It Takes More Than A Degree

In the 1960s, my sister and I were the first in our family to graduate—from grammar school. My parents were shoe workers in Manchester’s millyard in the last gasps of it actually being a real mill yard. In high school one of my classmates mentioned he was going to college to major in business. I thought, “What a waste of college …. going there just to run a corner grocery store.” Today it’s hard for me to believe, but at that point in my life, that’s how far my vision of the business world extended.

Which brings me to a turning point in my life and the War on Poverty. In the summer of 1966, after my first scholarship-funded year at the University of NH, I got a job in the Community Action Program’s Summer Youth Program in Manchester. I was one of about 25 college students eligible under the program due to our low family income. The pay was at or barely above minimum wage—$1.60 an hour, which adjusted for inflation is a couple of dollars above the woefully inadequate current minimum wage. But more importantly, I had access to and rubbed shoulders with white-collar office workers. It was a world as strange to me as another planet. It made me realize that there really were opportunities for me to move up the socio-economic ladder.

I worked there a second summer as well, helping run an inner-city summer youth program. In all, I think I was paid about $1,000 for each of those two summers. But it wasn’t about the money. It was about access and exposure to a world I didn’t know.

Now here’s the thing. I’ve been working for most of the 50 or so years since that federally funded summer internship. Over the subsequent decades, I’ve paid taxes amounting to much more than the compensation from those two summers. 

As it turns out, the $2,000 in summer pay over the two years was a great investment, yielding huge dividends to me in the form of a career and to the government in the form of the taxes I’ve paid over the years.

Educational opportunities abound today, and education remains a fundamental rung on the ladder of upward mobility, but upward mobility is often about more than getting a degree. The growing disparities between rich and poor, a shortage of skilled labor and the seemingly difficult path into the middle class for Millennials and Gen-Xers are oft-highlighted challenges to our economy. For many there is a disconnect between the classroom and a career.

Many NH grads sense a dilemma (real or imagined) of either working here at a sub-par job or leaving the state for better opportunities elsewhere. Recent demographic trends confirm that many are opting out of NH—during the last decade we experienced a net out-migration of almost 20,000 in the 20 to 29 age category, almost four times the rate of the prior decade.

Internships provide an important supplement to the classroom experience. They allow both interns and employers to test the waters. Those internships are inventoried in the career placement offices of our colleges and universities, and some can be found online, including stayworkplay.org. But I can’t help think that the availability of meaningful internships falls short of the potential. According to recent Census counts, we have more than 90,000 students enrolled part time and full time in higher education facilities in NH. Not all students want or are available for an internship, but I sense a need for more internship opportunities.

So, what can be done? Several things come to mind. First, our business and government leaders should examine whether they can open their doors for more internships. Second, employers may need some guidance in terms of addressing labor laws and compensation issues—a guidebook might help. Third, a well-exposed, easy to use, comprehensive on-line match-up clearing house, possibly building on the experience of stayworkplay.org, would enable internship sponsors and those looking for meaningful opportunities to find each other more easily.

It really is a win-win-win situation. Employers get to meet and measure potential employees with fresh ideas; schools and the business community work together and learn more about each other’s needs and potential; and young workers get a taste of the real world opportunities available here in NH, possibly encouraging them to build a career here.

Russ Thibeault is the president of Applied Economic Research, an economic and real estate consulting firm he founded in 1976 in Laconia.