<p>Like most liberal arts degrees, a journalism degree doesn’t automatically prepare a graduate for a high paid job that is an easy fit right after getting a BA or BS. As others have mentioned, journalism itself is generally not that well paying except for a few superstars, much like many of the arts and entertainment fields. The skills acquired in journalism, however, should be valuable in many applications. Not only writing and editing, but also research skills. I think the idea of looking at technical writing is a good one.</p>
<p>I would advise against going for another BS in CS unless your son really wants to do computer science as a career. Much better off to broaden the job search now and get some years of experience in the real world. Then if grad school is something he wants (law school, MBA or whatever) he’ll not only have some money saved up or at least college debt paid down.</p>
<p>One possibility (that others have mentioned) is for him to take some CS/programming classes at a CC, preferable one that has internships with tech companies. That might allow him to see whether he is truly interested in CS, plus give him a entry for programming and/or tech writing.</p>
<p>We have an IT person where I work who got an accounting degree from Cal Poly, then did an internship while taking CS course at the CC. When he was hired full-time, nobody cared that his degree wasn’t CS… he’d acquired the skills needed for the job and had a college degree.</p>
<p>My H worked at a hospital in the laboratories and for an applied physics lab after college. He had taken no science courses other than a science for non majors to fulfill distribution requirements while going to college. These were the only jobs he could find that were a bit above shop clerk, etc but the pay was comparable. It isn’t unusual to spend a few years in a number of dead end jobs; in fact it is usually the case.</p>
<p>Bleh… I applied to schools as a J major. I’m thinking I will double major, though, either in geological sciences or economics (diverse, I know).</p>
<p>Most of the colleges in the Boston area have hiring freezes at the moment. This is probably true in other areas of the country. It’s going to be tough for college grads
to find decent jobs in this economy. They may have to take anything and wait for the economy to get better.</p>
<p>My son is about to graduate with a BFA. He originally started off in a combined degree BA/BFA program but we can’t afford for him to continue in this program since we’ve already spent about $300K for private high school and 4 years of private college.
Now he’s talking about possibly getting a BS in Biology. If he wants to do that, he has to figure out how to pay for it himself. I think he’s getting very nervous about leaving college and entering the real world.</p>
<p>Just spoke with my college senior who was with friends today. They are all nervous and most of them are looking into grad programs rather than going into the workforce.</p>
At some point he needs to grow up and take responsibility for his own life & future. You keep running interference for him, it’ll never happen.</p>
<p>My suggestion is you have a series of talks with him and get firm commitments for how he is going to proceed. With 1.5 years left in college, you’ve said that he switched from physics to journalism. Why? What did he expect would happen? Did he take advantage of the resources on campus such as the career center? Did he get internships? You don’t need to answer us on this board, but unless/until he develops a clear understanding of how he got into the present situation and what lessons can be drawn from it, he is just grasping at straws. And there’s no a-priori reason to believe the CS straw is any better a fit for him than the journalism straw was. My guess from what others have posted about entry-level jobs in journalism is that he never understood the path from college grad to journalism career; now all of a sudden CS is the right fit with no more investigation than he did the last time around?</p>
<p>You’ve got problems here; more specifically, he’s got problems. You’re running around and getting him going down the path to a CS degree may fortuitously turn out the be the right choice, but I’m skeptical at this point.</p>
<p>There are application specific certificates that may be offered by community colleges in areas such as network management, system management, virtual machines, etc. These are support positions that medium and large companies have that can pay fairly well. Government organizations frequently need people with these skills.</p>
<p>If your S has been trying to get jobs in journalism, did he do any journalism internships in college? Virtually all people who are hired out of college for journalism jobs have done at least one internship – often unpaid – in the field. Typically the internship after senior year in college is the launching pad for jobs in the field. If the company where a person interns doesn’t hire them for a permanent job, it may even help them get hired elsewhere.</p>
<p>What did your son do summers while he was in school? Even outside of journalism, employers of students who are just out of college want to see a work history including some kind of summer jobs, preferably jobs of the internship type by the time the student is a senior.</p>
<p>D1 graduated from one of the top 3 J-schools last May (degree is in PR) and is also struggling with the job search. She moved home for about five months, and had a couple of different jobs, but neither one was permanent, nor offered any benefits. She worked for Comcast, doing publicity and marketing for them, but it was contract work. She was also doing contract work part-time for a new start-up PR firm who couldn’t guarantee anything permanent with benefits. Her alumni network is basically non-existent in our area for her field since her school was out east. So she decided to relocate to Boston where she has friends from college, and the alumni network is stronger. She’s only been there about a month, and finally managed an interview next week. In the meantime, she will get some holiday retail work upon return from here after Thanksgiving. She also considered doing substitute teaching (Cambridge pays well), but she will be giving up her car next week when she moves into an apartment (she’s living with a family friend right now), so transportation to unknown schools could be a problem. So she’s having to find temporary stuff until something else comes through. </p>
<p>When she graduated, we received a letter from the dean of the school, reminding parents that it often takes an average of six months for students to land a job in this area. When this letter came, no one had any idea of what would happen to our economy. So given the state of the economy, we agreed with her that the move back east is more likely to lead to jobs, than if she had stayed around here, so we are helping to support her (with limitations) in order to facilitate this.</p>
<p>I do think that parents with recent college grads need to take the current economy into consideration when advising their kids.</p>
<p>First, it is important to remember that this is probably the worst hiring period for new graduates in the past 20 years–so make sure you son realizes that the problem isn’t just with his major, or with his lack of experience–but also with the economic conditions at the current time.</p>
<p>Northstarmom is correct, of course. The key to getting any job right out of school was to be sure and get experience through internships during the previous summers and/or part-time jobs while in school. Since it sounds like this wasn’t a consideration, it makes it even more difficult to try and get his first experience now.</p>
<p>The suggestion of registering with temporary agencies is a good one. It may even be necessary for him to pay (via a percentage fee) for being placed with an employer. But in this environment, almost any experience is good experience–and, of course, provides some pay to help him pay his way even while still living at home. Eventually, the economy will improve and his experience will help him move on to other positions–either at the company he first works for or at another employer.</p>
<p>Remember that 60-70% of all jobs come through networking–which means not just him looking–but also you, your wife, his sister/brothers, grandparents, neighbors, friends, and anyone else willing to help look that might know of open positions. He needs to also spend time preparing a resume and cover letter and contacting employers directly–and to avoid applying to internet listings and newspaper ads where he will be competing with thousands of other applicants. It takes longer, and it is more difficult, but this is the way to be more effective in his job hunt.</p>
<p>Good luck to you and him during this difficult period–and best of success to him in his job hunt.</p>
<p>I had a similar situation to the OP and, like so many people. just wussed out and went to law school. </p>
<p>My dad had a biology BS (from Caltech) and MS (from Stanford) and got into the Berkeley Computer Science Ph.D program, so a CS BS isn’t required. Of course, times may have changed.</p>
<p>Friend of mine has a D who got a job with a top newspaper. She was over the moon about it. Until she heard about the pay. No way you can live in the city at that pay level… Another friend has a sister who has been an editor for a magazine for some years. Parents have been subsidizing the NYC apt for years as she does not make enough to live in a decent area. The pay levels are often not good in many of these fields. Lately, it seems that things have been complicated by unpaid or low paid internships. A lot of companies save money by having those knowing that there are parents willing to pay for their kid to get a foot in the door with a good firm at a promising job. Until you get a specific skill, it really is hard to get a living wage.</p>
<p>I am so appreciative of all your insightful comments and experiences! It is a challenging time for a new grad to be job hunting with high expectations and not much solid experience.</p>
<p>In hindsight son realizes Journalisn (electronic media) was probably the wrong-for-him major. He has had a mishmash of job experience. He worked as a cameraman for the university on the weekends, he produced the campus TV news for a semester; he was competent at both but not enthralled. He had two well paying summer internships that involved (ironically) computers in a public information agency in Hawaii. He spent a summer tutoring English in Japan. </p>
<p>He will continue to seek a job, any kind of job at this point. He is enrolling in a CS winter intersession at the local JC; he may find programming to be mind-numbing. And yes, I think he may be grasping at straws by declaring a sudden interest in a CS degree after his frustrating job hunt. He is debt-free which is a plus.</p>
<p>Yes, he would like to move back to his OOS college town but jobs are scarce. Yes, he has registered with a temp agency and has had a few temporary jobs.<br>
He enjoys and excels at creative writing (which seems more like an avocation than a bill-paying career). </p>
<p>Augh—I practically begged all my kids to major in a profession—education, engineering, nursing, business. Did anybody listen to me? No, they did not. LOL. One of my daughters got a BA in English 3 years ago, has a so-so job, and now wants to be an RN. So she is juggling her fulltime job, her bills (she lives in another city), and school; it’s a struggle. It would have been soooooo much easier to have majored in nursing in the first place! Maybe we are all late bloomers–my husband got his PhD at age 35 and I was in my 40’s when I finally got my degree. I am sure our parents were gnashing their teeth, too. They stepped back and let us fumble about and history seems to be repeating itself, sigh.</p>
<p>OK, thanks for listening. We are getting up before dawn on Thursday to drive 400 miles for Thanksgiving dinner! I will check in when we stagger home on Friday.</p>
If by mind-numbing you mean rote then that won’t be the case. It’s acually just the opposite and requires a lot of focused concentration, the ability to solve complex problems and develop algorithms. This is one of the reasons why it’s a difficult and rigorous major and many people bail from it once they find out the amount of effort it takes. I’m referring to a CS degree at a college with a well-respected program - not basic programming.</p>
<p>Contract work is for people with EXPERIENCE. Companies don’t want to pay for non-employees to learn on their dime. Only the most menial/clerical temp jobs want trainees.
To be instantly productive in any given business environment one has to be at the top of their field. It is a big misconception to consider temporary work entry level in most cases. On a professional level it is actually the elite level and should pay accordingly since you would not normally get any employee benefits if you are truly an independent contractor.</p>
<p>I am a journalist. I went to UC Berkeley a million years ago. I did not major in journalism, believing as I still do that one should do journalism after majoring in something like English, political Science, biology, whatever, a real liberal arts education. Having said this, what his major is is NOT important, it is what he wants to do. I work for National Public Radio, and have been there for almost 30 years. Many of the people here who are successful did strange things with their education. Nina Totenberg, the reknowned Supreme Court Reporter never went to law school. Neal Conan, who hosts Talk of the Nation, never finished college. The education part of journalism is the least of it. Number one, newspapers are dying, so have him try to get an internship at someplace that is succeeding: new media, online, or even try to get an internship at NPR in DC. I unfortunately am in New York, and we don’t use interns at our small news bureau, but the Washington DC headquarters has a 3 month unpaid intern program that can lead to real jobs. Let me tell you my story. I volunteered at the local pacifica station in New York, and then got a totally awful part time job writing news, while I kept a really boring day job coding papers for a professor at NYU. Eventually I decided that I had no experience, and went to grad school at Columbia School of Journalism in NY. They have a one year masters program. I am not sure that it gave me any entre to jobs, but I got enormous confidence, just by seeing all these other hot shot reporters who were no better or worse than me. Anyway, my first job after grad school was covering a fabulous political trial for a salary of only 50 bucks a week…this was the 70s, but it was experience, and it led me to get a job covering the senate in DC… so there are roads in, but don’t assume that your son has to get the perfect journalism job immediately, have him volunteer or intern and ooze his way in. It worked for me.</p>
<p>I agree with ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad about CS. In addition, I feel that writing computer software and writing essays, or other narrative text, involve similar organization skills.</p>
<p>I used to work with a guy that went into forestry for undergrad, got awful grades (Cs and Ds), did a stint for Peace Corps, went into a MS program, switched to CS, got his degree, worked two jobs and then retired in his 50s. The second job was at Microsoft and he was a manager of the SQL Server team. There’s a video interview of him in front of a live audience at the Behind the Code series that’s a free download at iTunes where he talks about his education, career and work at Microsoft.</p>
<p>For a short term full time or part time job, check to see if California is hiring people for the 2010 census. I saw an ad here in Tennessee for many full time and part time jobs starting fairly soon. I bet all states are gearing up for this too. The starting hourly wage was listed but I think they were also advertising for managerial positions which were probably salaried. Talk about using his computer skills for this kind of job! Even though it would be a temporary position, if he is good at networking, it could play into something more once the census is completed.
Good luck</p>