Recently a friend of mine had a pretty heated debate with a Penn State employee in Smeal’s office of career and corporate services on the topic of expiring or exploding job offers. For context this is an issue that arises when a potential employer extends a job offer whether for internship or for full time work to a student but gives a short or unreasonable amount of time to accept the offer. This is something that affects students in all colleges at the university, but is particularly problematic in Smeal where so much focus is placed on internship and full time job recruiting. When a company gives a student an expiring offer their mentality is that this will pressure the student to accept the offer. Logistically it makes sense on the part of the company to do so. However for a student, this prevents them from adequately assessing what their job options are and pushes them to take the first good offer they receive out of fear of losing the offer. When a student is able to hold onto an offer they are able to pursue potentially strong offers, negotiate for stronger salaries, and pursue opportunities that they might not have been able to receive without proper leverage. For example, with an appropriate amount of time, a student with a strong offer can go to another company that has not historically recruited at Penn State and potentially use their existing offer as leverage in starting an interview process with the better company.

Protecting students from expiring deadlines is common practice at other schools. Dartmouth for example does not allow offers to expire until October and arguably at the top of the business world (albeit at the graduate level), Harvard Business School does not allow offers to expire at all in the fall semester. Currently one of Smeal’s goals in the strategic plan is to be a “top five public business school”. This just simply is not possible with students not being protected from expiring offers. This lack of protection from the school severely limits the types of opportunities students are able to pursue and limits the number of companies Smeal and Penn State students are able to place at. With better protection of students Penn State could begin to attract more and more prestigious firms that historically only recruit from ivy league or near ivy league schools. Though a change like this would not suddenly turn us into Harvard over night, it would greatly change the way students are able to pursue job opportunities and would soon after change the profile of our school and the types of companies we are connected with. Consistently Smeal’s administration pushes back against students asking for protection regarding these expiring offers, and although students can individually ask the potential employer for an extension, that comes with no guarantees. By not providing protection to its students, Smeal is preventing itself from achieving its goal of being a “top 5 public business school”.