Survey, six percent of 2010 Santa Clara graduates continued on to "Other" experiences, which include enrollment in the military or in other volunteer programs. "There are alternative sorts of things students can do if they don't want to settle down in a corporate job just yet," said Thompson. "There are service programs, fellowships, teaching abroad, and volunteering abroad, all of which are great learning and exploring opportunities to really figure out what is the best step afterwards." So for those seniors who still don't know what they are going to do, have no fear; the opportunities are endless. Contact Emily Entress at eentress@scu.edu or (408) 554-4546. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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