A first career that's built to last
When the job market overall is terrible, it helps to be graduating from a college that stays in tune with employers鈥� needs.
Before finishing his final quarter this June, Jason Staten had his job lined up. And that鈥檚 not uncommon among graduates of Neumont University in South Jordan, Utah, which specializes in bachelor鈥檚 degrees in computer science and a project-based curriculum.
鈥淭he whole reason Neumont exists is to educate students so that when they graduate they are productive immediately on Day 1,鈥� says Aaron Reed, associate vice president of employer relations. 鈥淗istorically [that has been] a problem ... especially in the computer science field, because any manager who鈥檚 hired people right out of college will tell you that they require a lot of training and hand-holding.鈥�
Neumont students work in teams to learn the whole software development cycle. First, they do team projects for fictional clients (their professors). Then they move on to real assignments for companies such as eBay. The majority of graduates soon land jobs with starting salaries topping $60,000, according to the school鈥檚 website.
One of Mr. Staten鈥檚 projects was to create an application for managing IBM meeting schedules. 鈥淓very day we鈥檇 be on a phone call [with an IBM supervisor] explaining what we were working on ... and any issues that had come up,鈥� he says.
Mr. Reed regularly meets with employers, locally and in places such as Silicon Valley, to get their views on where the industry is headed. Because the school is small and 鈥渁gile,鈥� he says, it can respond quickly to firms.
While many of his high school classmates were sleeping in and taking two classes a day at traditional colleges, Staten had a full-time schedule, with short breaks between quarters but no full summer vacation. The payoff: He finished in just over two years. Since he鈥檚 always loved computers, it was easy to choose a school with a narrow focus, he says, and he took classes ranging from finance to music composition in order to round out his education.
Now working on desktop applications at a medical insurance company in Utah, Staten is feeling pretty good about his choice as he sees what鈥檚 happened in the economy. 鈥淭here鈥檚 always going to be a need for technology. ... So I believe that computer science is a really good field for me to be in right now,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 know the skills I鈥檓 learning, the specific coding languages may not apply 10, 15 years into the future, but [I鈥檝e gained] the ability to learn how to learn.鈥�
