Connecting career and college: IHE article

[polly_mer]

Mintz (the history professor who wrote about nursing education) is back with an article about career services: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/better-connecting-college-and-career

This article accords with what career services folks tend to say, but it misses some key background on why career service offices aren't all that helpful to many students.

Missed key points:

* Students who start from low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to be unable to participate in many internships and experiential learning offerings.  Someone who is already working multiple part-time jobs is going to have more trouble fitting in several hours per week of more activities, especially with any additional commutes.

* The quality of the offerings for internships and experiential learning tends to vary greatly institution to institution.  Lower resourced places tend to have much lower quality offerings in these areas or may have a substantial enough commute to the large city site that offerings are only really available to people who can relocate for a whole term or summer.  That is problematic for reason 1.

* Identifying personal skills is a good start.  However, actually having skills that are rare enough for employers to advertise specifically for those skills and to pay a premium for those skills is how the lower SES origin students get a middle-class job.  As I told the director of career services at Super Dinky, the students don't need another workshop on resume writing; the students need more good entries to put on their resumes.

Thiis article again starts from a reasonable premise, but then veers off course by proposing solutions to the wrong parts of the problem. 

The audience to be persuaded is unclear because the programs that prepare students for a particular profession or career family are already doing much better than the proposed solutions because they can focus.

The generic advice here would only be relevant to a more general liberal arts education.  However, the author seems to be against starting from the nuts and bolts of a personalized aptitude/interests investigation that would inform a college path that is a purposeful exploration of possible career opportunities.  Ideally, one would have a discussion with an advisor who knows how to pick among the various specific activities with regular follow-ups to ensure that current information was used to make the next decision.

One class about the theory of work is much less useful than personalized regular interactions helping to discuss choices that the student may not know exists.

Grade: C. A good middle school student with access to the internet could have written this article in a few days.

[marshwiggle]

* Identifying personal skills is a good start.  However, actually having skills that are rare enough for employers to advertise specifically for those skills and to pay a premium for those skills is how the lower SES origin students get a middle-class job. As I told the director of career services at Super Dinky, the students don't need another workshop on resume writing; the students need more good entries to put on their resumes.

From  the article:

There are a host of ways that higher educational institutions could help students develop skills that would enhance their employability. Certificate programs, briefer than a minor, and often incorporating an internship or a project, can give students a basic credential in such areas as research methods or sustainability.

It's cleary not obvious to Mintz that a credential that requires a commitment "briefer than a minor" is going to have less employment value than a minor as well.

How many people got great jobs because of their minor? (There wil be a few, but they're going to be pretty thin on the ground.)

[Wahoo Redux]

Eh.  Non-controversial.  Can't hurt but not ground-breaking.  Fine, but who has money to set up a prelaw or premed center?  We cut back on janitorial before COVID. 

Part of the problem with these approaches is that we as a culture expect education to solve or eliminate all the roadblocks to a good life that students face. 

[marshwiggle]

Eh.  Non-controversial.  Can't hurt but not ground-breaking.  Fine, but who has money to set up a prelaw or premed center?  We cut back on janitorial before COVID. 

Part of the problem with these approaches is that we as a culture expect education to solve or eliminate all the roadblocks to a good life that students face.

But higher ed. is at least complicit in this, with endless statements pointing out the higher salaries, lower unemployment rate, etc. of graduates. We're certainly trying to sell education as something close to a golden ticket.

[spork]

Not mentioned in point #4: curricular design often deliberately prevents employment-oriented experiential and applied learning. At non-urban four-year institutions, an off-campus internship during normal business hours is close to impossible with five courses, 3-credits per course, meeting twice or thrice weekly -- especially for low SES students, who are expected to pay tuition for the credits associated with the internship and the internship does not fulfill a requirement.

Not mentioned in point #5: many institutions regard industry certifications as a threat to their "college experience" business models and refuse to integrate them into undergraduate education. Same for many faculty employed by those institutions, who base their professional identities and job security on curricular requirements that force students into their courses.

[polly_mer]

Eh.  Non-controversial.  Can't hurt but not ground-breaking.  Fine, but who has money to set up a prelaw or premed center?  We cut back on janitorial before COVID. 

Part of the problem with these approaches is that we as a culture expect education to solve or eliminate all the roadblocks to a good life that students face.

But higher ed. is at least complicit in this, with endless statements pointing out the higher salaries, lower unemployment rate, etc. of graduates. We're certainly trying to sell education as something close to a golden ticket.

I'll say it again: people who go to college to get a job are not well served by the faculty mindset that college is about something else.

The expectation by many collegegoers is exactly that college will help reduce, if not flat out eliminate, the barriers to a good life for students who follow the rules and guidance.  That's why people choose majors like nursing and engineering where the connections between coursework and the career are clear.

Saying that students are on their own to translate a liberal arts education to a good life is exactly why I can't even find statistics on the discrepancies in outcomes between different SES groups.  The low SES students can't afford to be wrong or do a lot of exploration.  The students from a good enough SES group can be confident that their network will turn up a middle-class job after graduation.

I do have memory of a steady stream of articles ever since I became an adult in various media outlets of people who have negative feelings regarding going to college (or even grad school) and not getting the life they expected for all their investment.  In the past ten years, this has been augmented with substantial student debt.

Here are some recent articles debating whether college is worth the money, some even before covid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/style/harvard-students-coronavirus.html

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2020/05/06/dont_ask_is_college_worth_it_ask_which_college_degrees_are_worth_it_instead_110414.html

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a32969807/is-college-worth-it/

[Wahoo Redux]

I'll say it again: people who go to college to get a job are not well served by the faculty mindset that college is about something else.

Hmm. Been down this river before. 

You can keep hammering but I don't think you're going to convince anybody of this, particularly given the known income disparities between H.S. and college grads & the fact that most high level corporate jobs, professional jobs, and graduate schools require college. 

Yes, we know why students go to college----most of us are surrounded by them.  The argument, on which I agree, is that college is valuable to job and lifestyle attainment precisely because we do not focus exclusively on job-training.

And Polly, while I'm all for college being a ramp up (I teach at an open-enrollment urban school in a long-time financially decimated region), low-SES students are not the only people college serves.

[marshwiggle]

I'll say it again: people who go to college to get a job are not well served by the faculty mindset that college is about something else.

Hmm. Been down this river before. 

You can keep hammering but I don't think you're going to convince anybody of this, particularly given the known income disparities between H.S. and college grads & the fact that most high level corporate jobs, professional jobs, and graduate schools require college. 

Yes, we know why students go to college----most of us are surrounded by them.  The argument, on which I agree, is that college is valuable to job and lifestyle attainment precisely because we do not focus exclusively on job-training.

So how would you respond to this:

Part of the problem with these approaches is that we as a culture expect education to solve or eliminate all the roadblocks to a good life that students face.

In other words, what should students expect to need to do after getting a degree in order to get a decent job, (i.e. a job which enables a "good life")?

[Wahoo Redux]

Your journey begins with "American Pie Presents Beta House,"  Marshy. 

Get back to me after you've watched it and we can talk.

[marshwiggle]

Your journey begins with "American Pie Presents Beta House,"  Marshy. 

Get back to me after you've watched it and we can talk.

Since you used two sentences to say that, do you have a two sentence synopsis of your answer?
Among other things, frat movies are annoying.

[Wahoo Redux]

Your journey begins with "American Pie Presents Beta House,"  Marshy. 

Get back to me after you've watched it and we can talk.

Since you used two sentences to say that, do you have a two sentence synopsis of your answer?
Among other things, frat movies are annoying.

Oh Marshy.

Derp...derp...