<p>Four years can make a big difference in economic and industry cycles. However, it would have been hard for anyone to be that optimistic four years ago (in 2009) due to the economic downturn at the time.</p>
<p>Only a few universities seem to publish post-graduation career surveys of their graduates by major:</p>
<p>Of course, it doesn’t help if the students end up focusing on some field where employment opportunities are not especially numerous compared to student interest, such as biology or video game design.</p>
<p>I do not object to their choice of major. I object to their unrealistic job aspirations. Expecting a design job coming out of school is a waste of everyones time. The transition from school to real world provides a huge opportunity to set a path. Knowing you will need to hustle and what that looks like is very important. Some kids just do not know what it means. </p>
<p>I do not know anyone who thought the bad economy would still be around. Traditionally we would have pulled out by now. I think for $$$s tuition it is in the schools best interest to keep up with the reality of the real world and prepare students. If you are an average student in a tough competitive field, the kid needs to know his future in the field does not look great … “here are three possible directions…” If they choose to soldier on, their choice.</p>
<p>After spending $240,000 parents get miffed so maybe this is a part of educating the parents as well. Make sure the parents appreciate the ROI when Bobby is middle of the back and will need to hustle for a job or consider another major or or or.</p>
<p>Transparency!</p>
<p>The two boys I was talking about are smart kids but stuck. They have/had options but are surprised by the situation they find themselves.</p>
<p>Rose colored glasses …</p>
<p>Maybe economics and current economic realities should be a required course.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine how the economy could have been worse 4 years ago, it was the depth of the recession.</p>
<p>This is the thing, colleges are in the business of getting consumers to pay $240,000 for their services. Can you imagine if they said, hey pay all this money. Your career prospects are not great, we’ve over educated too many people. In reality you will probably be couch surfing, taking an unpaid internship and have a full time job as a restaurant server. Instead they tell you what some of their graduates are doing down the road, not what the probability is right after graduation.</p>
<p>Yes a conflict of interest requiring a complete paradigm shift within a university. </p>
<p>The higher education field is shifting and I think outcomes must be more transparent. The for-profts are being asked to do it. Why not non-profits? They should be held to the same standard at these price points. Are they really non profits … come to think of it?</p>
<p>With the exception of engineering students with decent GPAs and Ivy League-type grads recruited by Wall Street finance and consulting firms, I’m failing to recall any time in past where a typical recent college grad easily cake-walked into a high-paying first job.</p>
<p>First instance profession of architecture requires a professional degree (often a 3-year M.Arch after a BS or BA), years of accumulating internship experience in specific sub-sectors of practice, and passing multiple components of a professional licensing exam, and still results in a relatively low average wage throughout career, despite its educational and license requirements. Many recent architecture grads, whether from a B.Arch or M.Arch program, face quite low wage rates, even minimum wage. Architects may be expected to do unpaid internships if fresh out of school, and most architects often find themselves working long overtime hours without further compensation. Even if these architecture grads come from prestigous “Ivy-caliber” institutions, the job market itself is volatile, not well-paying, and often glutted with job applicants with a wide array of professional experience. (Job market doesn’t necessarily stabilize with experience or age.) Many younger architects also shoulder large student loans, because graduate school can easily cost $100,000 to $150,000 COA due to high tuitions as well as expensive urban locations for those schools.</p>
<p>Frankly I’d think that the “film production” job-market is similarly glutted, and that it requires a fair amount of low paid and often unpaid “internship” work, that “advancement” is a factor of luck, connections, and talent/experience, and that many film major grads eventually seek employment elsewhere simply to become self-supporting. Not everyone has a wealthy parent to support them years after graduation.</p>
<p>In some ways, not having loans to pay back is a disservice in that they have not had to do face the reality of employment. Even if you can afford college, it might be good idea to make sure the students has some skin in the game through a college loan. </p>
<p>Yes, I wanted to be an architect until I took a hard look at the career path. My nephew is switching from architecture to industrial desihpgn for graduate work.</p>
<p>How is a kid not having skin in the game w/r/t the need for employment the fault of the college?</p>
<p>I graduated in the late 70’s into a horrible recession. Nobody thought their “dream job” was waiting for them. Within a couple of years virtually everyone I knew had found a path. Art History majors quickly figured out that they needed to start out in the education department of a museum giving tours to third graders, or in the fundraising department learning to write grants, or in the gift shop learning to deal with vendors of licensed products before anyone wanted to hear about their senior thesis comparing El Greco to Picasso.</p>
<p>My friend the urban planner had to start out in customer service at a transportation authority handling customer complaints before anyone wanted to hear her ideas about building affordable housing near transportation hubs rather than at the edge of a city where people without cars couldn’t get to jobs. And my college roommate- the comparative lit major, Phi Beta Kappa, ended up writing press releases at a PR firm.</p>
<p>This is not news. What is news is expecting the colleges to shoulder the burden that used to be shouldered by mom and dad, i.e. “get a job and stop complaining that it’s someone else’s problem”.</p>
<p>My parents gave me the gift of an education and I am doing the same for my kids. One kid has graduated and is gainfully employed making more than I do. The other will probably have a harder row to hoe, but will be doing what he is good at. (Believe me you don’t want him programming your computers!) I’m an architect, I’ve never made the big bucks, but I enjoy my work. I’ve been laid off twice, both times I was invited back by the firm that hired me as soon as things picked up. Now that I have my own firm I don’t get laid off. I’ve never had no work on my table and for many years it was my choice to work less than full time something that being my own boss allowed me to do. It was/is a great career for someone who wanted to spend significant amounts of time with the kids.</p>
<p>I probably graduated into the same recession Blossom did. Luckily I had a grant to do some research that paid my bills for several months. I spent some time working in an urban design firm’s art department and had a job I loved being head librarian for a professor’s collection at Caltech before finding full time work.</p>
<p>Even the most expensive career counseling does not have high success rates. Many corporations her in NYC pay 10-15K for each employee that has been RIFed to go to a well known career counseling company for 6 months. The workers I know personally are all very good at what they do, highly credentialed and with outstanding resumes. They say that the counseling sessions were valuable to a point but NOT ONE has credited their counselor with substantially helping them get their next position.</p>
This is known as shooting yourself in the foot. Someone who was truly driven to get into a field like film would be open to starting anywhere so they can shine.</p>
<p>What I would expect/want a college career center to do is make opportunity available to students, but I wouldn’t necessary look for guarantees. What I mean by that is, 1) sponsor job fairs, 2) connect with alumni to foster strong alumni network, 3) help students with resumes, interview preps, identify right kind of jobs to apply to, 4) provide facility for students to do phone/video interviews, 5) start career/job seminars as early as freshman year. </p>
<p>When D1 was looking at schools, I asked some of those questions at some very top tier schools. The reaction I received was close to “We don’t know what you are talking about.” We crossed those schools off. </p>
<p>I am contacted by my alma mater to see if I would be interested in taking few interns. Few years ago, when the job market was very bad, Cornell contacted me to see if we would be interested in taking few graduates as interns. We hired few because the career center was very proactive. They did that with many alums/parents on their contact list. Cornell also sponsors many open houses at various companies to introduce their students. I was just at an event at Cornell over the weekend. I met many alumni/parents at the event. They all said they are big supporters of students from the school, and they are often contacted by the school’s career center. This is especially the case for the Hotel school.</p>
<p>I think many alumni would be happy to help out and hire their alma mater’s graduates, but it is most effective if the career center could organize it. I think that’s where they could be most helpful, providing a forum for potential employers to meet their students.</p>
<p>It is a different world than when I graduated in a recession … the Carter recession.</p>
<p>I do not expect colleges to find jobs for kids but when the tuition is multiple times higher than it was when I got out in the late 70s, i think it is smart business to make sure kids are prepared to enter the real world when they graduate. I hear a lot about college career services as abismal and a waste of money and time. That is a disservice to the kids. </p>
<p>I do not care what we had or did not have in prior decades. We all survived, some even thrived.</p>
<p>I am talking now when kids are taking on huge debts or parents are paying huge tuition bills. Schools need to shoulder the outcomes (many do and I applaud them!). The buying public (parents and kids) need to know if the schools are being forthright or playing into kids dreams. Forget the big flashy buildings and become a leader in after college success. That will get attention from everyone. Time to innovate!</p>
<p>Higher education IS changing so lets help shape it.</p>
<p>MQD- I have run campus recruiting for a large US corporation and I would not describe the resources at a single campus we visited/leveraged as abysmal or a waste of money and time. Most of them are run by highly skilled professionals who offer a wide range of services and options to their students. Whether the students are interested in teaching overseas, getting a Truman/Marshall/ other type of fellowship, applying to grad school, or getting a corporate type or non-profit job, every career services operation I’m familiar with offers tons of help, guidance, support, practical advice, etc. Want to teach overseas? Here’s how to get a job, here’s how to deal with visa issues. Want to work in finance? Come to this seminar to teach you the difference between commercial and investment banking; the difference between a career path in corporate finance/valuation or treasury/cash management. Come talk to recent alums who can tell you about life as a CPA at one of the Big 4. Come talk to older alums who can talk to you about venture capital or media convergence or trends in the pharma/life sciences industries.</p>
<p>I also know at least a dozen students who have already graduated from college who did not avail themselves of a single one of these services. Many of them dropped off a draft resume and cover letter to one of the career counselors and never bothered to retrieve it to see what edits or changes were suggested. Many of them signed up for job fairs but didn’t show up (they were too busy is the common excuse but I’ve heard others). Many of them told me “only tools and ******s use campus recruiting” whatever that means. And virtually all of them have told me that campus recruiting cannot help them with their dream job- and they are correct if your dream job is managing an NFL team, running a television network, or making a few million dollars a day at a Hedge fund (yes I’m serious.)</p>
<p>These students do not- will not believe that nobody graduates from college and lands a prestigious job running anything. And unfortunately- career services is there to help these kids get their foot on the first rung of the ladder- which some kids refuse to climb.</p>
<p>MQD you are really blaming the wrong player here. Innovate? I’ve participated in Podcasts, online symposia, virtual career fairs, tele-presence interviews, and a variety of social media networking opportunities. If kids are too busy playing Angry Birds and Beer pong to log on… I don’t think you can blame the college.</p>
<p>There are indeed kids in my neighborhood living on mom’s couch. Eventually they show up in my kitchen for free career advice. If they’ve been as hostile to the career guidance folks at college as they are to me (not personally hostile- but basically shooting down every idea as “I won’t commute” or “I won’t move to Dayton Ohio” or “I won’t take a job that doesn’t involve strategy” which I find hilarious) then I really can’t blame the career folks on campus!!!</p>
<p>I think the schools which are proactive like Cornell are great role models. In the SF Bay Area they have one of the strongest alumni groups supported by employees on the ground. This network is an enormous asset for the graduates, the professors, the students and of course, the development office! Cornellmwill survive the possible higher education downturn.</p>