30% of SNU graduates unemployed

Three out of ten graduates of Seoul National University are going jobless. According to a report released Monday on the employment and continued education of its 2001 graduates, 71.1 percent of 3,868 students who graduated in February have either found jobs, advanced to graduate school or joined the army. Employment figures of the university include the latter two categories. The employed numbers kept decreasing from 74.6 percent in 1999 to 72.4 percent in 2000 and further down to 71.1 percent this year.

In percentage terms the employed graduates in the strict sense of the term increased steadily to 35.0 this year, up from 27 in 1999 and 32.9 in 2000. The share of graduates going on to graduate school dropped to 32.5 percent from 37 percent last year. It showed more students preferred jobs to advanced studies.

The unemployment rate was highest among the graduates of the college of liberal arts and humanities at 41.6 percent, followed by the college of law at 39.4 percent, the college of social studies at 39.3 percent, the college of education at 39.3 percent and the college of agriculture at 31.9 percent. Thus, students of humanities and social sciences had greater difficulty in getting jobs.

The situation was worse with post-graduate students. Among 46 Ph. Ds in liberal arts and humanities only 17 found jobs, posting a distressingly high unemployment rate of 63 percent. Out of 29 degree holders from the college of social sciences 8 or 27.6 percent has gone unemployed; of 223 doctors from the college of engineering 25 or 11.2 percent are out of job.

Ha Joon-Woo hawoo@donga.com