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

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Mathur, a senior technical program managefat , aims to leveragre the undergraduate technology background he garnered at Rohilkhanxd University in his native India as well as his graduatre studies in information systems and business at . But the economgy has derailed his effort. On Apri l 2, Sun told Mathur that his positio nwas redundant. That means at the end of May he will losehis job, as well as the tuitionn reimbursement package the company was puttinfg toward his MBA at Santa Clara University’s Leavet School of Business. “Now my primaruy job is finding anew job,” said adding that he knows at leastr a half dozen classmatesx in a similar position.
“The studies take a beating becaus you’re obviously not as focused as you’dx like to be. Suddenly I have to pay all this and who knows howlong I’ll be in this positio of making no It’s a growing proble m at Leavey’s graduate program, a part-time modepl where a majority of students are full-time professionalss by day and their tuition is supplementedd by employer reimbursements. As a private institution that sits high in national rankings, the program is anything but cheap. A three-uniyt evening MBA class for the 2008-09 school year costs The accelerated MBA tuition for the classzof 2010, which began last summer, toppef $72,000.
Students in the Executive MBA program from the class of 2009paid “I think anecdotally there’s a lot of uneasiness (among at the business school righft now,” said Elizabeth senior assistant dean of graduated programs at Leavey. “Without having statistics on morale, we can senses it. It’s very unpredictable for us right now.” Enrollments in full-time graduated programs typically spike when there are large numberxs of layoffs, with undergraduates electing to go directly to graduatee school rather than test the job Applications for the class of 2010 at Stanforc University’s Graduate School of Business rose 43 percent over the clasa of 2007, from 4,5822 to 6,575 for about 745 slots.
But there are no guaranteed there will be a job waiting after completinfggraduate school. “When people come to a graduatebusiness school, especially a full-time program, there’s a high desire to eitherf take a step up in management in the same fieldr or look at doing something very different from what you were doing beforre you came to school,” said Andy Chan, assistanft dean and director of the MBA caree r management center at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
“In a down economy employers are less willing and have less of a need for hiringh people without direct The biggest challenge today for businessw schoolgraduate students, Chan said, is the sheee number of candidates in the job There are students coming out of school, peoplre already let go by their compangy and those at unhealthy companiee perhaps anticipating work force cuts. Stanford studentsx are drawing on thebusinessx school’s staff of careedr advisers as well as alumni employed to give Each year, whether face-to-facs or via telephone, the graduater school facilitates more than 2,000 careedr counseling appointments with students and alumni, Chan said.
That doesn’y include informal conversations, such as e-mail and phone If there is any good news tobe it’s that there’s still “qa decent flow of job opportunities coming througg the office,” Chan said, though 30 percenf less than last year or the year “The good news is that we have employers who are lookinvg at people,” Chan said. “I’m not so discourager from the standpoint of no Fordsaid part-time business programs are tryingt to “gauge and guess” what’s going to happemn for fall enrollment. Initial indicators show that interestremainsw high.
Information sessions are attracting good Applications to the graduate program are even with last year about 400 competing for 225 to250 slots. The question is whether those applicationxs translateto matriculation. “We just don’t Ford said. There’s no way to know how many studentws are affected by the same scenarioas Mathur, she but the business school has begun takinbg steps to address it.