Laugh if you must, but things are getting harder for students these days. While going to university for your parent's generation might have been an exception to the rule, more and more people are expected to apply for entry-level jobs with at least a bachelor's degree. The paradox of this shift from vocational school and life experience to post-secondary education is that more and more students are graduating each year with the same qualifications. So it's entirely possible that you can, in fact, study Russian literature for four years and be qualified only to make coffees or stock books.
More than just a snide joke that those successful business students crack at the expense of clueless liberal arts majors, the pressures of students are more and more real. First, there is the inflated sense of importance of getting into a good school that starts as early as junior high, and usually kicks in particularly strong in high school. Guidance counselors report more and more children under the age of 18 who are, quite simply, freaking out about their futures, even though they are technically still children. The amount of essays, standardized tests, and then additional standardized tests that are required to apply to university are overwhelming and somewhat mind boggling for high school students.
This is not to say that students don't require discipline or a look at how much work is required to make it in this world. It's that they should save their time worrying for an occasion where worrying is actually warranted. The problem here, many behavioral experts conclude, is that pressures are starting to mount on children when in reality, there is nothing to worry about yet. This can actually be a lot worse later on, when there are real things to worry about.
And in case anyone has forgotten, there are many real things to worry about. First and foremost on the minds of many young students is debt. Because, you see, to attend university, many students must take out loans, loans that are required to be paid back rather quickly after graduation.
So while students who are off to college and have already exhausted themselves on the stresses of applying just for college are attending classes and working on all of their projects and deadlines, they may forget about the bills they have piling up, waiting to creep up on them until graduation. And for many very intelligent university students, this doesn't come to mind until they have finally gotten their thesis out of the way and are ready to start thinking about jobs.
During such tough economic times, making the transition to the workforce from the world of studies is even more of a harsh reality check. Especially for students who chose a major that will not immediately get them some sort of work, it is difficult to learn that as special and as gifted as many people might have said you are, the current world of work is not as interested. While it is dangerous to build up student's egos to believe that they will never have to take a "regular" job, it is also important to remember what their worry priorities were while enrolled in university.
So after all of the pressures associated with attending school--balancing a job and work, excelling in courses, making sure you actually get the course load you need to complete the degree you want--there is now the added pressure of crippling debt looming right overhead. Students who applied to university three years ago had no idea they would be receiving their degrees amidst one of the worst recessions the world has seen in recent times, and that getting a job would be a lot more difficult than they realized.
As much pressure as students have been experiencing since grades began to get inflated and landing a spot in a freshman university class became an epic endeavor, the new world that awaits them after graduation is even more stressful. Because while a professor might excuse a late paper, it's going to be a lot more difficult to convince someone from a collection agency to do the same thing if your entry-level job is not providing you with enough money to live comfortably and pay off your student loans.
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