<p>Yeah, the reality of college education is that the majority of ALL college students finish their education when they get their bachelor’s degrees. In that sense, many schools do their students a disservice by not providing adequate resources to help them find jobs after graduation. In my opinion, Penn did an EXCELLENT job of encouraging its students to pursue their passions.</p>
<p>As mentioned above, very few students pursue academia as a career path coming out of any school, including top schools. At Penn, the undergraduate nursing, engineering and business programs generally produce graduates who wish to enter the workforce immediately. The College has comparably few graduates entering the workforce (58% last year, compared to 86% of business students), but the majority of College graduates not entering the workforce are going into professional school or completing a master’s degree. Again, these numbers are not at all ridiculous compared to other schools (61.8% of Harvard College graduates entered the workforce in 2011, while only 19% entered graduate/professional school).</p>
<p>I will say, when I hear about my friends’ experiences at other schools, I become increasingly grateful for the atmosphere at Penn. There is a distinct difference: At many schools, students are encouraged to pursue their own interests; at Penn, students are encouraged to pursue their own interests AND given a viable career path for whatever they decide they want to do. If you want to go to law school, Penn’s law school advisers are top notch; if you want to get a PhD, you are encouraged to talk to professors considered the best in their field (or, in the case of positive psychology and several others, you can talk to professors who created their field).</p>
<p>I fear that websites like this proliferate the idea that because a school encourages its students to succeed at what they do, students miss out on some of the more classic liberal arts traditions. That is absolutely not the case. Take a political theory, philosophy, linguistics or literature course and you will see that liberal arts traditions are alive and well. Take an an economics course and you will see a great blend of theory and practicality: In 2008, on the very first day in January, our professor, who had literally written the book on macroeconomics (as in she wrote our textbook), predicted a global recession the likes of which we had never seen; as the recession became more apparent, we spent significant time tying the real world to the theory we were learning.</p>
<p>To the point of the original poster, I’m honestly not sure what “pre-professional” means. It is a term that people throw around based on what they have heard about a school they visited perhaps once, but they don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about.</p>
<p>Out of my friends and acquaintances from Penn, only one (out of roughly 250 whom I would consider acquaintances) graduated without already knowing what they were going to be doing; out of my friends from other schools, probably 40% left college unemployed (i.e. unsuccessfully seeking employment). Since most students who get bachelor’s degrees want to get jobs, I see positively nothing wrong with an environment that encourages developing skills in addition to knowledge.</p>