Students expect faculty to be career mentors: IHE article

[marshwiggle]

I'm pretty sure that's the situation that is frustrating students who bought into the idea that a liberal arts education is a flexible preparation for the post-college experience.  Even on these fora in the past week, the insistence has been "You can do a lot with this degree", with the unspoken part being "if you already have a good social network, spend your summers according to how that network expects, and get a little lucky on the timing of the regional/national economy".

Without getting into these discussions again, I'll just point out that this is a circular argument that doesn't really make much sense. Liberal arts degrees do give students skills that can prepare them for all kinds of careers. Professional degrees prepare students for particular careers. That's great for people who are looking to go into a specific career track with a clear pathway. But, most people don't have the desire or skills to do most of these things.

English majors aren't potential engineers who made bad choices. They are usually people whose skills don't translate very well to professional undergrad degrees. Most jobs actually don't have a specific pathway connected to particular fields of studies and/or licensure. As Poly points out, business degrees actually aren't really particularly useful as professional degrees anyway, so....what exactly is the point here?

It's a bit like buying a product where it says on the box "Some assembly required". If you open the box, and there are no instructions, then you're likely to be frustrated, even if you're pretty confident that no parts have been left out of the box. If you complained to the vendor about the lack of instructions, would you be satisfied if they said "We gave you everything you need; you have to figure the rest out"? Technically, unless the box claimed to contain instructions, there's no false advertising, but the implication of "some assembly required" is that what is expected is reasonably within the capability of the purchaser.

[Caracal]

I'm pretty sure that's the situation that is frustrating students who bought into the idea that a liberal arts education is a flexible preparation for the post-college experience.  Even on these fora in the past week, the insistence has been "You can do a lot with this degree", with the unspoken part being "if you already have a good social network, spend your summers according to how that network expects, and get a little lucky on the timing of the regional/national economy".

Without getting into these discussions again, I'll just point out that this is a circular argument that doesn't really make much sense. Liberal arts degrees do give students skills that can prepare them for all kinds of careers. Professional degrees prepare students for particular careers. That's great for people who are looking to go into a specific career track with a clear pathway. But, most people don't have the desire or skills to do most of these things.

English majors aren't potential engineers who made bad choices. They are usually people whose skills don't translate very well to professional undergrad degrees. Most jobs actually don't have a specific pathway connected to particular fields of studies and/or licensure. As Poly points out, business degrees actually aren't really particularly useful as professional degrees anyway, so....what exactly is the point here?

It's a bit like buying a product where it says on the box "Some assembly required". If you open the box, and there are no instructions, then you're likely to be frustrated, even if you're pretty confident that no parts have been left out of the box. If you complained to the vendor about the lack of instructions, would you be satisfied if they said "We gave you everything you need; you have to figure the rest out"? Technically, unless the box claimed to contain instructions, there's no false advertising, but the implication of "some assembly required" is that what is expected is reasonably within the capability of the purchaser.

College isn't a box you buy.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

... Liberal arts degrees do give students skills that can prepare them for all kinds of careers. Professional degrees prepare students for particular careers...

Is there some kind of an intrinsic limitation in, say, civil engineering degree preventing its holders from pursuing "all kinds of careers"?

[marshwiggle]

... Liberal arts degrees do give students skills that can prepare them for all kinds of careers. Professional degrees prepare students for particular careers...

Is there some kind of an intrinsic limitation in, say, civil engineering degree preventing its holders from pursuing "all kinds of careers"?

Sure. They clearly don't get all those "soft skills" like communication, critical thinking, and so on that ONLY come from liberal arts (i.e. humanities) degrees.

Because engineers never need to think critically or communicate. Nor do any people in any professional programs.....

[kaysixteen]

These kids do have a right to expect some career assistance from their schools.   Probably, except in specific professional fields, this assistance could likely best be provided by specialized career advising depts on campus, but even liberal arts professors should be willing to say and offer all they can, all they know.    Kids/ their parents are paying much more than most of us did back in the day, even adjusted for inflation, for their expensive educations.  They have certain legit expectations as to post-college employability.

I am not even sure, however, that most professional fields, even at the graduate school level, really give such assistance.   Certainly I got little if any such assistance in either of the grad depts I got degrees in (PhD, MLS) at my public R1 20 years ago.   What the library school, essentially a diploma mill, did was especially laughable.  The classics dept was just beginning to deal wit the reality that the Bowen Report-style expectations for new employment for professors was bunk.   Maybe they do better today, but I ain't gonna bet my next lofty retail paycheck on it.

[apl68]

What the library school, essentially a diploma mill, did was especially laughable.

I wouldn't go so far as to call library schools "diploma mills" (Although I've known of some diploma mills that offered spurious MLS degrees).  But there has been an overproduction of MLS degrees in recent years.  Part of the problem is that there's still a need for more degree-holding librarians in rural areas, but most of the degree holders, as in so many other professions, feel that the rural areas are beneath them and hang around the cities where there's a glut of degrees. 

My standard advice to aspiring librarians has been to work at a library first, and then work on the MLS.  In other words, get established on the ground floor before spending a lot of time and money on a set of keys for the elevator.

[mythbuster]

I teach a required sophomore level course for our majors which includes building a resume for a science based job, finding internships and on campus research opportunities, and the basics of professional communication. We do this during sophomore year so that the students have the light-bulb moment that they need experiences other than just their coursework to be competitive for jobs in the field of biology.

Even having done this, we get lots of comments from seniors that they would have liked to participate in on campus research etc but did not know how. So even when we do our best to teach them the norms, not all will get the message.

I mentor students on how to find jobs all the time. I've even won campus wide awards for my repeated successes mentoring students. But I will say that other than the one nice plaque, our administration does not value this work by faculty.  They should, but they really don't. It's not even on their radar.

[apl68]

English majors aren't potential engineers who made bad choices. They are usually people whose skills don't translate very well to professional undergrad degrees. Most jobs actually don't have a specific pathway connected to particular fields of studies and/or licensure.

Thank you for making that point.  There does seem to be a sense among some that liberal arts majors are either people who were too lazy or unintelligent to get a proper STEM degree, or were diligent and intelligent enough to do so and thus SHOULD have done so, and pursued any liberal arts interests on the side. 

The nation's bright students can't ALL be doctors, nurses, and engineers.  We need other kinds of majors.  The poorly prepared or lazy and immature students aren't likely to do well in any college degree program.  But there are many students who are a good fit for liberal arts programs, would thrive in them, and will do okay in the world of work after college.  But the conventional wisdom that majoring in the liberal arts makes one unemployable and useless and will ruin your whole life is scaring many of them away from majors for which they would be a good fit.

[marshwiggle]

The nation's bright students can't ALL be doctors, nurses, and engineers.  We need other kinds of majors.  The poorly prepared or lazy and immature students aren't likely to do well in any college degree program.  But there are many students who are a good fit for liberal arts programs, would thrive in them, and will do okay in the world of work after college.  But the conventional wisdom that majoring in the liberal arts makes one unemployable and useless and will ruin your whole life is scaring many of them away from majors for which they would be a good fit.

I want to make the point I've made repeatedly; the students who are bright and motivated and want to pursue humanities and so on should do so, and will likely do fine after graduation. My beef is with trying to keep enrollment up in those disciplines by recruiting the not-well-prepared and rudderless students (because "NO MATH!!!"), rather than telling them to go get a job for a few years until they figure out if they really WANT to do more school, and if so, what do they WANT to study?

Why do I care? Because institutions and "the system" , (not programs or disciplines), get blamed for the poor outcomes even though the patterns of where those bad outcomes originate are pretty clear.

And even many of those doing that kind of recruiting will then say the problem is the government, or employers not wanting to train employees, rather than admitting any responsibility.

[Caracal]

The nation's bright students can't ALL be doctors, nurses, and engineers.  We need other kinds of majors.  The poorly prepared or lazy and immature students aren't likely to do well in any college degree program.  But there are many students who are a good fit for liberal arts programs, would thrive in them, and will do okay in the world of work after college.  But the conventional wisdom that majoring in the liberal arts makes one unemployable and useless and will ruin your whole life is scaring many of them away from majors for which they would be a good fit.

I want to make the point I've made repeatedly; the students who are bright and motivated and want to pursue humanities and so on should do so, and will likely do fine after graduation. My beef is with trying to keep enrollment up in those disciplines by recruiting the not-well-prepared and rudderless students (because "NO MATH!!!"), rather than telling them to go get a job for a few years until they figure out if they really WANT to do more school, and if so, what do they WANT to study?

Why do I care? Because institutions and "the system" , (not programs or disciplines), get blamed for the poor outcomes even though the patterns of where those bad outcomes originate are pretty clear.

And even many of those doing that kind of recruiting will then say the problem is the government, or employers not wanting to train employees, rather than admitting any responsibility.

This is such a red herring. Recruitment efforts in humanities disciplines are just about letting students who show some promise in a discipline know that majoring in it is an option. I see far more problems with students feeling like they need to be an engineering, pre-med or computer science major because it will lead to a job even though they don't really have the skills or vocation to succeed in those disciplines.

[marshwiggle]

The nation's bright students can't ALL be doctors, nurses, and engineers.  We need other kinds of majors.  The poorly prepared or lazy and immature students aren't likely to do well in any college degree program.  But there are many students who are a good fit for liberal arts programs, would thrive in them, and will do okay in the world of work after college.  But the conventional wisdom that majoring in the liberal arts makes one unemployable and useless and will ruin your whole life is scaring many of them away from majors for which they would be a good fit.

I want to make the point I've made repeatedly; the students who are bright and motivated and want to pursue humanities and so on should do so, and will likely do fine after graduation. My beef is with trying to keep enrollment up in those disciplines by recruiting the not-well-prepared and rudderless students (because "NO MATH!!!"), rather than telling them to go get a job for a few years until they figure out if they really WANT to do more school, and if so, what do they WANT to study?

Why do I care? Because institutions and "the system" , (not programs or disciplines), get blamed for the poor outcomes even though the patterns of where those bad outcomes originate are pretty clear.

And even many of those doing that kind of recruiting will then say the problem is the government, or employers not wanting to train employees, rather than admitting any responsibility.

This is such a red herring. Recruitment efforts in humanities disciplines are just about letting students who show some promise in a discipline know that majoring in it is an option. I see far more problems with students feeling like they need to be an engineering, pre-med or computer science major because it will lead to a job even though they don't really have the skills or vocation to succeed in those disciplines.

I've never seen anyone tell some kid who barely passed math in high school to go into physics, engineering, or medicine. There's no point trying to recruit those students because they won't succeed. (Now if they or their parents push for it, that's another thing. But that's not the institution's fault. And if they don't get in, the insitution has done their job.)

[apl68]

The nation's bright students can't ALL be doctors, nurses, and engineers.  We need other kinds of majors.  The poorly prepared or lazy and immature students aren't likely to do well in any college degree program.  But there are many students who are a good fit for liberal arts programs, would thrive in them, and will do okay in the world of work after college.  But the conventional wisdom that majoring in the liberal arts makes one unemployable and useless and will ruin your whole life is scaring many of them away from majors for which they would be a good fit.

I want to make the point I've made repeatedly; the students who are bright and motivated and want to pursue humanities and so on should do so, and will likely do fine after graduation. My beef is with trying to keep enrollment up in those disciplines by recruiting the not-well-prepared and rudderless students (because "NO MATH!!!"), rather than telling them to go get a job for a few years until they figure out if they really WANT to do more school, and if so, what do they WANT to study?

Why do I care? Because institutions and "the system" , (not programs or disciplines), get blamed for the poor outcomes even though the patterns of where those bad outcomes originate are pretty clear.

And even many of those doing that kind of recruiting will then say the problem is the government, or employers not wanting to train employees, rather than admitting any responsibility.

This is such a red herring. Recruitment efforts in humanities disciplines are just about letting students who show some promise in a discipline know that majoring in it is an option. I see far more problems with students feeling like they need to be an engineering, pre-med or computer science major because it will lead to a job even though they don't really have the skills or vocation to succeed in those disciplines.

From what I've been hearing here and elsewhere, schools that are staking their future on enrolling poorly-prepared students aren't mainly recruiting them into the humanities.  They're mostly trying to pull them into more vocational majors.  Those sorts of schools seem like precisely the sorts of places where humanities majors are being jettisoned.

Now if you're talking about grad programs in certain fields bringing in students who will end up having no prospects, that's another matter.  I think we're basically in agreement there.

[kaysixteen]

All library schools aren't diploma mills, but mine certainly was.   Five years after I graduated, the ALA took its accreditation away, giving it 'provisional accreditation' and a list of things it had to fix in order to get the accreditation back.   At least ten years passed before it got approval to get it back, within the next two years.  I am not sure they ever got it back.  But throughout all that time, they continued to churn out MLSs.  This constitutes at least 'diploma mill', if not outright fraud.

The MLS degree ought to be a prereq to serious professional employment as a librarian, else why bother to get it?   We can discuss whether this is actually the case.

[apl68]

All library schools aren't diploma mills, but mine certainly was.   Five years after I graduated, the ALA took its accreditation away, giving it 'provisional accreditation' and a list of things it had to fix in order to get the accreditation back.   At least ten years passed before it got approval to get it back, within the next two years.  I am not sure they ever got it back.  But throughout all that time, they continued to churn out MLSs.  This constitutes at least 'diploma mill', if not outright fraud.

The MLS degree ought to be a prereq to serious professional employment as a librarian, else why bother to get it?   We can discuss whether this is actually the case.

That's pretty bad, if they've had accreditation problems.  Yeah, a school that's selling non-accredited degrees is conning students with a worthless product.

One reason why I so strongly advise working at a library first and then getting the degree is because I've observed that most successful librarians I know have done so.  Library positions that require a professional degree also invariably require years of experience in library work.  That means it's nearly impossible to build a library career without doing bottom-level paraprofessional work first.  The only exceptions I'm aware of involved big-city library systems that wanted a CEO type to run a big operation--and even they made the new hires go back to school and get the degree, so that they would be able to understand what the people they supervised were actually doing.  Would that more administrators of all kinds had to do that!

I remember being annoyed at having to go to school to get an MLS degree.  I'd been working in a library for years, doing a variety of different types of work.  Why did I need a piece of paper to rise above the glass ceiling?  In the course of earning the degree, though, I came to realize that the professional education really does make a difference. 

That's why our state ties eligibility to collect state aid to libraries to having an MLS librarian as library director.  And makes part of that state aid a subsidy meant to support a professional librarian's salary.  And offers scholarships to public library staff members who are working on their MLS, have already taken two semesters at their own expense to show that they're committed, and will commit to continuing to work in public libraries in our state.  I and a number of other rural librarians in the state owe a great deal to that support.  It's not unusual for a rural library to groom a staff member with the right potential into a home-grown librarian.