Hiring Their Graduates

When I was teaching at York College-CUNY, I was struck by how many of the college's alumni/ae were employed by their alma mater.  In the department in which I taught, two full-time faculty members and two adjuncts were students at the college.  Other departments employed even more graduates, and several administrators and staff members also received their degrees from that august institution.


A friend--one of the few people from the college with whom I've remained in contact--remarked upon this phenomenon.  This friend teaches there and graduated from other, more esteemed, schools in other parts of this country.  In fact, one of this friend's degrees comes from study at a schEool that's considered its region's equivalent of the Ivy League and has other degrees from institutions that are considered among the best in their field in which my friend teaches.


This friend's undergraduate institution has never, in its history,employed an alumnus/alumna, and probably never will.  "After all," my friend explains, "the school figures that you're good enough to make it anywhere else.  And that's exactly what they want you to do."  The good news is that most, like my friend, do exactly that.  Even while teaching at York, my friend has compiled a record of research and publishing that's considered formidable among those who work in the field.  It's also good enough that other, better-known, institutions are offering positions with tenure, which my friend has.  However, this friend of mine chooses to stay, mainly for personal reasons and the privilege this professor's current position holds.


I thought about our conversation, and my own observations at York.  Then I recalled that none of my profs at Rutgers, where I earned my bachelor's degree, had ever been students on the Banks of the ol' Raritan.  Just to be sure, I checked on Google. (Great way to spend your weekend, eh?)  Among my profs--at least the ones for whom I found records (that is to say, most of my profs)--I couldn't find a single Rutgers degree.  Not a BA, BS, MS, MA, MFA, MBA, MSW, JD, PhD or any other degree from any division of Rutgers in the bunch.  I don't know whether Rutgers has ever had  a written or unwritten policy against hiring its graduates--as my friend's institution seems to have had--but I was happy to see no Rutgers grads among my old profs.  


As a matter of fact, when I was at Rutgers, the University's graduate schools almost never admitted applicants with baccalaureates from the land of the Scarlet Knights.  One of my classmates, whose GPA was something like 3.85 and who edited one of the school's literary magazines and tutored, was denied admission to the Rutgers graduate program in her field.  But Columbia, which supposedly has an even better reputation in it, accepted her!


Then, after looking up my old profs, I thought back to my conversation with my friend--and of blogs like Third Tier Reality and Inside The Law School Scam.  From reading them, I have the impression there's scarcely a law school in the country that's not hiring at least a few of its graduates.  Or, the universities that host the law schools hire recent graduates for positions that exploit them and are often meaningless.  


Why do those schools hire their graduates?  The short answer is to inflate their placement statistics.  But the whole story is even worse:  Many of those gradates are hired seven or eight months after earning their JDs.  That's because most schools compute employment and placement statistics nine months after the students graduate. (Think of it as a "stimulus.")  As often as not, those recent graduates are laid off a few weeks after the statistics are compiled.    Or, the positions are made to last only three or four months.   


In York's defense, the college usually keeps the graduates it hires.  On the other hand, it begs the question of just how employable some of those people actually are.   Nando and Professor Campos might say the same thing about law school graduates, many of whom never find work in the profession for which they've trained.