Job market sends education major back to school

By Jonathan McFadden

mcfaddenj@thejohnsonian.com

Graphic by Shatesha Scales

Editor’s note: Keep up with the job market for Winthrop graduates with reporter Jonathan McFadden. This is the first story in a 3-part series about where alumni are now.

Ask Laura Kendrick what she was looking forward to most in her classroom and she’d say interacting with her students.

The future teacher was going to have a corkboard adorned with the theme colors of whichever school she would be working in.

She planned to immerse herself in school spirit and find common ground with the people she worked with.

She wasn’t going to stand in the front of the room, point to the board and lecture all day.

Those were Kendrick’s thoughts before graduation day.

Laura Kendrick 2010The 27-year-old graduate student walked across the stage on May 6, earning a Master’s of Arts in teaching (MAT), which certifies her to teach social studies.

During her early days of graduate school at Winthrop, she wasn’t too sure if teaching was for her. That all changed with an internship at Fort Mill High School.

“I got into a classroom and was put in front of the kids and was like ‘Oh yeah, this is fun. I want to do this,’” Kendrick said.

After graduating, Kendrick applied to six or seven jobs but soon encountered difficulty.

She made the decision to stay in Charlotte. It was around that time when the recession crawled its way south into the school system, Kendrick said.

This past summer, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools (CMS) had the option to cut salaries of their employees across the board. Instead, they chose to clean house, Kendrick said.

In late June, CMS laid off 1,035 employees, 804 of whom were teachers.

When Kendrick was ready to submit her job application to CMS, only three job openings were available and the competition was fierce.

“…You can see how many applicants have already applied, much to your pleasure. One of them had 1,000; the other two had 200 applicants,” Kendrick said.

Kendrick was competing against other college graduates as well as teachers who had been laid off, but still had at least two years of experience in the classroom.

Kendrick didn’t get the job.

Cutting losses

Kendrick said it was stimulus money that keep many schools from being hit too severely by the recession.

Now that the stimulus has almost run out, the number of grants coming in only put “a band-aid over a flood,” Kendrick said.

She decided it wasn’t a fight worth fighting at the time. So she returned to school to obtain her Master of Arts in history.

Even so, she already had an impressive list of educational experience. She completed her undergrad in political science at Marrymout College in Manhattan, N.Y.  

From there, she put in three years of law school at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.

Then she moved east, where she earned a master’s degree from Winthrop.

Job requirements

Kendrick said she realized what was happening in the job market, especially for teachers.

She has an MAT in history, which certifies her to teach a range of subjects from economics to sociology.

But the demand for social studies teachers was low, she said.
 
On the other hand, demand for math and science teachers was high.

To get a job, she said, most have to be willing to move to undesirable locations.

Kendrick’s school she interned at was also not hiring. She said they will have two job openings next fall and she is going to try for that.

But she said her two master’s degrees may result in a deficit rather than a benefit.

“I have a strong feeling it’s going to be a two to three year rebound,” Kendrick said.

Many principals may be willing to hire a college graduate with two master’s degrees under their belt. Problem is, the principals won’t be able to afford them.

Kendrick said she would either lose the job competition to teachers with more experience or undergraduates who are cheaper to hire.

Still, Kendrick has no regrets and said she wouldn’t do anything differently.

“You know of your mistakes and it’s bad timing, but a lot of things in life are.”

Grad school alternatives

Amy Sullivan, director for the Center for Career and Civic Engagement, said a lot of seniors are using graduate school as a default option, which she said is not a good reason to seek a maser’s degree.

“That’s a big investment of time and money,” Sullivan said. “Now, if you have a clear reason to go to graduate school—excellent.”

Still, Sullivan said students going to grad school to avoid   unemployment will face the same problem once they get their master’s degree. If they lack relevant experience, such as internships, then they still won’t prove to be valuable to a company that is hiring.

Sullivan said more than 70 percent of employers said they rank internships and relevant work experience as the number one thing they look for in out-of-college applicants.

“They place it above what college you went to, they place it above GPA, they place it above choice of major, they place it above leadership activities,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said there is no question that a degree from Winthrop is worthwhile. The question is, what have students done to make their degree valuable, she said.

Less than 30 percent of college students who are graduating have applied to their first job by graduation, Sullivan said.

And, many students today are applying to jobs ineffectively.

Sullivan said she bets graduating seniors spend 95 percent of their time applying to jobs online rather than making personal contact and connection with employers, setting up informational interviews and networking.

“Just because you’ve applied to 100 jobs doesn’t mean that that’s an effective job search,” Sullivan said. “Does that mean you’ve applied to jobs that you’re qualified for? Have you tried to find someone in that organization that you can talk to? Did you follow up after you applied for the job? Did you apply for the job because you had a lead from someone you know? That’s going to make a big difference.”

Poor economy or not, Sullivan said having a college degree still matters in the job market.

“But I think what this generation is doing in terms of their job search, they’re doing what they’re comfortable with—which is online, but they’re not doing what’s effective,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said she also hears from students who have attended the career fair that they didn’t want to work for the employers at the fair.

“But those are the employers that are hiring,” Sullivan said.

Students also pass up companies that may not be hiring in their specific major, Sullivan said.

“Just because your degree is English or something in the liberal arts doesn’t mean that all you can do is teach English or write a book,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said students with liberal arts degrees demonstrate that they have the critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, communication skills and creativity that many companies find useful.

“I’d say probably 50 percent of seniors who come in now are talking to me about graduate school whereas before it might only have been 20 percent,” she said.While these are only estimates Sullivan is throwing out, she said she still has seen an overwhelming response of students who want to apply to graduate school.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), hiring college students is on a rebound.

NACE indicated that employers taking part in their Job Outlook 2011 Fall Preview survey anticipate hiring 13.5 percent more new college graduates from the class of 2011.

Read the second installment in this series here. 

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