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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Emotionally fragile college grads say they're not prepared for work

People who fell apart under pressure were "nervous in the service," my father used, a World War II veteran, used to say.


Photo: Christina Morillo/Pexels

There are a lot of nervous folks out there, according to a survey by the Marie Christie Institute. Just over half of young professionals said they needed help for emotional or mental health problems in the past year: Women were much more fragile than men.


Black (60 percent) and Asian-American (63 percent) respondents were the most likely to say they have good or excellent mental health, compared to Whites (52 percent) and Hispanics (49 percent).


A majority of recent college graduates say they're not emotionally prepared for a 9 to 5 job, and a majority of young professionals say they feel "burned out" at least once a week, reports Will Potter for the Daily Mail.


Nearly 40 percent said their college or university didn't prepare them for "the emotional or behavioral impact of the transition to the workplace," writes Johanna Alonso in Inside Higher Ed. However, "slightly more than half reported that their mental health had improved since they were in college."


College students are working less, yet earning higher grades, writes Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University, on Minding the Campus.

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3 Comments


obiwandreas
Feb 17, 2023

Once again, the prophet we really need for these times is Mike Rowe. In this case, for his emphasis on the importance of developing a work ethic. College is too late to start. Students need to be expected to complete tasks and actually hand them in. This is the end result of years of lowered expectations and coddling.

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Guest
Feb 17, 2023

Colleges are no longer "hot houses" that force students to bloom earlier than they would in the intellectually cooler working world. Instead they now produce "hot house flowers" that wilt when removed from the protected environment and must deal with reality. Not really the best thing to go into lifelong debt to become.

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Guest
Feb 16, 2023

I guess being born at the end of the last year of the baby boomer, and not having all this technology when I was a teenager must have spared me from these issues as I've been working since I was 15 (though if I would have done a better job of investing, I could have retired 10-15 years ago)...


What did these college students/graduates think work was going to be like, a 24/7 video game?


I see many people on a daily basis spending (in some cases) more time on their smart phones than they do working, and if you're not producing for the company your employed by, you're just dead weight which can be tossed overboard with ease when…


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