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Poll Finds Grads Trying to Stay Afloat

by CALVIN WOODWARD and ANN SANNER, Associated Press Writers , May 20, 2009

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WASHINGTON,D.C.

Students scattering for the summer are worried they’ll be graduating from schools of higher learning only to find themselves snagged in the school of hard knocks.

That’s what happened to Josh Donahue, 23, who went on food stamps two weeks after leaving Oregon State University with an economics degree that he hoped to use for a job as a financial analyst. He’s living with his aunt and uncle in Grants Pass, Ore., and looking for even a menial job.

“It feels like really, really bad, terrible timing,” he says. “A degree in economics doesn’t really prepare you to understand the economy very well.”

Timing is much on the minds of students as they size up their opportunities in the worst economy their generation has known, an AP-MTVU poll at 40 college campuses finds. Young men and women are anxious not only about their finances and job prospects after graduation, but about the pressures facing parents, normally the rock of their existence.

Nearly one in five polled students reported that at least one parent had lost a job in the past year.

Many young people are taking refuge in graduate school, buying time until the economy improves even as they amass more debt from student loans. But others who hoped to go to grad school have had to defer it because of the expense.

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Comments posted here may be reprinted in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education magazine, and may be edited for purposes of clarity and/or space.



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