Guaranteed Job
An alumna is currently suing her college because she has not found a job after graduating.
[Trina] Thompson says she seeks $70,000 in reimbursement for her tuition and $2,000 to compensate for the stress of her three-month job search.
As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record.
I could go off about how ridiculous she is to expect a job in the current economic recession with a 2.7 GPA but that’s obvious. It’s more fun to think what would happen if her suit went through and the university is required to find jobs for all its graduates.
A couple things could happen. Universities would only accept the tops students they were sure could get a job. You may end up giving people a free ride if you take a risk on them and they don’t get a job. Enrollment would plummet probably by like 80-90% and tuition would increase that much. University would then be for the elite. It would separate the haves from the have-nots. But then salaries would skyrocket. There would be more jobs than qualified people because universities would err on the conservative side. There would then be a glut of underqualified people. They would have to take up lower trade jobs. Schools would then adapt to the markets and emphasize programs where graduates could get a job. This would probably force schools to specialize into careers (though this could be highly dangerous if that industry tanks).
All of this would just make high school more competitive to the point where it becomes like Asia. (Which may be a good thing compared to how much smarter Asian college students are) Kids would compete to get into college because that’s a shoe-in for a high paying job.
Or universities could make finding a job a requisite for graduation. They force them to study and learn until they find one. Students would then pay butt-loads to graduate if it takes more than 4 years to find a job. Or they make the curriculum so difficult to weed the incompetent students out so only the top qualified students actually graduate.
It would all start looking like Cooper Union.
What would probably happen would be that universities have students sign a waiver that the school isn’t responsible for finding them a job. Then things would carry on like normal.