ESPOSITO: Good grades are not enough anymore
Column: Unapologetically
For college students in 2020, every day is met with a new kind of frustration: the trials and tribulations of online classes, the lack of social interaction, the missed connections with professors. Most prominent for many is the lack of opportunities.
We have been told for years that work ethic is the driving force in whatever we choose to pursue. How many times has the phrase “you get what you give” been tossed around, instilling in us that effort is the key to success? What recent years and recent studies have shown us is that is not entirely the case.
Especially in the midst of a pandemic, with record-breaking unemployment as many students attempt to find internships and employment, it is not necessarily about how hard they work. Other factors include what they can afford and who they know. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic makes it more prevalent than ever that college students are not on the same playing field.
In 2017, 50 percent and 43 percent of parents in the United States are offering no financial assistance to their daughters and sons, respectively, to finance their education, according to Forbes. Approximately half of American college students are emerging from college with thousands of dollars in student loans.
We can assume that to cover those costs, many full time students are also working part-time jobs in their college towns. These students are already falling behind those whose parents cover the cost of college — they are unable to take unpaid internships.
Sixty percent of internships are unpaid, according to Time Magazine. For the majority of fields, internships are a necessity to be looked at by recruiters and to show you have experience before graduating. In 2020, good grades are not enough. You need recommendations, jobs in your field of work and leadership skills to build your internship.
But many students are at the disadvantage of not being able to afford an internship that comes their way, if any. With the ongoing pandemic, this problem is amplified more than ever. With companies furloughing and laying off entry-level employees and recruiting less for internships, many are opting to have unpaid internships rather than not having opportunities for them at all.
Unpaid internships, especially during this time, directly diminish opportunities strictly for lower-income students. And the consequences of this are long term and will only further the wealth gap. If only wealthier students are able to afford unpaid internships, this will directly correlate to wealthier students being the only ones to get jobs post-graduation.
With so little internship opportunities in the first place during COVID-19, some opportunities are not based on applying for an internship or a job but by networking.
Upward of 80 percent of jobs are found through networking, and 70 percent are not posted online to be applied to, according to CNBC. In a time where everything is halted, internships and potential jobs can be scarce and based solely off of who you know and your connections.
This again affects lower-income students more than anyone else. Many of them are first-generation college students, with little prior knowledge of the field they are going into. Wealthier students, on the other hand, could have much more prior connections due to their families, and what they can afford to do to get experience and network.
The success of college students post-graduation already offers an unfairly-leveled playing field for students based on their wealth. The coronavirus has only made it more prominent, and the effects of it will be even more dire in the years to come. There is little to do to fix this solution as companies themselves are releasing so many of their workers in this financial crisis.
But the first step is recognizing that getting good grades and being a good student, in today’s world, no longer gets us where we want to go. The more this is acknowledged, the more we can do to fix it.
Laura Esposito is a School of Arts and Sciences junior majoring in journalism and political science. Her column, "Unapologetically," runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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