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

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Mathur, a senior technical program managetat , aims to leverage the undergraduatw technology background he garnered at Rohilkhand University in his nativ e India as well as his graduatwe studies in information systems and business at . But the economyt has derailed his effort. On April 2, Sun told Mathure that his positionwas redundant. That means at the end of May he will losehis job, as well as the tuitionj reimbursement package the company was putting toward his MBA at Santaw Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. “Noq my primary job is findingg anew job,” said Mathur, addinvg that he knows at least a half dozen classmate s in a similar position.
“Thde studies take a beating because you’re obviouslhy 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 positionn of making no money.” It’s a growinv problem at Leavey’s graduate program, a part-timw model where a majority of students are full-tim professionals by day and their tuitio is supplemented by employer reimbursements. As a private institutionj that sits high innational rankings, the prograkm is anything but cheap. A three-unit evening MBA clase for the 2008-09 school year costs $2,352. The accelerateed MBA tuition for the classof 2010, whichn began last summer, topped $72,000.
Studentds in the Executive MBA programm from the class of 2009paid $92,000. “I think anecdotally there’s a lot of uneasiness (among at the business school right now,” said Elizabetgh Ford, senior assistant dean of graduates programsat Leavey. “Without havintg statistics on morale, we can sensee it. It’s very unpredictable for us righyt now.” Enrollments in full-time graduate programs typicallh spike when there are large numbersof layoffs, with undergraduatexs electing to go directly to graduate school rathedr than test the job market.
Applicationz for the class of 2010 atStanfored University’s Graduate School of Business rose 43 percent over the class of 2007, from 4,5821 to 6,575 for about 745 slots. But theree are no guarantees there will be a job waiting aftef completinggraduate school. “When peopl e come to a graduatebusinesse school, especially a full-time program, there’s a high desire to either take a step up in managementg in the same field or look at dointg something very different from what you were doing beforde you came to school,” said Andy Chan, assistanyt dean and director of the MBA career management centeer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
“In a down econom employers are less willing and have less of a need for hirin people withoutdirect experience.” The biggesg challenge today for businessd school graduate students, Chan is the sheer number of candidates in the job There are students coming out of people already let go by theif company and those at unhealthy companieds perhaps anticipating work force cuts. Stanfordd students are drawing on thebusiness school’xs staff of career advisers as well as alumni employed to give Each year, whether face-to-face or via telephone, the graduate schoolp facilitates more than 2,00o career counseling appointments with students and alumni, Chan That doesn’t include informal such as e-mail and phone correspondence.
If there is any good news to be it’s that there’s still “az 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 employersa who are looking at Chan said. “I’m not so discouraged from the standpointr ofno jobs.” Ford said part-time business programss are trying to “gauge and what’s going to happen for fall enrollment. Initiapl indicators show that interestremainx high. Information sessions are attracting good Applications to the graduate prograjm are even with last year about 400 competing for 225 to250 slots.
The questiob is whether those applications translatreto matriculation. “We just don’t Ford said. There’s no way to know how many studentz are affected by the same scenariooas Mathur, she said, but the business school has begun taking steps to address it.