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

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Mathur, a senior technical program managerat , aims to leverags the undergraduate technology background he garnered at Rohilkhaned University in his native India as well as his graduatd studies in information systems and business at . But the economu has derailed his effort. On April 2, Sun told Mathurr that his position was That means at the end of May he will losehis job, as well as the tuitiob reimbursement package the company was puttiny toward his MBA at Santa Clara University’s Leave y School of Business. “Now my primary job is findingh anew job,” said Mathur, addinyg that he knows at least a half dozenm classmates in a similar position.
“The studies take a beatintg 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 position of makin g no money.” It’s a growing problem at Leavey’sa graduate program, a part-time model where a majority of studenta are full-time professionals by day and theirf tuition is supplemented by employedr reimbursements. As a private institutionh that sits high innationap rankings, the program is anything but cheap. A three-unig evening MBA class for the 2008-09 schoolk year costs $2,352. The accelerated MBA tuitiobn for the classof 2010, which began last topped $72,000.
Students in the Executive MBA program from the classd of 2009paid $92,000. “I thinm anecdotally there’s a lot of uneasiness (amongg students) at the business schoool right now,” said Elizabeth Ford, senior assistantt dean of graduate programsat “Without having statistics on morale, we can sense it. It’s very unpredictable for us righft now.” Enrollments in full-time graduate programs typically spiked when there are largw numbersof layoffs, with undergraduates electing to go directly to graduate school rather than test the job market.
Applicationw for the class of 2010 atStanford University’s Graduate School of Business rose 43 percent over the class of from 4,582 to 6,575 for about 745 But there are no guarantees there will be a job waiting aftert completing graduate school. “When people come to a graduatdbusiness school, especially a full-time program, there’s a high desire to eithe r take a step up in management in the same fieldr or look at doing somethinfg very different from what you were doing before you came to said Andy Chan, assistangt dean and director of the MBA careeer management center at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
“In a down economy employers are less willing and have less of a need for hirinvg people withoutdirect experience.” The biggest challenge todayg for business school graduate students, Chan said, is the sheerf number of candidates in the job There are students coming out of school, people already let go by their company and those at unhealthg companies perhaps anticipating work force cuts. Stanfordc students are drawing on thebusiness school’ staff of career advisers as well as alumni employefd to give guidance. Each whether face-to-face or via telephone, the graduat school facilitates morethan 2,009 career counseling appointments with students and alumni, Chan said.
That doesn’tf include informal conversations, such as e-mai and phone correspondence. If therr is any good news to be found, it’s that there’xs still “a decent flow of job opportunities coming through the Chan said, though 30 percent less than last year or the year “The good news is that we have employerx who are looking at Chan said. “I’m not so discourages from the standpoint of no Fordsaid part-time business programs are trying to “gauge and what’s going to happen for fall Initial indicators show that interest remains high. Information sessions are attractingggood turnout.
Applications to the graduate progra are even with last year about 400 competing for 225 to 250 The question is whether those applicationzs translateto matriculation. “We just don’y know,” Ford said. There’s no way to know how many studentx are affected by the same scenario as she said, but the businesw school has begun taking steps to addrese it.