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Volume CXXXII, Number 23 |
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A fork in the road
TIMOTHY J. RIEMER
COLUMNIST
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| J.P. Box '03, Orient staff member, frustrated by his job hunt, has been forced to beg. (Hans Law, Bowdoin Orient) |
As the end of this academic year approaches and Commencement is in sight for the Seniors, the Senior Class is coming to another set crossroads in their lives. Commencement implies that one will be entering upon something new. Many seniors hope to be embarking on a new stage in their lives, but-for most seniors-what they will be embarking on is not yet clear.
Although the overall economy may be gaining steam these days, especially with the combat in Iraq over now, the job market is simply awful. The Class of 2003 is entering the worst job market in over a decade, if not longer. Many seniors have been able to secure jobs, but the truth of matter is that many more seniors, who are seeking employment, are still in the dark about their futures. So will the economy improve enough to shed some light on the future of the senior class?
The economy does seem to have a more bullish sentiment these days, but everyone looks toward the economy with guarded optimism. Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, in his testimony to Congress on Wednesday said that he believed that the economy would pick up at the end of this year, but also noted that business pessimism could prevent that belief from becoming reality.
Mr. Greenspan also for the first time raised concerns of deflation (when prices fall) in his testimony to Congress. This mix of fear of further economic weakness and belief that the economy will soon recover indicates that the economy has come to another fork in the road. Either the economy will recover as everybody has been hoping for the couple of years, or the economy will lose what steam it may have gained from the post-war boom and drop back into hard times.
What does this economic uncertainty mean for graduating seniors still in the hunt for a job? This uncertainty in the economy will continue to cast a dark shadow on the job market. The job market, in my opinion, will not begin to pick up until the future of the economy comes a little more into focus. Businesses, unfortunately, will be very cautious in their hiring practices, therefore limiting the number of new positions, until their own futures are little more secure, which is dictated by the security of the economy and its future.
This has even had a profound effect on graduate schools as well. Younger members of the job market who have been laid off along with graduating students who might have entered or re-entered the job market in a good economy have chosen to go to graduate school in hopes of avoiding the bleak job market.
This has created a demand for graduate schools like never before. I have heard of some graduate schools receiving three times the number of applications than they did last year. This makes getting in graduate school as difficult as getting a job right now, if not more difficult.
Graduating from a liberal arts college is supposed to provide you with some choice in life. The point of a liberal arts education is to give you a diverse background so that you can have a wide array of choices after college, so that you are not limited to one field.
Despite the benefits of a liberal arts background, the state of the economy has left the Class with almost no choice. We are facing more of a fork in the road instead of a set of crossroads.
All I can say is that I hope that we can look toward the future in the same way Robert Frost did in his poem The Road Not Taken in which he says,
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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