thursday, epril 29, 1976
PA
0
c
daily ncbrcikcn
University Programs and Facilities Fees.
. That's the duded-up name of the every
semester fact of financial life for students: stu
dent fees. Appropriations for next year are being
reviewed, as well as increases contemplated to
meet growing strains on the fee doliar-both in
1976-77 and 1977-78.
One Student Affairs committee has projected
an increase in student fees from the current
$61 .50 full-time student rate to $65 for next year
and $70 the year after that. One wonders if rising
costs will ever again permit a break in the near
constant escalation of student fees.
To meet the legitimate needs of student-fee
users, who serve a real educational purpose within
the university, the Fees Allocation Board (FAB)
has sought to keep increases as low as possible.
In their report, they disagree with the need to
make student fees total $70 within two years: in
stead FAB suggested an increase of only a buck
next year and $4 the following year.
One cornerstone of their recommendation is
the Regents Committee Report on student fees
which was approved at the April 17 board meet
ing. The regents recommended that several
programs no longer receive student fee support
Career Planning and Placement, Career Counsel
ing, New Student Orientation, Environmental
Health and Health Education. Those educational
divisions should rightly be transferred to the
university and its- tax dollars for their support.
In addition to endorsing the regents' recom
mendations the FAB report recommends a little
belt tightening in the University Health Center,
the Nebraska Union and the Recreation Dept. In
the latter, the validity of purchasing a minute
supply of expensive equipment, such as skis, that
only can be used by a limited number of students,
is rightly questioned. The intramurals program
and recreation activites at UN L are well
supported and popular-there are just a few too
many frills.
The FAB report makes sense, especially con
sidering the tuition increase which is lingering on
the horizon. The FAB report is a valuable con
tribution to UNL, just as the entire year's work
by FAB has been, careful, complete and
cognizant of student interest-and pocketbooks.
Vince Boucher
U
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REALLY , , CrhhuUBA THAT' ' ,
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1 i LUL- liw.i
con Time-worn economic ideas
p:5 can hasten job cataclysm
ByNeH Klotz
(This is the secosd a a two-prt series cn Le-sr
students can face the f-Sure jsb Eet) . ' '
And you think things can't get worse. ..
It's 1980. You return to your old college for
graduation. You meet six old friends and go out for a
drink. But one person can't pay the tab because he's
unemployed. The c!assof-19S9 graduates . then get
together to eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow and
for awhile after one cut of four of them will be un
employed. You go home, passing through the nearest
city that used to be the weekend hot spot. It st is.
Ten thousand Mgh-school students are looting the
downtown. Every other one is unemployed. You get
caught in the riot and can't get home. Your boss fires
you for missing work.
: To reach that ominous scene, we don't need a rror
national disaster. A3 we have to do is contMue as ire
have for the past decade. By 1920, the economy must
create 12 mi-ion new jobs to acccmmadt crsr
workers and those still on the streets after the last
recession. That's almost taice as mssy jobs as wsre
created in the past five years, and as the uy
controlled Business Week noted nervoudy, "the
economy has never grown that fast for so long.
Meanwhile, it's 1976 and you oily wt to create
one new job. As we learned last week, usashisg 503
resumes to the four winds or casting your fate to
employment agencies will only work for one or two
out of every hundred people.
A small group of job counselors have developed
a different formula for which they claim a 80 to 90 per
cent success rate. The most recent and fullest explana
tion of it is in the book What Color is Your Pmxfaite?
by Richard Nelson BoIIes ($4.20, Ten Speed Press,
Box 4310, Berkeley, Calif. 94704). As BoIIes describes
it, the "creative minority's prescription for joblessness
comes down to this:
Yea cast dscif g
1. "You must decide exactly what you want to do."
Not forever, of course. But if you want more than
"jast-ajob, you must disregard the traditional advice
to be as vague as possible about your ambitions to take
advantage of any vacancies that might open up.
Vaitisg for "openings' is just another form of the
resume numbers game, says Delias, and you probably
wouldn't be satisfied with what you get anyway.
"The pardoxical moral, he says, "is that the
ker a skll level you can legitimately claim, the more
likely you are to find a job." You may have skills that
weren't even part of your formal education. BoHes
provides a number of sophisticated exeats to help
- you dstermine what they are. ..' ; .
2. "You must dsdde exactly where you want to
work through your own research and personal survey.
This also violates the popular assumption that
employers have all the initiative and that you should
stand around like a wallflower while the dance passes
by.
According to the "laser beam approach, you pick
an area of the country, go there, then target a few
places where you'd like to work, and research them
exhaustively to try to unearth their problems. The
best skill you can present is not credentials or
experience, but problem-solving.
Besides reading everything you can about your
target organization, you should personally survey and
interview their key employes. At this point, you're
just gathering information and you should tell them
this to remove any job candidate-interviewer pressure.
Low-keylock
Giving prospective employers this low-key look at
you is very important, says BoIIes. Most people who
make hiring decisions hate job interviews because it
puts them through the stress-ringer, and letting an
executive "window shop you" creates a good feeling
about you.
3. "You must identify the man who has the power
to hire you and show him how your skills can help him
with his problems."
Once you've identified your target's problems,
contact the person whose responsibility it is to solve
them. Avoid the dead end of personnel departments.
Even if you didn't meet this person "with the
power" during your research phase, you have one thing
going for you. You set up the interview by saying you
want to talk about his organization's problems and
some ideas yoti have that might be helpful. You're
offering him something free, instead of placing the
burden on him to offer you something, as in most job
interviews.
If all this, sounds like a lot of work, says BoIIes, it
is. Getting a satisfying job may be the toughest job
youH ever have, and may 'take from three to nine
months. But on that search may rest 10 to IS years of
your future.
But what if you want to create your own job and
no existing organization can hold it? Then it might be
time to start your own business.
"IIow4o advice -
Some practical "how-to" advice on the great leap is
in the April Ms. magazine. You can find some equally
important advice in The Seven Laws of Money Making
by Michael Phillips, former banker and current
financial adviser for the Whole Earth Catalog Founda
tion ($4, Word WheelRandom House).
Some of Phillip's best advice is that you should
separate the project you're starting from the problem
of your own survival. Otherwise the day-to-day anxiety
over making ends meet may be channeled to your new
business and kill it.
Phillips , and friends have started a network of
alternative businesses in the . S"?' Fisisisco area and
published the Briar Patch Review to help others do the
same. ($5 a year from the Briar Patch, 330 Ellis St
San Fransisco, Calif. 94102).
Briar Patch? Says PhiSips, "the Briar Patch Society
consists of people learning to live with joy on the
cracks. . .wiling to fail your.g, 'concerned with the
sharing of resources and skills with members of an on
going community and. . xicre committed to karng
how the wodd works than to aceuiimsrjossessioris and
status."
Combining a sixties hippie rap with business sense,
Phips may have something. The economy won't
. avoid job cataclysm in 19S3 by relying oa traditional
strategies. Within an organization or not, we must
begin to create our own alternative future. That nght
also mean for a while, the n&jcb job: subsistence work
while sorting things out, traveling or ssdtchfcg projects
to gam new insights and meet new people.
It a replay of the 30s does occur, it may be those
?Jeam to "Kvc with iy hi the cracks" who will
provide the model for a new sockty and who wl be
holding nets under the windows on V7all St. .