By Taylor Haire
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
When Kenysha Smith graduated last May from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, she thought her dream of becoming a dancer was about to come true.
Then she got a job at The Home Depot.
“My plan was to audition for dance companies worldwide and agencies in California and New York,” said Smith, a 22-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina. “But now, I find myself waking up every morning to work my job at Home Depot until I can find employment as a dance teacher.”
Smith is not alone. According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, 16.8 percent of college graduates are currently underemployed and working in jobs that do not require a college education.
In addition, the institute has reported that while 62 percent of college graduates have obtained jobs that require a degree, only 27 percent of those held jobs that were related to what they majored in while in college.
Morgan Calvo, who graduated from Towson University in 2015 with a degree in exercise science, said she never thought that getting a job after graduation would be easy, but she didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was for her.
She learned that it didn’t matter how high her GPA was when she graduated or what her resume looked like. Most jobs that she applied for overlooked her degree because she did not have the experience needed, she said.
Calvo ended up moving to Japan after graduating to be with her fiancé, who is in the military, and is currently employed as a manager at one of the gyms on his base.
“The pay is lower than I imagined,” Calvo said. “I could have a better job that paid more without my degree. I just wish I was more prepared when I graduated. Now I’m in debt of $30,000 for no reason.”
Lorie Logan-Bennet, the director of the Career Center at Towson University, said a student’s chances of success all depend on their major and how well they prepared themselves while they were in college.
Logan-Bennet said that some majors are in high demand, such as speech pathologists and accountants. Other majors, she said, are not.
“If you’re a nursing major, you will most likely become a nurse,” Logan-Bennet said. [But] not all people who major in psychology will end up being a psychologist.”
She said students should also take advantage of the many resources most colleges provide, such as career centers. For example, Logan-Bennet said that only about 13,000 of Towson’s 22,000 students interact with the school’s career center during their college career.
“In order to be successful, I’ve noticed that students have to be well-prepared to go into the real word,” Logan-Bennet said. “I would advise all students to look at how well they know the industry that they plan on building a career in. I urge everyone to utilize the career centers on their college campuses. Students need to engage more, take advantage of the online tools that we offer, and come out to the job fairs. It could really help them a lot.”
Tracipha PierrePaul, who graduated with a degree in psychology last year from the Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, said she has decided to get a master’s degree to help her job prospects.
“I never really thought it was hard to get a job in your field with just a bachelor’s degree,” said PierrePaul, who works for Wireless Advocates. “But a lot of people prefer you to have your master’s degree. A lot of places only require bachelor’s degrees, but they’re just not my first choice.”
Christine Solomonik also feels pressure to go to graduate school.
A 2015 graduate of Columbia College in Chicago with a major in audio arts and acoustics, Solomonik is currently working part time at a Teavana as she tries to save money.
“When it comes to companies overlooking a bachelor’s degree, I think it depends on the job,” Solomonik said. “Where I currently work, it’s not something they care about. But other jobs – like government related ones – it [a bachelor’s degree] is something that they notice and are very particular about.”
Smith, who moved back in with her mother and has been working as a sales associate at a Home Depot in Raleigh for about four months, said that she is grateful for the opportunity to have a job in general because it is giving her the opportunity to save money.
But she said her chances of making it in the professional dance industry are slim due to the amount of competition among other dancers and the small number of professional dance jobs available.
“I’ve applied for a lot of jobs before accepting a position at Home Depot, but none of them got back to me,” Smith said. No one told her why she didn’t get the jobs for which she applied, Smith said, so she assumed that it was because of a lack of qualifications or the fact that her major was dance.
“I believe a lot of employers overlook bachelor’s degrees and just look for people that already have years of experience,” Smith said.
Smith even thought about joining the military to have a stable career that would allow her to grow and improve as an individual and financially, but until she decides her next step, Smith is completely content with living in the moment.
“I know it’s not that easy to find a job in general with the way society is set up today,” Smith said. “So, I’m blessed with the job that I have now, and if I end up getting the opportunity to do what I love as a living [dancer], I will be forever grateful.”