It's not totally a laughing matter, but we can't really help ourselves sometimes. This week it's been the lawsuit filed by a 27-year-old unemployed graduate of Monroe College. Her claim? She paid the college $70,000 in tuition and she says she hasn't received the job leads that she feels she was promised by the school.

Knowing how tight the job market is, it's surprising this hasn't happened before. For many students and alumni, the frustration of not finding a good job in a bad economy has them worked up. Maybe it's all about blaming someone, or in this case, maybe it's about recovering some money from the school to keep the job-seeker afloat for a while.

Couple of questions here.

First question -- schools, are you in the business of making claims that you will find jobs for grads, or are you in the business of educating them -- not only in academics, but also in the "science" of careers? Simply having a career center on campus is not the same as getting the students (and alumni!) involved on a REQUIRED basis.

Second, for grads, are you still assuming that old (from 2 years ago) myth that a degree is a guaranteed ticket to a job? Wouldn't the reality be something different -- more like, it took me years of work to learn the basic skills to prepare me for my chosen career field. Why should the process of finding a career be more intuitive?

So I wish the suing graduate all the luck in the world finding a career, but not necessarily in pursuing a lawsuit. I do hope that they can take advantage of all the career resources available -- such as those Experience.com provides, as well as those provided by their schools.

And maybe we've all learned a lesson or two from this. What do you think?

Photo by Diego Cupolo