Although people tend to get jobs to pay the bills, recent changes at the Duke University Career Center are forcing graduate students pay to find a job.
In an effort to cut costs, the Career Center recently outsourced its credential services to an online company. Interfolio Inc. streamlines application procedures by electronically storing all the documents necessary for students to apply for academic jobs, but the cost doctoral students money will be a major burden, faculty and students said.
Graduate students recognize the benefits of the new system, which allows portfolios to be sent at any hour and puts the entire process online, said Heather Dean, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council.
“It didn’t make sense that they were spending so many of their resources sending out resumes,” she said. “It just seems a lot easier. The problem is the cost.”
Several faculty members are also concerned that the costs will be a significant hardship for students, and they have encouraged the University to assume financial responsibility.
Graduate students, who often rely on teaching and second jobs for income during the final years of school, may find the cost daunting.
Betsy Jelinek, a fourth year graduate student in philosophy, said the prospect of paying to have her letters of recommendation sent was “ridiculous.”
“I just don’t have the money,” she said, noting that she lives on a stipend of $14,000 a year. “I would not eat groceries for, like, two weeks.”
Doctoral candidates regularly apply to 50 or 100 different jobs in order to receive even one offer. At $5 per mailing, the cost could accumulate quickly, faculty said. And for graduate students, who often live on a subsistence stipend until they find employment, even the $82 that the Career Center estimates will be the annual average could be difficult to muster.
“The burden of implementing it financially will fall on the people who are least capable of handling it: the students,” said Kenneth Surin, professor of literature.
He noted the advantages of the new system but was dismayed at the timing of the decision to outsource, which came at the end of spring semester when faculty attention was devoted to final exams and papers.
The Career Center consulted faculty last spring before the outsourcing was final and held several poorly attended forums, said Sheila Curran, executive director of the Career Center. Several faculty members on the Executive Committee of the Graduate School were startled and disturbed that students would have to pay when the changes were mentioned at a meeting Tuesday. The issue will be discussed at a future meeting.
Interfolio took over mailing and archiving Duke’s credentials this summer, and the Center is still monitoring it to see if Interfolio’s services are smoothing the application process. “Obviously you don’t want to outsource without having some ability to do quality control to make sure that this is a significantly improved service to what we would be able to provide on campus,” Curran said.
When the Career Center mailed credentials for students directly, it recouped part of the $5,300 cost by charging alumni who used the service to apply to jobs. The Center initially invested several thousand dollars to transfer its existing paper files to the electronic system, but now that the entire process is outsourced, Curran said the Center has “nothing to do with the cost directly.”
Students and alumni will pay Interfolio for each packet sent. Curran is evaluating whether the Career Center will pay the set-up and registration fee for current students who will begin to use the service.
Even if students are released from Interfolio’s initial fee, the cost will fall disproportionately on humanities students, since they are the group most likely to apply for academic jobs when they graduate, several faculty members and students said.
Also, many faculty in the natural and social sciences send letters of recommendation directly and do not take advantage of the Career Center’s clearinghouse system for applications. These letters are mailed at no cost students.
Gregory Wray, director of graduate studies for biology, explained that biology students only apply to 10 jobs, which means that it is possible to send out the letters individually.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.