SALT LAKE CITY — College provides a higher education, and it can allow you to specialize in a certain profession.
College students may not be the first to come to mind when people bring up the impacts of federal layoffs.
At the University of Utah, students hope they’re not forgotten because they’re worried about their internships, research, and future jobs.
Physics and Astronomy PHD candidate Joshua Bartkoske works as a research associate and hopes that work stays afloat.
“Because of the layoffs that happened at NSF recently, the program officer who is connected to our program got laid off, so it’s just uncertainty,” Bartkoske said. “It’s this unknown now of are we going to have someone who is going to be in our corner to say like hey this research is important and valuable.”
He said it’s important to give graduate and undergraduate students a voice because they don’t always have the space to.
Many students on campus told us they are “worried and concerned.” They voiced their concerns about the lack of federal grants for their research, which in turn they said will affect the job opportunities available.
“It’s kind of like a domino effect,” Jacob Neely, a Biology Major at the University of Utah said. “We don’t graduate for three more years, but one thing leads to another when it comes to finding jobs that lead up to graduation.”
When graduation rolls around for these students they’re trying to keep an open mind when looking for their next job.
"By the time I graduate, hopefully in a year if I will have place for me in the subfield that I’m in in astronomy,” Bartkoske said. “It might be that I need to find a completely different career path that I haven’t necessarily prepared for.”
