THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
MONDAY, APRIL 3, 2006
WWW.KANSAN.COM
OUR OPINION
Job market growing but effort still needed
It feels good to be wanted.
It feels good to be wanted. After years of a dismal job market, a recent study by the Chicago-based consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that many college graduates are stepping right into a better era of job offers and incentives. Though the study paints a better picture for those hunting for jobs, students still need to be adequately prepared for the rigors of searching for a good job.
For the first time since the dot-com industry plummeted, the firm reports entry-level position availability and salary are the best in the past five years. The study shows that employers plan to hire 14.5 percent more college graduates this year. Starting salaries are also up, between 11 percent and 3.9 percent depending upon a graduate's degree. Those with liberal arts and sciences degrees can also expect to see better results in their job searches.
Despite these encouraging
Issue: Job prospects for college graduates
Stance: Hiring and salaries are up, but students must still put forth some effort to find a job.
numbers, KU Career Center director David Gaston said students would still need to put forth effort in their job searches. Knowing what you want in a job and what you have to offer to a job is important, he said. Assess yourself and go after jobs that fit that assessment. If a student needs help putting together a résumé or just finding job listings to browse, the Career Center is there, Gaston said.
It may be reassuring to know that employers are looking to hire students, but students have to put forth the effort to show that same enthusiasm.
- Ty Beaver for the editorial board
PAGE 5A
Free All for Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
Hey Free-For-All, I'm drunk. Take advantage of
me.
also, frat dudes don't ride the bus.
also, frat dudes don't ride the bus.
If I had a dollar for every STD I got, I'd have one dollar.
I just got done touching myself for the first time. It was awesome.
I have a question Free-for-All, would the past tense of wake and bake be woke and smoke, because wake and baked to me just sounds funny. I would prefer woke and
图
You know how there's a section in the Kansan that's called the Jay-play? Well, the question is what does Jay play? Does Jay play the trumpet? The clarinet? I think Jay plays women. Jay's
a pimp
And now for a lesson in bus etiquette: It is hilarious to fart in a bus full of people. It is awesome to fart when you're standing in the middle of the aisle. And if your fart goes in someone's face, well that just sucks. And also, fart cludes don't.
So I've been doing some hard thinking and I may have stumbled on to
something: Could Jiminy Crickett be a metaphor for Jesus Christ? Just a thought.
If this tableau I recreate, perhaps I can resnare my mate. Hoo hoo, oh that tickles me pink.
Bye!
I'm pretty sure that when Johnny Cash wrote "Ring of Fire" he had just had an experience with a redhead that had
all STL
I want to file a complaint with the Free-for-All for never putting good Free-for-Alls.
get that back to you.
George Mason has 30,000 students and is the largest school in Virginia. Cinderella my ass.
get that back to you.
Does anybody else find it funny that George Mason has more Final Fours than Missouri?
To all you fair-weather basketball fans, next time you have a thought, just let it go.
Hello?
If FOX News interrupts The O.C. one more time, I swear to god I'll kill
Next time a weather alert interrupts The O.C., heads will roll.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
Long story short, I was drunk at the Ranch, and I found a camera on the floor, so if you lost a camera Thursday night, e-mail kulostcamera@yahoo.com and give me the type of camera you lost, your name, and your e-mail address and I will try and
Making college cheaper is easy as one, two, three
COMMENTARY
The importance of a higher education is known to all of us who choose forgoing paychecks now for exams and all-nighters in front of a blurry computer screen. As I stand on the precipice of graduation with my tuition doubling since I first came to the University of Kansas and looming student loan bills awaiting my next step I wonder if college could be cheaper. Unsurprisingly the answer is yes if we make a few minor changes.
1. The federal government cut $12 billion from the student-loan program back in February to help pay for an exploding deficit and tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent. A better way to save money and not hurt students would be by passing the Student Aid Reward (STAR) Act, which increases student-aid funding by redirecting the subsidies currently going to loan companies to needy students.
Our current system costs $11 more for every $100 loaned to students. By passing the STAR Act our federal government could increase aid to students without any new taxes or cuts to deserving programs. This plan would generate $4.4 billion next year alone. While this common sense plan may not be the final answer to all our problems, it sure is a good start.
2. Textbook prices have increased 186 percent since December 1986 according to the Government Accountability Office. To give you a little perspective, if all prices increased at this rate a gallon of
JUSTIN LAMORT opinion@kansan.com
Publishers say they are trying to help students who aren't as well-prepared for college by offering supplements that could help them learn. I call shenanigans. Textbooks are now bundled with unnecessary and unused CDs and other extraneous additions to artificially raise the price.
Publishers say they are trying to help students who aren't as well prepared for college by offering supplements that could help them learn. I call shenanigans. Textbooks are now bundled with unnecessary and unused CDs and other extraneous additions to artificially raise the price. Furthermore, U.S. Public Interest Research Group found publishers, such as Thomson Learning, charge U.S. students 72 percent more, on average, than students in the U.K.,
1986 milk would cost $6.35.
If you think that stinks, try buying a $200 new edition book that you can't return.
Africa and the Middle East. Textbooks are one of the few things where demand is determined not by the consumer — students — but instead by professors. In short, we are getting screwed.
How do we make it better? We get professors and legislators informed and get our textbooks unbundled. The practices of publishers have been egregious and no amount of spin can change the numbers. If we keep pressuring and, more importantly, stop buying, they'll be forced to submit to our civic and market demands.
3. Lastly, the Kansas legislature is working on a bill introduced by Rep. Bill Fuerborn (D-Garnett) that would allow public universities to keep the interest earned on tuition and student fees instead of that money going toward the state's general revenue fund. This would mean an estimated $3.3 million for the University and $337,000 for KU Medical Center. If only a portion of these funds can go toward tuition assistance then more students could afford the ever-increasing cost of college by using money that comes from students in the first place.
Making college cheaper may seem simple, but that doesn't mean it will happen. I urge you, if these ideas seem sound, to take the initiative and e-mail them to your representatives. A little change now can save a lot of change tomorrow.
LaMort is a Cherryvale senior in psychology and political science.
▼ LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Through the years, Western governments have given billions of dollars to the Palestinians. This drain on Western wealth has been
Canada is right to suspend all assistance to the Palestinian Authority. It should have done so long ago. And so should the United States.
Palestinians do not deserve aid
used to promote anti-Semitism in Palestinian schools, mosques and media and to finance suicide bombings in Israeli streets, restaurants and malls.
the Palestinian leadership, but also the overwhelming majority of Palestinians deserve no aid. What they deserve is to suffer the consequences of electing terrorists to rule them.
The election of Hamas — an Islamic terrorist group committed to the destruction of Israel — demonstrates that not only
David Holcberg
Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, Calif.
Measuring potential takes more than tests
COMMENTARY
NEIL SPECTOR opinion@kansan.com
When I was in high school, the only tests that I had to worry about were two practice tests, one for the ACT and another for the SAT. Today, that process has expanded in states such as Illinois.
My brother Scott Spector, a junior at Adalie E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., said, "It's a little ridiculous. We go through two or three practice tests before we get to the one that actually matters." According to Spector, the process begins with a test called the Explore Test that predicts a student's success on the PLAN test. The PLAN test predicts the student's performance on the ACT and even goes as far as making a prediction of that student's career path. Then of course comes the more familiar PSAT, or practice SAT. Unique to the State of Illinois is the Prairie State Exam, part one of which is a straightforward standardized test, followed by part two, an actual ACT exam. After all of this preparation, students take the ACT and/or SAT.
Think about everything that is riding on these tests. In Illinois, one of the practice exams tells students what their career path could be. How is that possible? Too much importance is put on these tests and it is causing a lot of unnecessary pressure on students who probably are already dealing with a lot.
Students have every right to be worried about these exams; the results of an ACT or SAT maps out a student's path for the rest of his or her educational career. It doesn't stop with high school exams either. Other specialized tests such as the GRE, MCAT, GMAT, and LSAT, among others, all have an enormous impact on a student's future. If the score on that one test is not good enough, what is a student to do? That person has just spent the past few years of his or her life preparing for a career path that he or she might not be able to follow because of a poor performance on a multiple choice test.
An editorial by Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, could not make my stance on this issue any clearer; "Only on 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire' can people rise to the top by rote memorization and answers to multiple-choice questions. The final answer to improving education is more than memorizing facts for a multiple-choice test. Children today need critical thinking skills, creativity, perseverance, and integrity."
Although these skills are much more difficult to assess, students need to know that this is what they should be aiming for, not just a score on a test.
Spector is a Buffalo Grove, Ill., Senior in Political Science.
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