Taking the Long View: Focus on Life After College

By Cathy Nabbefeld
Co-Director of College Counseling


Peek inside any college counseling office in this country and parents would see students focusing on two primary questions: “Where should I apply?” and “Where will I get in?” Certainly, college counselors spend a great deal of time guiding students through this maze, helping them navigate (as best as possible) the answers to those questions.
 
Not surprisingly, much of our professional time as counselors is spent visiting college campuses across the country to get a better understanding of places and to encourage students who might be a good fit for that school to apply, while also conversing with our colleagues in the profession to understand the nuances of admission across campuses. Given all of this focus on the first two components of the process–where to apply and where will admission result, you can imagine how refreshing it was at our annual national conference (held this year in Columbus, OH) instead to spend some time contemplating what students should do once they get to college to prepare for the life that follows. National best-selling author and award-wining columnist for the Washington Post, Jeffrey Selingo, gave a presentation on his most recent book, There Is Life After College, one that our office highly recommends.
 
Some takeaway messages gleaned from his presentation:
  • It’s not where you go to college but how you go. There are five primary skills employers of today want:
    • Curiosity (thus learning is a lifelong pursuit).
    • Creativity (most jobs are ambiguous… nobody is going to tell these students what to do, so students need to be able to think on their feet and integrate knowledge from different areas).
    • Digital Awareness (most students today have a passive relationship with technology…they use it but have NO idea how it actually works; they will have a leg up if they push beyond this).
    • Contextual Thinking (the ability to transfer underlying competencies to the real world. This requires breadth and depth).
    • Humility (understanding that not everyone gets a promotion).
    • The top five skills asked for in jobs posted nationwide:
      • Communication/writing
      • Customer service/problem-solving
      • Organizational skills
      • Planning/details
      • Knowledge of Microsoft Excel – ability to work with large sets of data and synthesize them.
 
So shaping a college experience to help acquire the above skills can set students up for their futures. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a testing initiative in the U.S. that seeks to measure a college’s contribution to student learning in the areas of critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem-solving and written communication skills–recently showed that 33% of the students who took the exam demonstrated no learning gains over four years of college. (The CLA is the college level version of the CWRA, the College Work and Readiness Assessment, a test that CA, among other independent schools, administers to its 9th and 12th graders to measure the added value of a CA education; CA seniors have consistently scored at the 95th percentile and above.)
 
Data collected also showed that 40% of students graduate from college without complex reasoning skills, and only 50% of college seniors “talk often” to a professor about career plans.
 
Selingo says most students “are waiting for college to happen to them, like it’s a spectator sport.” He cited a recruiter at Xerox who says, “Students know how to take a course, but they need to learn how to learn” in order to navigate the ambiguity of the 21st century economy.
 
Today, the average age of financial independence for college graduates is 30; in 1983 it was 26. Selingo poses the question: what helps kids to launch or not launch? In his analysis, 35% are sprinters (they go with marked determination), 32% are wanderers (they take their time) and 33% are stragglers (they press pause during most of their 20’s). Selingo theorizes there are three main factors that determine this “type of launch” during those critical ages of 18-22.
 
  1. Debt. The more loan debt students amass, the less flexibility they have upon graduation. Debt rules out internships and constrains flexibility of where they can live. The class of 2016 had an average debt of 37K. For sprinters, their average debt was 10K.
  2. The numbers of internships and other experiential learning opportunities students have during college. Many employers hire their full-time employees from amongst those who have interned at their companies. At places like Facebook, it can be as high as 80% of new hires coming from the intern group. Sprinters have at least one internship over the course of their four years in college.
  3. Credential. Having the degree matters. Nearly all the stragglers have “some college, but no degree.”
 
 
How to Rethink Higher Education for 21st Century:
  1. “Fail fast, fail cheap.” Colleges should present models and opportunities for failure. Most careers are made up of trial and error, not a straight line. (Students aren’t aware of early drafts or attempts; they only see final products and think everyone nails it at the first try.) A head of recruiting at Enterprise says, “This is a generation that has been syllabused through their lives.” Many companies like to hire athletes because they have experienced failure directly. Companies also like to hire kids from failed startups rather than recruiting on campuses because they’ve learned how to pivot and restart. Many corporate executives will say they are much less interested in big successes but in little failures.
  2. Put more students in relevant work before and during college. In 1991, 40% of teenagers had jobs; today only 20%. Students need to learn how to work with people from different backgrounds and generations; they need to learn how to show up on time.
  3. Allow students more time to explore careers/passions. The average child born today will live to 100. What’s the rush to ship them off at 18? Take a gap year before or during college. Figure out what professions and job titles even mean. Kids will have to reinvent themselves multiple times. A major change from the past is that a student who job-hops has higher earnings and is more productive 20 years down the road. Today’s successful graduates have multiple jobs in order to gain the knowledge they need; those different positions help them acquire skills that would be impossible to gain in one job.
 
Some final thoughts from Selingo: Students need to leave college with more than those pieces of paper that we make such a big deal about. Consider co-op schools such as Northeastern, Drexel, and the University of Cincinnati. They can sometimes be a hard sell because they’re not the traditional college experience, but they think the best way to learn is to learn by doing. Employers aren’t looking at transcripts and degrees exclusively; they heavily use the interview, and this is where students can talk about their work/internship experiences.
 
I strongly recommend Selingo’s book if you’re looking for insight, advice, and peace of mind. There Is Life After College, What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow, by Jeff Selingo, published by Harper Collins.
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