Here is how to lower the cost of attending college

 If universities want to lower the cost of attending college, instead of getting rid of staff who help students or professors who teach classes they ought to do away with administrator jobs.

At NJCU the president created a job of "provost." Probably did so to make herself feel important. Having a lot of assistants must be a status symbol of some sort.

The first provost said "This is an important day" when the university opened their "confucius center" to much pomp and circumstance. Yet no one really knew what the center was for, or why any students in Jersey City would care about what it did. It unceremoniously closed down several years later after the federal government accused the centers as being propaganda for the Chinese communist party. The provost left the job four years later. I'm still not sure what he actually did, or what he accomplished.

The second provost didn't seem to do much of anything either. The job is supposed to be like a senior vice president, overseeing academics, services, and other operations. Yet, how important can the job be when she left the campus after three years to take a job in private industry? Of course, this was after the campus declared a financial emergency, so I guess she had a moral epiphany after the fact. Or maybe just didn't want to get caught up in the state's investigation.

The third provost got rid of the only staff position in career services, yet a few months later signed off on a document stating that helping students find internships, explore careers, and land "good jobs" after they graduated was a top priority. But who exactly was supposed to help these students, if you don't have any staff? If anyone knows the answer to this question, let me know.

Universities functioned fine years ago when there were maybe half the number of administrators employed as today. A lot of them have titles with words like "associate," "vice," and other prefixes, but it’s not clear what they actually do in the jobs. The reality is a lot of what these people do is useless.

University administrators wanted to spend taxpayer money on "space consultants"

When I worked at NJCU and they were in the midst of a hundred million dollar financial crisis, the vice president of administration and finance said he was going to hire "space consultants" to advise the university on the best use of the "space" in their buildings. How bizarre. The former president put the university into hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and her vice presidents and board of trustees let it happen without saying anything, and then they're going to spend money to have someone else tell them how to best use the "space" on their own campus? Phew. This after they were begging the state of New Jersey to give them more of taxpayers' money to bail them out of the financial crisis. All the people who run this colleges with their PhD's, and they can't figure out themselves how to best utilize the buildings on their own campus?

A job interview at Goldman Sachs

I’m sure lots of people have had strange experiences while searching for and interviewing for jobs. People who do the recruiting and interviewing of job candidates often have funny stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder though, if other people looking for a job have had anything similar to mine.

Once I went on an interview for a job as a college recruiter, with Goldman Sachs. This particular office was in lower Manhattan. The director of college recruiting was a guy named Mike. At the start of the interview he mused, “There’s mostly women working in college recruiting.” Hmm, maybe this gives me an edge, I thought. He didn’t ask me any questions though. He just rambled on for a couple of minutes about Goldman Sachs.

Suddenly, he looked past me (his office was surrounded by windows). He stood up, grabbed a stack of what look to be like tickets to a game or concert wrapped with elastic bands, and raced out the door. I turned around, but he had already fled down one of the hallways, disappearing from sight.

So I sat there for a few minutes, wondering what I should do. Wait until he comes back? Leave now? It started to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to get this job even if I stayed, so I was about to go when a girl named Kim walked in.

“Mike had to go, but I’ll finish the interview,” she said brightly. Then she proceeded to talk a little about the job. She didn’t ask me any questions, or ask if I had any questions about th position. She did talk at length about the bars in the area and how everyone in the department liked to go out for drinks after work.

After a few minutes she stood up and held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you,” she said. For some reason I said thank you, nice to meet you too, instead of saying what I really felt, which was, why did you even bother to call me in….

I’ve thought that maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If that’s the case, and I’m sure some interviewers consider that above all else (although they would never admit it), why not ask for a picture? A photograph with the resume on the back. It would save us all a lot of time and money. By looks, I mean beyond the blue suit/white shirt/red tie/polished shoes/clean shaven appearance.

Who knows. Maybe this isn’t as ridiculous as some others’ experiences. It feels like it was a waste of time and energy. On the other hand it’s given me something to write about, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Stay tuned for upcoming stories about job search…

Employers like Katia Beauchamp of Birchbox make me laugh

I just read an interview with Katia Beauchamp, the founder of Birchbox, an online business. She was discussing the hiring process at her company, and how if candidates describe a past job as not fun, she does not consider hiring the person. She claims it's a person's job to make your life fun.
 
Well I would agree it's up to each individual to find their own version of happiness in their personal life, but to think that any job can be made "fun" is silly and only shows that the person saying it has lived a sheltered and privileged life.
 
Lots of people are in lousy jobs, mainly because of lousy managers. Some people just can't wave a magic wand and put themselves into the job of their dreams. There are other factors at play, some of which are out of their control.

To not hire someone because they were in a bad situation is short-sighted and narrow minded. What is important for hiring managers to consider is, what can the candidate do to solve problems in the job that I'm hiring for? What has gone on at another job in someone's past is irrelevant. As is their past and current salary.

The "no one is ever allowed to say anything negative" nonsense that some recruiters believe in is silly. Some people wouldn't be interviewing for new jobs if something bad hadn't happened at the last one. I guess hiring managers would rather be lied to.

If the person is a good candidate for a job, I'd rather know more about what you're looking for in a job with a potential company and why you weren't satisfied with your previous job, instead of saying everything was all peaches and cream.

Where is the $13 billion fine money from JP Morgan going?

Where is the $13 billion fine money from JP Morgan going?  Is going to pay down the national debt? Is it going to be spent on something we don't need?  How come reporters don't ask these questions? Why am I asking it in a blog?