A weak job market has some seniors reassessing their post-graduation options.
While there are no numbers yet available, William Wright-Swadel, Fannie Mitchell executive director of career services, said he expects more Duke students to head straight to graduate or professional school after graduation.
“A pretty high percent of Duke students plan to go on to grad school,” he said. “One of the things that’s always interesting is when they go.”
He added that last year’s class had an increase in the number of students who went straight to graduate or professional school, rather than deferring for a year or more. He noted that because this year’s seniors are aware of the difficult job market, they are more prepared for the challenges they face. This Fall’s Career Fair saw only 76 recruiters, down from 106 last year.
The Class of 2009 graduated with 31 percent of its members going to graduate or professional school, a 3 percent increase from the previous two classes. In addition, the number of Duke students with jobs upon graduation decreased from 39 percent for the Class of 2008 to 32 percent for 2009, Wright-Swadel said.
“Last year, it was a real surprise that the economy was bad,” he said. “But this year’s class has had a whole year to adjust to the fact that the market is difficult.”
The economic downturn took hold in Fall 2008 as the Class of 2009 was in the midst of applying for jobs.
Greg Adrouny, Trinity ’09, was one of the students caught in the downturn.
Adrouny enrolled in the Master of Management Studies: Foundations of Business program at the Fuqua School of Business, because he had difficulty finding a job and thought the program would make him more competitive in the future, he said. Adrouny said he originally planned to go to business school but wanted to work for a year or two beforehand.
“It’s impossible to get a job with a large firm, and I didn’t want to go home and live with my parents,” he said. “I saw this new thing advertised to people like me.”
Wright-Swadel said he believes the senior class is not discouraged about the job process, but focused on figuring out what they want to do and where they want to work.
“In the past, at elite schools like Duke and many others, fields like investment and banking and consulting are so available—or at least they seem to be—that lots of [students] go through that whole process and when you really ask them why, they don’t have good explanations,” he said. “It’s just, ‘well, all my friends are in the recruiting program, so I am.’”
Dean Gerald Wilson, director of pre-law advising, said the weak job market has increased the number of law school applicants. Students who planned to take time off are now applying because they feel they will not be able to get jobs, and more alumni who were laid off are applying as well, he said. Wilson said alumni usually make up 40 percent of the people he advises.
Because more people are applying, getting into law school will be a lot more difficult than in years past, he added.
“Everybody is expecting a tremendous increase in law school applications here and elsewhere,” Wilson said.
Senior Yifan Wang, however, said she will still take a year off before going to law school.
Wang said she does not feel prepared to take the LSAT yet, and that competition will probably be stiff for law school admission this year. Wang said she thinks that by waiting a year, she will be able to get into a more prestigious law school.
“The economy has made a lot of people who were going to get jobs go to grad school instead and because law school doesn’t require any prerequisite courses in [undergraduate studies], I feel like a lot of people are [applying to law school],” Wang said.
She added that her need to pay off the debt she has accumulated while at Duke will dictate her career path after law school, so she wants to take a year off before setting out on that path.
Wang said she is not worried about finding a job for the coming year because she is open to different kinds of work. She said, however, that uncertainty about where she will live and what she will do is stressful.
Because applying to medical schools requires that students have taken a rigorous set of science courses, there has not yet been time for the down economy to affect their applicant pool. And while the economic situation might affect the number of students taking a year off before medical school, Dean Dan Scheirer, director of Health Professions Advising, said this is not the case.
More than 105 current seniors are taking at least a year off prior to medical school, which is on par with last year’s numbers, he said. About 165 seniors will go straight to medical school, he added.
He said some parents are concerned about the job market and are encouraging their children not to take a year off, but students, for the most part, are not as concerned.
Just as before the economic downturn, Wright-Swadel said the Career Center will encourage students to assess what they want to do, and have an alternative plan.
“Duke students are some of the most diversely-interested and diversely-able students in the world,” he said. “The ‘keep yourself open’ is a good strategy when you’re first beginning to assess what you want to do, but the object is to come to a series of relatively clear decisions.”
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