What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 4 of 4

April 16, 2014 Leave a comment

Choosing a major can be stressful!

Choosing a major can be stressful!

Part 4 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Where is your major leading you?

“Many people end up doing work completely unrelated to their major in college, but it still helps to know for what careers that major might matter when selecting a major or concentration. Students who really know the possible career paths with an undergraduate degree are few and far between at the time of major selection. Many students choose their majors in their sophomore year before they have much work experience at all. There would be many benefits to students if there was a consultant at the school keeping track of where their major may lead, career-wise, and what those careers meant in terms of average activities. Not only would students be making a more informed decision, but it would jump start the process of searching oneself to figure out what they really want to do before the big crunch at the end of senior year.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)

While I was at Mount Holyoke College as the Director of Recruiting and Employer Relations, I had the opportunity or working with many great partner recruiting organizations and some really wonderful students looking to make their mark in the world. One woman, in particular, that really ‘got it’ was a student that was interviewed and hired by, I believe, Paine Webber.

She was a history or psychology major, I can’t remember for sure, but the point being she was hired on by a pre-eminent financial institution after graduation in the liberal arts. Upon being installed on a team, one of her also recently graduated co-workers, had come out of a more formal business program as opposed to her degree in the liberal arts. Upon hearing of her ‘history’ or ‘psych’ major, he turned to her in a meeting and brazenly said, “what are you doing here?” Without missing a beat, she responded by saying, “to do the things you cannot!” A brilliant retort and was coming from someone that could articulate her liberal arts experience and how it would be a good translation to that financial working environment.

But for many, that transition and translation is not so easy.  College is a major expense in one’s lifetime but students who don’t follow their hearts by delving into subjects they’re most passionate about will ultimately hurt their chances of a successful—and satisfying—career in the long term, many college officials say.

For college students, declaring a major can be a stressful moment in one’s academic career. What do I major in? What should I choose? Now I have to live with this? These are some of the questions that plague thousands of newly minted college students each year, looking ahead, producing beads of sweat and who have nightmares of doing the ‘diploma walk’ only to head off the stage after graduation directly into an unemployment line.

For many, they view it as though they essentially are to say, ‘this is now what I am to do for life…’ While true to some degree, no pun intended, a major is really nothing more than saying I am specializing in an area of interest and taking the classes to support such. For someone who already has a career destination in mind; say they want to build bridges as an engineer or be a surgeon, they are lucky in that they are on a defined path and their declaration of major is more of a natural means to an end. The more difficult task is when one doesn’t necessarily have a set outcome in mind; no set path or destination, and choosing or declaring a major can be a pretty stressful addition as one feels they are essentially locking in by having to ‘choose their future.’

The good news is that, as stated above, a major is a focus and what, for many, is missing in their college experience, is a real, comprehensive understanding as to how that major is, or can be, translated to the working world and charting off on a career in the future. This is especially true when majoring in the liberal arts or humanities where the outcome can be a much more abstract path as is not necessarily a linear translation to a job or career.

Much of what happens in the classroom, and its success, is in how one, upon graduation, understands the subtlety, nuance and range of skills that are now to be articulated in a way that explains its relevance to a potential employer.

Most majors are elastic in that employers rarely ‘need’ a specific degree majored in, but instead a set of skills (both hard & soft), experiences and the ability to put them into motion. It is rare that a new hire is showing up at the door with a stand-alone skill. Employers look for a mosaic of such and future college graduates have such, but many do not know they have such and it is in this applied learning, this translation that can be the ‘make or break The college experience is too often limited in making that translation for students and many times the only discussion of such is schlepped over to the off-in-the-corner, stand-alone career services to make those connections evident.

This is a huge missed opportunity in that while these dedicated offices of careers and career transition do what they can, without the full ‘eco-system’ buy-in of the campus at large, the talk of transition from academics to career is usually too limited or late in coming and is missing a great opportunity to be as effective as it could be.

Much of what should or could be done during the college experience is a synthesizing of one’s academic studies at every corner of the respective campus, in a way that fully cross-pollinates, so that students have four years of not only academic intake, but four-years of transitional understanding of their academic history, both looking back and looking ahead? The college experience should, and can, be an artful balance of synthesizing interests, skills, personality strengths and acquired knowledge while at the same time acquiring tangible experience outside of the classroom.

In a perfect world, in the first four semesters, when wrapping up the sophomore year, if possible, this synergistic learning would make for a much better understanding of one’s choosing a major and how it ultimately can be a better blueprint for the transition to career and life after college.

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What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 1 of 4

April 8, 2014 Leave a comment

"Help! Interest? Vested? Taxes? Huh...?"

“Help! Interest? Vested? Taxes? Huh…?”

Recently, while meeting with our intern, Eli Lisseck ’13, we were discussing his transition from four undergraduate years at Oberlin to the present, where he is now actively engaged in his job search.  I asked him, now that there is some time in the rear-view mirror, to look back and reflect on his four-years of quality education and its application to his reality today.  In this 4-part article, examining, what he thought, shortcomings to the college experience and my personal observations having worked in such for 20 years, we discuss these areas and talk about what educational institutions could do better in preparing students for transition to independence and adulthood.

When asked, he said; “one thing pertaining to the job search that I have observed changing recently is that it never ends. With communications technology rapidly advancing, even people currently at a great position always have the antennae tuned in for new opportunities, just in case. The relatively new culture of rapid job switching and constant job searching puts even more weight on crucial job search skills, and relevant life skills related, than has existed in the past.  There are a few crucial actions to consider, and steps to take, that I wish I had learned a couple of years earlier than I did.  None of these things are particularly difficult to begin doing, but practice certainly helps tremendously.  I hope that thinking ahead will give students about to graduate a head start compared to recent graduates such as myself who have had to pick these skills up as they became relevant, rather than being prepared.  What follows is a list of four ideas, in no particular order, that I feel would benefit students if they were incorporated into undergraduate learning processes.”

Part 1 of ‘What’s Missing in the College Experience’ – General Financial Acumen

“After paying incredibly high tuition for four years, a student should at least have an idea of how to succeed outside of school. Students are first and foremost trained to continue inside the academic world, but many students will not be academics forever. Colleges want successful alumni, and students want to live on their own, so it seems like some required class about finances is pertinent. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just the ins and outs of filing a tax return and how to budget oneself when planning around employment.  An astounding number of recent graduates will forget to budget for healthcare, utilities, tax withholding, and the like when considering their potential income, and struggle later because of it.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)

As supporting anecdotal ‘evidence,’ in an endearing sort of way, one student I had, who accepted a job offer and moved to NYC, related her experience to me that was both funny and inexplicable at the same time.  She was a graduating senior, and a savvy one at that, from Mount Holyoke College and was majored in Economics.

She got her apartment and had that secured at least.  On moving day, she was handed the key by the land-lord and started to move in all her belongings. Walking in she flipped the switch in the entry hall and the light did not come on.  So she flipped it several times.  Nothing.  After setting her stuff down and out of the way, figuring it to be a dead bulb she went and got a light bulb from another spot in the apartment and switched it out and flipped the switch again.  Nothing. Enterprisingly, she then went out and bought a box of light bulbs and came back and started to swap them with the ‘dead’ bulb thinking this should be an easy fix.  Nothing, as expected to an outsider at least.

The reality was that she, in her life-time, every time upon flipping a switch, something was to happen!  She had no concept that one had to start an account with the utility company and it had never occurred to her to inquire as it had been a constant presence, like the very air that she breathed, in her life.  Again, for her entire existence on this planet, something happened when she flipped a switch so who knew?

Much of her story highlights the fact that graduates, or soon-to-be, ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ until it’s either presented or experienced first-hand, with the latter sometimes being too late. This is very apropos to the plight of many college graduates today as they seemingly have no concept of the issues of personal finance and related terms and topics such as; taxes, gross and net pay and what the differences are?  No understanding of the litany of potential benefits that employers may offer in a job and how each of these can play out? Investments and the power of compounding.  The majority have no idea what ‘compounding’ even means?  The fact that a landlord might want first, last month AND a security deposit before they can even set foot in an apartment? What the term ‘vesting’ means? And this is many times Economics’ majors, yet.  How about the fact that credit cards are not ‘free money’ and need to be paid back, with interest yet? What’s interest and why are they allowed to collect that? Remember all those student loans?  Well in November of the graduating year, the note holders show up at the door wanting it to be repaid. Oops, forgot to budget for that!  That renter’s insurance is a necessity when they move out on their own, thinking that the building ‘must be insured, so my belongings must be too…?’

There is an incredible lack of financial understanding and it can have large ripple effects on their navigation of life post-college. For many years I’ve taught workshops and presentations on personal finance, budgeting and understanding benefits offered by employers, etc…  These workshops have always been, historically, well attended and feedback almost universally of appreciation and thanks.  For many, these presentations are kind of deer-in-the-headlights sort of endeavors as students would sit there bewildered, perhaps having a new appreciation for what their parents have navigated to get their sons or daughters to this point in their education.  Some of the more common observations I’ve had are that students have no understanding of the language and machinations of how money & finance works on either the micro or macro scale.

Sadly, this series of workshops on finance that I have done for the colleges, were never a mandated part of anyone’s curriculum and it should be.  It was simply a need that I had witnessed so put it up on offer.  There is no reason or excuse that a student leaving college has no concept of personal finance, taxes, benefits, how to balance a checkbook even.  It really would be a simple addition, if not an all-out mandate, to one’s four-year experience. In fact, the cost-benefit of such is a huge consideration in that graduating students, future alumni/ae, can look back and say that they were ‘better prepared.’  No matter as to one’s major; if it be Economics or Dance, once departing the hallowed halls, they need to be able to understand how it all relates to function in the world they choose to live.  What’s critical, in my view, is that each student leaves college with an understanding of personal finance and how it relates to their transition to the working world.

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