Increase Funds for Career Services

At Harvard, students feel the palpable pressure to succeed in the Real World. Whether students are still pondering potential careers or, more specifically, searching for a position for the summer or beyond, the Office of Career Services (OCS) is a valuable resource for information and advice.

Yet as students scramble for jobs, OCS seems strained under the pressure and is currently unable to meet student needs. Since intersession, hordes of desperate undergraduates have been descending upon OCS, forced to engage in a bizarre Darwinian struggle for informational supremacy. Students must fight for their chance to peer inside the mystical OCS binders which contain precious contact names and job listings. Even Mary Fan Kain, OCS summer jobs counselor, has described the situation as "hectic."

At this moment, the employment sages for the most popular careers--including the sole business counselor--are booked until the second week of March. Also, there is also only one counselor to advise students on jobs in media and the arts and one counselor for government jobs.

While employees of OCS are generally friendly and helpful, frequently mentioning the possibility of walk-in office hours, present resources are simply unsatisfactory.

Harvard should make funds available to hire additional personnel for OCS--at least during the spring term. When there is only one counselor for each of the most popular professions, one more counselor would constitute a significant improvement.

We would like to think that University administrators understand the laws of supply and demand. If not, perhaps students at OCS can teach them.