Why attend college? When I attended college, many people believed college was beneficial for each individual’s personal development. Studying the classics, joining social clubs, participating in athletics or club sports, and receiving a well-rounded education would prepare you for your personal and professional lives. However, the global economy, the internet, and other technologies have profoundly changed education, the workforce, and society. For example, today companies have to produce new products or updated versions of current products and bring them to market in less time. This has changed how employers view new hires. Many companies expect recent graduates to hit the ground running and contribute quickly to the bottom line. Training programs, apprenticeships, and rotational work programs are being phased out in favor of hiring college graduates with work experience prior to their graduation from either undergraduate or graduate schools. That is why your understanding of what a college can offer in support of your career development is important and can influence your college selection.
Often students have said, “I’m not sure what to major in, but I will figure it out when I get there.” That was easy to say when college tuition was just $850 a semester back in 1990. However, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal mentioned that college tuition has risen 400 percent over the past 30 years. The option to explore or ponder your future just became very expensive. Therefore, you may need to make a more concrete decision earlier than anticipated about the possible majors or career path you are interested in. For some students who look to specialize in academic programs, such as engineering, nursing, or accounting, they may even have to decide in high school. However, the pressure to decide your future can be lessened if you add career development options to your list of criteria for picking a college. Let me explain.
What careers align with which majors? What am I good at? What excites me educationally? What type of industry or company would I like to be employed in? These are great questions, but hard to answer without real-life experiences. How do you obtain work experience? You do so by attending a college with a strong career development plan that works actively to help you gain experience in internships, cooperative education, or research. The two-fold benefit to participating in co-curricular activities is to answer the questions listed above with firsthand experience and second, to bolster your résumé by making you more attractive to employers or graduate school admissions departments. Working will provide the confidence that your decision is the right one and indicate to employers that you are serious about your career and not looking to “figure things out” at their expense.
Future blogs will develop this idea further and provide greater insights and examples of colleges offering a good career development plan for students. This blog is meant to plant the seed and get you thinking about how career development is essential to your future goals; therefore, you should strongly add it to your list of criteria for picking the right college. Stay tuned.
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