If you could fix three things about the college-to-career pathway, what would you pick?

If you could fix three things about the college-to-career pathway, what would you pick?

This year, American colleges and universities will award about 1.9 million bachelor's degrees. Nearly all those graduates will find work, but many won't put their college degree to full use -- and about 7% of them will end up in low-wage jobs that don't really require higher education at all. Can we do better?

I've been digging into this question for the past four years, producing a book, a variety of speeches and a lot of magazine articles on the need to bring college and the job market into better harmony. Meeting with students, administrators and employers, I've seen frustration gradually turn into a focused desire to make the college-to-career pathway work better.

The can-do energy was especially strong last week, at a gathering of the Association of American Colleges & Universities in San Francisco. Deans, provosts and presidents are not shy people! We covered a lot of ground in our time together. Here are some of the cures we explored. As you scan these options, take a moment in the comment section to highlight the ones that intrigue you the most -- or go ahead and add some new ideas of your own.

Build social capital for students who arrive without a lot of connections. Programs such as Braven connect first-generation and minority students with advisers who look like them -- and can show how to build the professional networks that make it much easier to find a good job. Often the best advisers are near peers from similar backgrounds who graduated from college just a few years ago. These coaches can share tips about how to get started; they radiate credibility.

Teach career readiness as a formal, one-credit course. A case in point is COMM 490, "Crafting a Professional Identity," at Gonzaga University. I chatted at length with Jonathan P. Rossing, chair of Gonzaga's communications studies department, about the way this course teaches students to explain clearly what they've learned, what they know how to do, and how they plan to put those strengths to work. These are enormously teachable skills, but we put graduates at peril if we assume that everything somehow falls into place without human intervention.

Coach students on the new geography of jobs. New graduates can get their careers off to a faster start by looking for opportunities in cities where their skills are in peak demand. In some fields, that still means the classic early career magnets of New York, Washington, D.C., or Chicago. But as LinkedIn's own Economic Graph data shows, the biggest opportunities today may be in unexpected places. Say hello to Austin, Seattle, Charlotte, Las Vegas and more.

Tap into young alums' unique insights about starting a career. Hoping to start a career at the State Department? It's thrilling to hear a former ambassador to France recount his or her 30-year career. But the most practical tips are likely to come from a recent grad who figured out how to land a six-week stint on the Cuba desk when State wasn't hiring. Schools such as Pomona College, Binghamton University and Drew University do a great job of building ties between current students and the recent grads who can best explain how to get a foot in the door.

Make it easier for small employers to exhibit at job fairs. Career-services departments generally regard job fairs as revenue raisers, charging $800 to $3,000 for employers to set up booths. That fine with big tech companies and accounting firms that hire heavily from a few vocational majors. But it stymies the small nonprofits that might want to hire a history major or two. At the University of Cincinnati, senior assistant dean Lisa Holstrom is looking into ways a free day for nonprofits might lead to more job connections.

Each of these ideas is incremental. They're designed to open opportunities for small clusters of students at a time. But they're easy to implement, and most of them can be scaled briskly when they work well. In the comments section below, let me know which ones intrigue you -- or if you have others that have worked at your school and are worth adding to the list.

Ian Clements

Project Manager | Data Manager | Community Developer | Racial Equity Advocate | Nonprofit Professional

5y

Three things I would change: 1. The mentality that employers may have when it comes to HBCUs vs. PWIs. Most employers still intend on recruiting from ivy league institutions because they believe that those students are more valuable and more prepared. 2. Universities should offer a research course in college that explains how to seek employment in your target city of choice. Many students may choose to stay near their families after graduating but if they do not conduct enough research in their field, they will miss out on exploring new opportunities. 3. Create a peer-to-career pipeline with partnering companies who seek to employ college students for internships and full-time jobs. It would help to build a support system for students who lack the resources and support system to achieve their career goals.

Andrea Weiss, MS, NCC, MCC

Career Counselor | Outplacement | Nonprofit Executive Search | Myers-Briggs Workshops

5y

Terrific, and on point, suggestions!!

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Ann Martin

Principal, Martin and Powell

5y

I would change my gender.

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Great ideas! May I add more focus problem solving? I am always impressed when a recent graduate can cite an example of a time they needed to learn a new skill to complete a college assignment, such as extending their analytic skills to support a research project in a class that did not cover analytics or learning to code in another language so they could add a non-required feature to a project. Specific skills can become dated, so I will always pick an enthusiastic and inventive problem solver over someone with an extensive list of skills.

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