Proof the American Dream is still alive

Man, it feels good to be back in America.

A week ago I headed to Bologna, Italy, to begin a year-long study abroad program through IU at the University of Bologna.

The program is one of the best Italian language programs in the country. For students who are accepted, fluency in the language is all but guaranteed upon returning to the States.

For me, however, the year turned into a week after health problems forced me back home.

Usually a week in another  country is not enough to learn what life is like for its citizens, but students in the IU program get a crash course in Italy and its institutions from the moment they arrive on the ground.

In the program’s first days, students are expected to buy a cell phone, find an apartment, learn the city’s transportation system and prepare themselves for classes at the University of Bologna.

I learned a lot from this experience.

I learned that, in Italy, if you want to work out at a gym, you must first get a doctor’s approval. I learned that at some restaurants, you have to pay to use silverware. I learned that, as college students, we are lucky we live in America.

If you check online today, you will see that Italy’s unemployment rate is about 8.5 percent. Comparatively, that is better than America’s.

But that is why in economics, it is always important to dig beneath the surface. While Italy’s statistics may say one thing, the sentiment on the ground says another.

Talking with Italians who are fresh out of college, you will quickly learn that the prospects for work are much worse there than they are here in the United States.It is a quality vs. quantity thing.

Sure, there are jobs in Italy, but jobs are not the same as careers. Careers are hard to come by.

Graduates with engineering degrees find jobs as servicemen making house calls to fix kitchen appliances. Scientists spend most of their working lives in school because there is no market for them in Europe, where there is little scientific innovation.

Most students settle for a job in a local store and do that for the rest of their lives. Here, if you go to a record shop, a fast food restaurant or a retail store, you will most likely find a college or high school kid working behind the counter.

In Italy, you are most likely to find a middle-aged man.

If they are not working a menial job behind a counter, recent college graduates are either contemplating going to school to get another useless degree or sitting around their apartments, relying on welfare.

In Italy, the welfare is stronger and much more enabling than it is here in the United States.

If you worked at one point and were laid off, or for whatever reason are no longer employed, it is possible to get a good portion of your previous salary from the state for years.

I met one man who had spent the last four months in Bologna, trying to find a job. He had a degree in biology and some engineering experience, and he knew four languages. In the United States, he would be an asset. In Italy, he is a bartender and airport worker.

As a matter of fact, just before I left for my trip, I saw an NBC Nightly News Report about how Boeing Company, an aviation leader and the world’s second-largest military contractor,  has thousands of jobs available in South Carolina but difficulty finding enough qualified applicants.

Boeing cannot find enough people with adequate math and engineering skills.While the situation here in the United States may have many of us seniors and recent graduates worried, be glad you are not a college student overseas.

— nperrino@indiana.edu