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Iowa college graduates find that even with an advanced degree, finding a job isn’t a cinch

Diane Heldt, CR Gazette –

Recent University of Iowa doctoral degree graduate Tim Paschkewitz steeled himself to be realistic and flexible during his job search. He’d heard it was a tougher market for graduate-degree holders since the recession.

“I’ve heard that joke about ‘I have a Ph.D., do you want fries with that,’” he said. “Fortunately I don’t know anyone personally in that position.”

Paschkewitz, 31, had a job lined up as an electroanalytical sales scientist with Pine Research Instrumentation in Durham, N.C., several months before his May graduation with a chemistry doctorate. But during his search, he made sure he was open to looking at faculty jobs as well as those in industry and the private sector, where he had greater interest.

“I really didn’t want to lock myself into one thing, knowing that the job market wasn’t doing that great,” he said.

Stories have made the rounds nationally about some graduate-degree holders struggling in this economy — the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in May that more Americans with advanced degrees have applied for food stamps or some other form of government aid since 2007.

But higher education officials at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University said many of their advanced-degree graduates are landing jobs. How graduate-degree holders fare in this market depends much on the type of degree a person has, the officials said, with strong demand in areas such as business, engineering and applied sciences.

“There’s both the academic sector and the non-academic sector where those students can get jobs,” ISU Graduate College Dean Dave Holger said of those more career-oriented degrees. “If you focus on graduate degrees in humanities fields, it probably is a tougher market.”

Graduate college officials and faculty also are advising advanced-degree job seekers to be flexible in the types of jobs and locations they consider. More doctoral graduates who might have originally wanted tenure-track faculty jobs are looking at careers outside academia, for example.

IN-BETWEEN STEPS

The academic job market is often tied to the economy as public universities rely on state funding, so that job market is shifting with the economy, UI Graduate College Dean John Keller said. It’s a national issue that UI officials are concerned about, Keller said, as they look for ways to better prepare doctoral graduates for careers outside university life.

They also advise them of extra steps between the doctoral degree and tenure-track faculty jobs that become more common in a tough economy, such as postdoctoral jobs in the science fields or adjunct and nontenure-track teaching positions.

“We need to do a better job while students are in school to educate them about the multitude of career options available to them,” Keller said. “It’s becoming more common that people want to do something with their Ph.D. other than academics.”

That option of the private sector for doctorate holders often happens during a recession, said Peter Orazem, university professor of economics at ISU. When the economy is good, the private sector often has a hard time competing with large public universities for doctorate-holding candidates, he said.

But in a recession, private-sector businesses know they can move into that employee market and be more competitive.

“It’s not that you can’t get a job, it’s that it’s a different job than you aimed for when you started,” Orazem said. “You may not get a job in academia, but that doesn’t mean you’re unemployable.”

Iowa’s unemployment rate in June was 5.2 percent, though the state does not track unemployment data specific to a person’s education level, said Kerry Koonce, communications director for Iowa Workforce Development. So it’s hard to know how graduate-degree holders are being effected by the economy compared to job seekers with less education.

Recent National Association of Colleges and Employers surveys have indicated that, at a national level, demand for new college graduates is mostly evident at the bachelor’s degree level, with more than 90 percent of respondents planning to hire those graduates, Koonce said.

But more than half the respondents to those surveys expressed interest in hiring graduates at the master’s degree level, and almost one-quarter had plans to recruit at the doctoral level, she said.

January survey by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce showed lower unemployment rates for graduate-degree holders when compared to college graduates in many fields, including life and physical sciences, humanities, communications, computers and math, education, business and engineering.

CREATIVE SEARCHING

Medora Kealy, 26, graduated from the UI in May with a master’s degree in urban and regional planning. Now living in St. Louis and searching for a job there, she has applied for about 15 jobs since December, and she said it’s been a tough search.

She isn’t working part time now because she prefers to focus on her full-time job search and networking. Kealy is giving herself a year to dedicate to the job search before she re-evaluates her options. She held an assistantship during graduate school and had saved money from her previous job, so she was lucky to not need loans for her master’s degree, Kealy said.

“I’m very frugal, so I can last awhile,” she said. “I think there are other areas that I could apply my skills to, I just haven’t figure out where I want to focus that search.”

UI College of Law students also are getting more creative in searching, looking at rural areas and being more flexible in what types of jobs they consider, said Michael Appel, who will be a third-year law student this fall. Appel, also president of the UI Executive Council of Graduate and Professional Students, is a summer associate at a large Washington, D.C., law firm.

The legal job market is not as good now as it was before the recession, said Appel, 24, but he gets the sense it’s improving. Still, law students remain stressed about it and spend a lot of time finding summer jobs they hope will pan out later to full-time employment, he said.

“It’s no longer the case where you can just go to law school and come out with a job,” he said. “You have to invest time in it.”

Employment statistics gathered by the law school 9 months after graduation showed 10 graduates still unemployed and looking for work from the class of 2011, compared to 5 and 3 graduates still job seeking in the 2010 and 2009 surveys, respectively.

Karen Klouda, University of Iowa law school director of career services, said graduates have to look in different locations and it takes longer to find a job than it did five or six years ago. The college stays in touch with alums until they find employment, contacting them often and sending job postings, Klouda said.

“It isn’t as quick as it used to be, and it takes more work,” she said. “Preparation is the key.”

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