College graduation brings both the satisfaction of academic achievement and the expectation of a well-paying job. But for 6000 graduates at San Jose State this year, there’s uncertainty as they enter one of the worst job markets in decades. Ryan Stewart has a freshly-minted(新兴的)degree in religious studies, but no job prospects.

“You look at everybody’s parents and neighbors, and they’re getting laid off and don’t have jobs,” said Stewart. “Then you look at the young people just coming into the workforce… it’s just scary.”

When the class of 2003 entered college, the future never looked brighter. But in the four years they’ve been here, the world outside has changed dramatically.

“Those were the exciting times, lots of dot-com opportunities, exploding offers, students getting top dollar with lots of benefits,” said Cheryl Allmen- Vinnidge of the San Jose State Career Center. “Times have changed. It’s a new market.”

Cheryl Allmen- Vinnidge ought to know. She runs the San Jose State Career Center, sort of a crossroad between college and the real world. Allmen-Vinnidge says students who do find jobs after college have done their homework.

“The typical graduate who does have a job offer started working on it two years ago. They’ve postured(定位) themselves well during the summer. They’ve had several internships(实习),” she said. And they’ve majored in one of the few fields that are still hot, like chemical engineering, accounting, or nursing, where average starting salaries have actually increased over last year. Other popular fields (like information systems management, computer science, and political science) have seen big declines in starting salaries.

Ryan Stewart (he had hoped to become a teacher) may just end up going back to school. “I’d like to teach college some day and that requires more schooling, which would be great in a bad economy,” he said.

To some students, a degree may not be a ticket to instant wealth. For now, they can only hope its value will increase over time.

NEWS BRIEF

●President Donald Trump enters the second week of his presidency facing a growing political backslash-with protesters in the streets, lawsuits mounting and his own party fracturing over his executive order banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations.

●US Forest Service officials are reminding people to stay off Forest Service roads that are closed.The fine for disobeying the rule of road closures is a maximum of $5,000 fine and/or six months in prison.Those who enter the area and cause road damage may also be required to pay for repairs.

●In a second study presented at the meeting,scientists from the UK and Denmark showed that even a few days of high temperatures can severely reduce production of crops such as wheat,soybeans,rice and groundnuts,if it occurs when the plants are flowering.

●A bomb exploded in Thailand's mainly Muslin south on Sunday,killing two police men and wounding three others,a day after Thailand's queen condemned those behind a 15-month wave of violence.

●Mechanicsburg 3, West York 1: Ken Stamper and Rusty Bowman had seven kills each, and Ryan Warfield had six to lead the Wildcats past the Bulldogs,25-11,25-15,15-25,25-23, in a non-league match.

The food delivery industry now is a hotly competitive business, attracting the world's biggest moneybags such as Amazon, Alibaba and Soft-Bank. Balancing the needs of diners, cooks and couriers（快递员）is complicated. Most new companies lose money. Yet they have received more than $30bn from venture capitalists （投资家）in the past five years. And they are likely to get more.

The food-delivery business can be divided into two camps: mostly profitable veterans（老牌公司）and loss-making newcomers. The veterans, founded at the start of the century, are led by publicly traded Grubhub in America, and Just Eat and Takeaway in Europe. They account for the largest share of the market, offering customers online access to restaurants. Their relatively simple business model, in which they take a cut of the bill from the restaurants, has enabled Grubhub and Just Eat to turn a profit for years. Takeaway makes money in its home market of the Netherlands.

The newbies, born more recently, have turned a once-tidy business into a food fight. For most of them, delivery is their core business, so they share their cut of the bill with riders as well as restaurants. This substantially broadens the market to restaurants but profit suffers.

The only mouthwatering aspect of the delivery business is its potential size. According to Bernstein, a brokerage（经济公司），almost a third of the global restaurant industry is made up of home delivery, takeaway and drive-throughs, which could be worth $l tm by 2023. In 2019 delivery amounted to $161bn, leaving plenty of room for online firms to expand.

Yet it is by no means clear if anyone can make money by delivering meals. In fact, the economics may be even worse. Delivery businesses have ways to cut their losses. One is to diversify further, by delivering groceries, flowers, booze, and even people, as well as meals. Another is to provide cheaper meals by centrally supplying ingredients to restaurants. In the dog — eat — dog world of food delivery, it will still be hard.