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Rice University President David Leebron on the challenges for college students in finding a job after they graduate and efforts to rein in mounting st...
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Welcome back to money we are live in Houston at rice university for our special series open for business.
And this is the jobs numbers aren't good just this morning the Labor Department released another report showing first time jobless claims last week coming in.
Higher than expected 300 ED 2001.
Time filers.
So how do today's college grads find a job in this rough environment and what are universities doing to prepare them for insight.
We turn to David -- -- president of Rice University.
So much for hosting us today by the way we have had a fantastic time -- your.
Beautiful school -- we're really delighted to have you here on her campus on this.
Typical Houston September again it's -- it hanging in the weather has been absolutely -- gorgeous but turning back to the unemployment rate of course an -- for college grads when you look at -- all these kids walking around the campus here.
Filled with hope.
And I worry about after graduation we right now the unemployment rate for people for college grads that are twenty to 24 -- eleven point 5% at the top number.
Jackson is a very challenging environment for that age group -- -- -- to keep in mind we've all seen the statistics that a college education and.
-- a high school education has about a million dollars of income on average over the course of your life is even more pronounced effect on employment.
And having a college education or even beyond.
The employment rates for those groups are very substantially reduced so -- as a comparative matter college graduates are actually doing better than others.
Well and if you wanna go on a comparative basis if you look at different occupations and jobs you know there's certainly differences in the same things you're talking about employment salary I mean Labor Department says biomedical engineering for example is a field that's gonna grossed 62% over the next decade.
Do you steering -- students sorts of things where there's gonna be jobs it seems logical.
Yeah -- we that we don't steer them we have what the top ten bio engineering department.
Until we get a lot of those students who -- interest in bioengineering.
And bio medical professions but we -- we it carries them through -- liberal arts education that define their passions and you know as they get older they tend to get a little more practical.
A lot of our students going to further education and that's focuses them even more so they have a tendency to find their way.
Our students are pretty Smart about.
Finding the right balance between the things they have an interest and passion and what the realities of the job market are.
But you talk about you -- -- and the potential income of being a million dollars more of your college graduate but you also have debt potentially when you come out so many kids do and especially when you're talking about -- higher education as well.
The -- the big debt problem in this country you know overall the reason big debt problem but to be very careful if you look at you know you see off from the statistics people.
And I really -- a 100000 dollars in debt.
That's a very small percentage when we're figuring out our student scholarships here.
We capped target 101000 dollars over four years.
So our students to undergraduate with a relatively small amount of debt to their choices aren't so constrained by that -- Do you think that the it.
No the for the cost of education is you're gonna pay a number of factors one is -- constantly expanding -- -- When I meet with our graduates -- -- out twenty years and it doesn't how many of you majored in bioengineering raise your hands yeah none of the major.
In bio engineered so.
There there -- a number of things but I don't actually think that that I think one of the problems is you know the default rate for example for an institution like ours.
Is somewhere around maybe one to 2%.
If you look at other sectors -- much -- thank you so much for coming on tonight of course thank you for having us that your beautiful school we have really enjoyed our time here in our guess we have learned so much.
That is all the money that we have.
