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I have to admit, this is a tough call. I don't feel qualified to express an opinion on what to do during a contracting economy (or the economy formerly described as contracting) such as we have now, since I really haven't tried to get a job recently. But I have heard experts who are concerned with employment of young graduates speak about what qualifications are most useful when job-seeking, and the following keep cropping up (and I've written about them before, but who knows whether any of it was useful):The ability to write. This only applies to jobs where you're expected to write on behalf of your employer. In addition, if you have to make a good impression on behalf of your employer, the ability to write good grammatical English becomes important. On the other hand, for an employee of Chemlawn, just the ability to write "Needs cut and watered" is plenty.
The ability to use a computer. Again, if you're just delivering pizza, the ability to use a cellphone is probably sufficient. But think big. You might move on to big Party Pizzas, and then ... the sky's the limit!
The ability to speak clearly. Most important in any job. You'll probably have to stick to jobs with your immediate family if you can't be understood by outsiders. With big companies, the ability to give a good presentation on something you have prepared becomes more important.
Working with people. People at the top don't like to deal with idiots, so the new hires become the front of any business. You get to talk to everyone, and filter through anyone who needs to talk to the higher-ups. This is where a liberal education comes in.
On the one hand, the more complex our society and its business becomes, the more one has to specialize. Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword: if you're highly specialized within a particular business, (A) it becomes harder for the company to replace you, because they have to train someone to do what you do. On the other hand, (B) it's harder for you to find a job, because you're so accustomed to thinking in the specific ways you have been required to think at your present employment, that it's difficult to start new thought-patterns.
If you're too specialized, to begin with, e.g. graduated with a technical degree, you're already working with a disadvantage. Liberal Arts graduates don't know a great deal about most things, but they do know a little of everything. People like Ken Robinson seem to be saying that new specializations that no one has ever heard of are going to become increasingly important. But when the economy turns sour, the variety of things you have been experiencing and learning suddenly become invaluable. You used to counsel students, but you're suddenly fired, and now you're managing a warehouse. You used to manage a department of a retail store, but suddenly you're selling make-up. You used to sell make-up, but suddenly you're a relief school-bus driver who can't parallel park to save your life. Don't write off any of your skills as unimportant.
A friend of mine who used to have a salaried job with a significant amount of responsibility was out of a job recently. She wonders whether to be choosy about the jobs she takes, or go for anything. This is the sort of choice that is hard to advise about: save yourself for that brilliant job that may come along, or take anything that pays money?
If this slump continues, it seems practical to take any job. You can always keep looking while you're employed, and pretty soon the fact that you are employed, however humbly, may poison your resumé a lot less than having been unemployed for too long.
What about a Liberal Arts education in a good economy?
We were recently discussing the so-called general education requirement at our school. This is the part where they insist that students take courses in a variety of subject areas, and not just in their area of specialization (or "major"). Why is this done? Its origins may, indeed, lie in renaissance times when the idea of formal education was being invented. Education was for the minority back then: initially the younger children of landowners and later, those of artisans and businessmen and tradesmen, who would help their families' ability to diversify; and the advantages of diversification were present back then just as they are today. In the Industrial Age, as Robinson points out, public education was systematized and regularized, but the principle of a liberal ---i.e., a diverse--- education was retained. At the upper level, it was impossible to enforce a common curriculum for everyone, since the natural inclinations of students would eventually lead them to concentrate on subjects that they enjoyed learning (or which their parents insisted they should learn). But insisting on a certain variety in the curriculum had enormous advantages. In addition to the fact that increasing complexity of life required a variety of skills, the liberal education provided a desperately needed social cohesion that offset the fragmentation of society along specialization lines. Thus the businessmen and the engineers and the teachers had a core of experience in common, which enabled them to relate to each other (despite the different mini-cultures that develop within various trades).
Today, more than ever, this social cohesion is important. Society is splintering now, along ideological lines. Declining resources induce splitting in any society; the fragmentation of countries of the Third World in the 20th Century were caused by increasing populations and decreasing incomes, which turned neighbors against each other, since they were all competing for the same jobs, and their children were competing for the same spots in schools and universities. And we thought it couldn't happen here! Haha. But the situation would be much worse, if not for the fact that there is a certain amount of shared experience, at least within the middle class, and the educated segments of the working class. We've all hated the same adverbial clauses and quadratic equations. [Note: I have observed young people in very economically depressed areas in this country, and as of now I have not noticed any tendency to hostility between youths who are all competing for the same jobs. On the other hand, they tend to gather together and drink, which is hardly a better thing.]
Increasingly important is cohesion within institutions of learning. It used to be that the friends you made in college were your friends for life. But increasingly the libertarians on campus have little to do with the social liberals. If the requirements for a common, diverse curriculum were to be relaxed, it could be the last nail in the coffin of school identity, and more importantly, the demise of the slight social cohesion that college graduates take away with them.
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