It’s the classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario: how do you get employment experience without a job, and how do you get a job without employment experience? “You get it through the Summer Youth Employment Program,” Alicia Modestino, an associate professor of economics in Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, said in welcoming the program participants to the university’s Boston campus on Tuesday. “It helps you get this experience,” said Modestino, also research director for the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. “And it also reduces inequality of opportunity across different groups of youth to make sure that these kinds of employment experiences are open to everybody.” Since 2015, Northeastern’s Community to Community Impact Engine has partnered with the city of Boston to evaluate the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Modestino heads up the research.
On Tuesday, 175 Boston teens and young adults gathered at Northeastern to kick off another year of the program, which will connect roughly 10,000 city students this year with hundreds of local employers, including Northeastern. The university offers program participants internships with various university departments or the opportunity to get paid to take Bridge to Calculus, a course to prepare them for advanced math courses. A summer jobs program is also offered on Northeastern’s campus in Oakland, California.
