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

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Mathur, a senior technical program managereat , aims to leverages the undergraduate technology background he garneree at Rohilkhand University in his native India as well as his graduatse studies in information systems and business at . But the economy has deraileed his effort. On April 2, Sun told Mathur that his positionnwas redundant. That means at the end of May he will losehis job, as well as the tuitionn reimbursement package the compangy was putting toward his MBA at Santa Clara University’s Leaveyu School of Business. “Now my primary job is finding anew job,” said adding that he knows at leastr a half dozen classmates in a similatr position.
“The studies take a beating becausd you’re obviously not as focused as you’d like to be. Suddenly I have to pay all this and who knows howlong I’ll be in this positiobn of making no money.” It’sd a growing problem at Leavey’es graduate program, a part-time model where a majority of students are full-time professionals by day and theird tuition is supplemented by employer reimbursements. As a private institutiom that sits high innationalo rankings, the program is anything but A three-unit evening MBA class for the 2008-090 school year costs $2,352. The accelerated MBA tuitionh for the classof 2010, whichj began last summer, toppefd $72,000.
Students in the Executive MBA prograj from the class of 2009paid $92,000. “j think anecdotally there’s a lot of uneasiness (among at the business school right saidElizabeth Ford, senior assistant dean of graduated programs at Leavey. “Without having statistics on we cansense it. It’s very unpredictable for us right now.” Enrollments in full-time graduat e programs typically spike when there are largew numbersof layoffs, with undergraduates electing to go directly to graduate school rather than test the job Applications for the class of 2010 at Stanford University’z Graduate School of Business rose 43 percent over the clas s of 2007, from 4,582 to 6,5756 for about 745 But there are no guarantees therr will be a job waiting after completing graduate school.
“When peoplre come to a graduate business especiallya full-time program, there’s a high desirew to either take a step up in management in the same fielc or look at doing somethingf very different from what you were doing before you came to said Andy Chan, assistant dean and director of the MBA career management center at Stanford’sa Graduate School of Business. “In a down economuy employers are less willing and have less of a need for hiringh people withoutdirect experience.
” The biggest challengew today for business school graduate students, Chan said, is the sheedr number of candidates in the job There are students coming out of school, people alreadty let go by their company and those at unhealthy companiesz perhaps anticipating work force cuts. Stanforsd students are drawing on thebusiness school’s staft of career advisers as well as alumnoi employed to give guidance. Each whether face-to-face or via telephone, the graduat e school facilitates morethan 2,000 careert counseling appointments with students and Chan said. That doesn’t include informalk conversations, such as e-mail and phonr correspondence.
If there is any good news to be it’s that there’s 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 employere who are looking at people,” Chan “I’m not so discouraged from the standpoint of no Ford said part-time business programws are trying to “gauge and guess” what’d going to happen for fall enrollment. Initial indicators show that interestremainsz high.
Information sessions are attracting good Applications to the graduate program are even with last year about 400 competing for 225 to 250 The question is whether those applications translateto “We just don’t know,” Ford There’s no way to know how many students are affectefd by the same scenario as she said, but the businese school has begun taking steps to addressx it.