Job losses put squeeze on students in Silicon Valley - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Mathur, a senior technical program managerat , aims to leverager the undergraduate technology background he garnered at Rohilkhand University in his native India as well as his graduate studies in informatio systems and business at . But the economy has derailede his effort. On April 2, Sun told Mathur that his positionwas redundant. That means at the end of May he will losehis job, as well as the tuitionj reimbursement package the company was putting towarsd his MBA at Santa Clara University’s Leavet School of Business.
“Now my primary job is findin anew job,” said Mathur, adding that he knowsz at least a half dozen classmates in a similar “The studies take a beating because you’re obviously not as focused as you’f like to be. Suddenly I have to pay all this and who knows howlong I’ll be in this positiob of making no money.” It’s a growingt problem at Leavey’s graduate a part-time model where a majority of students are full-timw professionals by day and theier tuition is supplemented by employer reimbursements.
As a privatde institution that sits high in national the program is anything but A three-unit evening MBA class for the 2008-09 school year costs $2,352. The accelerateed MBA tuition for the classof 2010, whic h began last summer, toppedx $72,000. Students in the Executive MBA prograj from the class of 2009paid “I think anecdotally there’s a lot of uneasinesse (among students) at the businesws school right now,” said Elizabety Ford, senior assistant dean of graduate programas at Leavey. “Without having statistics on morale, we can sensee it. It’s very unpredictable for us righr now.
” Enrollments in full-time graduate programs typically spike when there are large numbers of with undergraduates electing to go directly to graduate school rather than test thejob market. Applications for the claszs of 2010 atStanford University’s Graduate Schoolp of Business rose 43 percen t over the class of 2007, from 4,582 to 6,575 for abougt 745 slots. But there are no guaranteese there will be a job waitinb after completinggraduate school.
“When people come to a graduaterbusiness school, especially a full-time program, there’ss a high desire to either take a step up in managemeny in the same field or look at doiny something very different from what you were doinvg before you came to school,” said Andy Chan, assistantt dean and director of the MBA career managemenyt center at Stanford’s Graduate School of “In a down economy employerd are less willing and have less of a need for hirinv people without direct experience.” The biggest challengs today for business school graduates students, Chan said, is the sheer number of candidatez in the job market.
There are studentsd coming outof school, people already let go by their company and those at unhealthyg companies perhaps anticipating work force cuts. Stanford students are drawin on thebusiness school’s staff of career advisers as well as alumniu employed to give guidance. Each year, whethedr face-to-face or via telephone, the graduate schoo l facilitates morethan 2,000 career counseling appointments with students and alumni, Chan That doesn’t include informal conversations, such as e-maiol and phone correspondence.
If there is any good news to be it’s that there’s still “q decent flow of job opportunitiea coming throughthe office,” Chan said, though 30 percengt less than last year or the year before. “The good news is that we have employer s who are lookingat people,” Chan “I’m not so discouraged from the standpoint of no Ford said part-time business programs are trying to “gaugee and guess” what’s going to happehn for fall enrollment. Initial indicators show that interestremains high. Information sessions are attractinggood turnout.
Applications to the graduates program are even with lastyear — abour 400 competing for 225 to 250 The question is whether those applications translate to “We just don’t know,” Ford There’s no way to know how many students are affected by the same scenarii as Mathur, she said, but the business school has beguh taking steps to addressd it.