Trina Thompson is suing Monroe College in New York because her degree has not helped her find a job. At first this sounds like a funny, silly story, but there’s a lot going on here.
Thompson’s complaints reek of self-delusion. She calls out Monroe’s Office of Career Advancement, which gave her numerous job leads that didn’t pan out: “They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement,” says Thompson. Right. That’s why the graduates with 4.0 GPAs are getting more jobs than her and her respectable-but-not-perfect 2.7.
She goes on to say that other unemployed grads should take the same course of action: “It doesn’t make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”
If Thompson’s inability to understand her own predicament is heartbreaking – and it is – then the conditions which allow her current course of action are equally infuriating. Thompson has not hired an attorney, and has filed a “poor person order” to be exempt from other fees associated with the lawsuit. There’s no risk for her, but Monroe College has to spend valuable resources defending itself – resources that could make education better or cheaper for other students. Not to mention that Thompson’s time might be better spent earning money at McDonald’s or Payless and looking for better employment than putting together a case which will likely (hopefully) be laughed out of court. And the punchline is this: if you were hiring someone, and Googled their name, and you read that they were suing their college because they couldn’t find a job, would you hire them? I wouldn’t.
Of course, maybe Thompson could solve that issue by suing the media.
Jim Eltringham 