Brokers watch the Dow Jones intensely as President George W. Bush’s $700 billion bail-out plan gets tossed among politicians.

Numbers plunge, and then swiftly rise again for short-lived peaks, just to fall hundreds of points the next night. Plans have been proposed and rejected as Wall Street erupts, and Americans are getting scared.

As politicians debate on how to save the stock market, the fate of the American economy remains uncertain, and its effects on the job market make Syracuse University students and graduates uneasy about their futures.

In August 2008, the national rate of unemployment was at a high of 6.1 percent. The fear of graduating into a market with no demand for new employees overwhelms some seniors and grad students.

Because the economy is unavoidable, the deteriorating market and economy affects those who are looking to enter the business field the most.

Entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises professor Larry Bennett said it is too early to tell what will happen to future SU students.

‘There certainly will be an impact,’ Bennett said. ‘For those who are going into business for the first time, they will need to scale back on initial ideas and planning,’

Bennett stressed that, now and even at the greatest of economic times, there are two main reasons why students over the years have not fared well in business, and in the future still may not: a lack of funding and a lack of general self-confidence.

‘Overall, it is too early to tell with the number that start businesses,’ he said. ‘Students’ (effects) won’t be as apparent.’

Bennett also said that he noticed an increase in the amount of graduate school interests and applications.

Despite Bennett’s concern for SU grads, Dave Sfass, a senior biology major studying to become an optometrist, does not seem to be too worried about his future career.

‘I’m not in the business world so I’m not too worried about finding work,’ he said. ‘Because I am probably going to med school, I think that I’ll have an easier time finding work than the others going into business.’

Although there is no sure-fire job out there for everyone, mechanical and aerospace engineering department chair Alan Levy stated in an e-mail that there has been ‘excellent placement of our mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduates in high quality positions over the years, and I expect this will continue.

‘I think areas such as renewable energy and medical devices for health care will see large investment in the future,’ he said. ‘Both of these areas require intense effort from mechanical and aerospace engineers (along with bioengineers, electrical engineers and chemical engineers) if they are to continue to develop. I guess we will have to wait and see.’

The debate on job security recently became a topic of national concern. Bush warned in his nationwide primetime address last Wednesday, ‘More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs.’

Director of the Center for Career Services Mike Cahill seems to feel the same way in regards to the job market for seniors.

‘There are still recruiters coming for support positions, yet a lot of trading positions have declined pretty substantially in terms of recruiting,’ he said. ‘We don’t find a decline in students finding an amount of job (offers) but there are just fewer jobs with a limited choice of variety. My sense is that it is more likely to get worse than any better.’

He also said communications positions have become tougher to obtain. In terms of graduate school, however, over the past few years, the rates of applicants and attendees have remained at a constant of between 16 and 18 percent of SU graduates.

Contrary to Cahill’s prediction, senior newspaper journalism and political science major Paige Dearing said she is confident in her future and skills.

‘I think I will always be able to find a writing job, whether it be blogs, magazines or any other medium,’ Dearing said. ‘Newhouse will give me a good opportunity to find work for a long time.’

With the House of Representatives’ recent rejection of the proposed economic bailout, one can only speculate where the job market will be in the near future.

For many students, graduates and alumni, patience and hard work will be the necessary steps to deal with this situation.

wmmilill@syr.edu

Published on September 30, 2008 at 12:00 pm