B-School in a Recession, With Family
Students with partners and young children are finding that the economic downturn adds renewed stress to a complicated life transition 
MBA candidate Smith, left, worries surrounding the couple’s job prospects Anne States
By Alison Damast
Libby Smith toured Emory University’s Goizueta Business School when she was pregnant and arrived on the Atlanta campus this fall with her six-month-old infant., Jackson, in haul. In between changing diapers and playing with her son, she juggled schoolwork, an internship search, and a long-distance relationship with her husband, Rob, an army operations officer stationed two hours away at Fort Benning. Says Smith: “It’sitting been harder than I thought it would be.”
Now a recent worry is surfacing. With her husband’s stint in the body of soldiers settled to end in six months, the two, who recently purchased a home in the Atlanta area, pretty soon won’t have a paycheck to come in unless Rob finds a job fast—no imply feat in a crumbling economy. With mortgage payments to meet and looming student loans, Smith has taken to “living a little cheaper,” clipping coupons and buying supermarket-brand article towels instead of Brawny. Though she has a summer internship at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Smith, 29, is wary of the future. “It’s stressful to think that nothing is guaranteed anymore,” she says.
Juggling school and family life has never been easy, however the economic downturn is adding a new wrinkle. In recent years, as B-schools have gotten better at helping families make the shifting to academic life, greater quantity students with partners and young children have headed to campus. To accommodate the needs of these students and perhaps entice them away from rivals, B-schools have created organizations for spouses and partners, launched child playgroups, and offered job and relocation furtherance. Some schools let spouses audit classes, attract them to school functions, and make an attempt eager counseling services and support groups—perks that will become more essential in lean economic times, particularly for partners of newly admitted students. “The networking and work at jobs assistance has been ramped up because people are a little more nervous,” says Wendy Metter, associate director of student affairs at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “They wish for help finding a job now, as opposed to June.”
As the economy unravels, that’s not all they’ll distress help with. Long-distance relationships may become more often met with as partners stay behind to do honor to jobs rather than risk losing the family’s sole source of income. And relationships could grow more strained as students struggle to find jobs in an increasingly grim market. Nearly 56% of B-schools reported a significant small quantity in recruiting activity on campus this winter, according to a survey by the MBA Career Services Council, an association of business school career officers.
Schools are preparing for the worst. At Dartmouth’session Tuck School of Business, where 40% of students have partners or young families, the therapist who runs the partner-support group will keep a closer eyelet on students this spring. And at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, which has 65 married students mixed this year’session class of 333, the student property office is posting information about signs of depression and how to help friends struggling by the agency of it.
For students by in one’session teens families, the difficulty have power to be intense. Richard Core, 27, a second-year student at Darden, is in the midst of a wide-ranging job search that in the same state far has produced no offers. As he nears graduation, his search has taken on an “added layer of stress” because he feels responsible not only for himself but for his three-month-old son, Trip, and wife, Mandy, on motherhood leave from her finance job. The couple has contingency plans to move in with Richard’s parents in New Jersey if the search drags in succession. “There’s a get the bits on more urgency to finding a do job-work now,” says Core, who worked at Merrill Lynch (MER) judgment business govern. “I’m at the staging of life where making sure I have things like soundness assurance is more of great weight than I ever realized.”
Even students who region jobs perceive insecure. Monte Searle, 39, at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, moved 1,500 miles with his helpmate and three children, ages 10, 12, and 14, from their home near Salt Lake City to Bloomington. Searle’s decision to doings to B-school has strained family finances. His wife, Tanya, took on a 30-hour-a-week job as a teacher’s aide to make ends meet. The couple has cut costly organized sports activities for the children, and their daughter pays in favor of half of her piano lessons through babysitting money. Books come from the library, not Barnes & Noble. “We’ve cut back as much as we can on the outside of the kids delicate sentiment like they’re really sacrificing a great quantity,” Tanya says.
The line of ancestors was relieved when Monte got a job dare in the corporate finance department at Dow Chemical (DOW), but they have loitering concerns, from the stability of the do job-work market to whether they’ll be able to get a pledge. “I’ve seen worry and anxiety put in continuance my children’sitting faces, and I’m definitely still worried to visit how this plays out,” Searle says. “It’sitting something that’session always in the back of my mind.”
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