UC Berkeley Graduates Entering An Uncertain World Shaped By COVID-19; 'I'm Supposed To Be Doing Great'
BERKELEY (CBS SF/AP) -- Tyler Lyson watched his parents' financial collapse in the Great Recession, a decade ago. He vowed he'd find the security they never had: He would get a college degree.
The 28-year-old won a full scholarship to the University of California-Berkeley and, on Monday, will become the first in his family to graduate from college.
"I'm supposed to be doing great," he said.
Instead, he feels powerless and panicked, with a political science degree that seems worthless. He has a 7-month-old baby and his wife, a United Airlines flight attendant, fears losing her job. In the past several weeks, he has applied for about 35 jobs, all over the country.
He's also considering the military. "Unfortunately, they always need people," he said. "And the benefits are so good."
Mere months ago, the graduates of the Class of 2020 seemed all but assured of success. The economy was booming. The stock market had closed the year strong. The unemployment rate, on the decline for years, had dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent in February. Jobs outnumbered applicants, and fears of a recession had faded.
Then came the pandemic, shattering the economy. Last month, more than 20.5 million jobs vanished as the unemployment rate soared to 14.7 percent -- the worst since the Great Depression. The high hopes of graduates crashed as corporations slashed budgets and rescinded offers of jobs and internships.
For working-class students who defied the odds to get a college education, it's hard to be optimistic about the future. There's a sense of an unending crisis, with loans due and family members laid off.
These graduates will be competing not just with experienced workers but with those in another Class of 2020 — high school graduates who aren't college-bound or have put their dreams on hold to join the job hunt, in some cases to help newly unemployed parents .
Others are opting for a 2-year junior college instead of a 4-year program or taking a gap year or have decided it's not worth paying tuition for schooling that may be conducted only online.
In California's agricultural Central Valley, the county of Merced has six high schools with about 2,500 graduating seniors, many from low-income or immigrant families. Typically, about 40 percent head to college and the rest go straight to jobs in mechanics, construction, agriculture and hospitality -- industries that, for now, are wiped out or stagnant.
"The future looks very, very grim," Merced's assistant superintendent Constantino Aguilar said. "Where do these students go? A lot of doors have been closed. We're trying to plan for our students' futures and there is nothing out there for them."
Whether the Class of 2020 will face long-term setbacks depends on the severity of the recession and the speed of economic recovery, he said. The longer it lasts, the worse the damage.
As he struggles to find work, Tyler Lyson is considering leaving Berkeley to move back home to Post Falls, Idaho, where it's cheaper, even though it would feel like giving up on his dreams.
As a teen, he watched his family lose everything in the recession. His father's construction business collapsed and the family had to leave their foreclosed house so quickly that they dumped just about everything they owned into a pit and set it on fire.
"I watched it all go up in smoke -- everything we owned," Lyson said. "Ever since then, I knew I needed to go to college and have something to fall back on."
