As high school seniors prepare to graduate and attend their chosen colleges and universities, a new wave of students are preparing for what should be their summer of visiting campuses and deciding where they will submit applications in the fall.\u00a0 With so many colleges and endless factors to consider, it can be helpful to state the larger reasons for attending college in the first place.\u00a0 College ought to be a place where a student can grow as a person and as an employable professional. \u00a0Unfortunately, finding an institution today with a healthy balance of those two components is harder than ever.<\/p>\n
In my graduate thesis, I studied the changing missions of 100 of the top liberal arts colleges in the country in an effort to discover if they had changed their central purpose over the last decade.\u00a0 I found two important things.\u00a0 First, it is surprisingly difficult to locate the mission statement for many colleges via their website. For something as important as mission, college\u2019s often make it very difficult to ascertain what the mission actually is and there were countless examples of multiple and competing statements of mission on a single site. Second, I found evidence of verbal language changes in liberal college mission statements to reflect the increasing importance of \u201cemployability\u201d and professional preparation.\u00a0 Diminished endowments, reduced government funding, and the depressed job market all contribute to this shift, but perhaps the largest influencer is the question that at least one parent asks in every admissions session, \u201cwill my son\/daughter get a job?\u201d<\/p>\n
Grappling with hostile external criticism of cost and efficiency, traditional colleges and universities are doing everything they can to assure families that they will prepare their student for the workforce. Websites highlight graduates working for top employers, they tout internship and co-op opportunities, and, as seen in this latest research, have even begun transforming their own mission statements.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this hyper-concentration on professionalism has resulted in a dismissive attitude toward student self-development and growth, a shift that began long before the current crisis but has undoubtedly been fueled by it.<\/p>\n
So what can prospective students and their families do to make sure they\u2019re choosing an institution adept at balancing these two competing factors?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t trust college websites, the visit is now more important than ever. \u00a0<\/b>As the market for enrollment becomes increasingly competitive and public scrutiny of education continues to escalate, the identity of institutions as viewed through their website will be increasingly harder to trust.\u00a0 Talk to students.\u00a0 Ask about internships on their resume AND about their own growth as a person.\u00a0 If they are puzzled by either topic, move on.<\/p>\n
Ask better questions.<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cWill my son\/daughter get a job?\u201d is an average question at best.\u00a0 Try asking about the importance placed on the advisor\/advisee relationship and how that develops over the course of the student\u2019s four years.\u00a0 Or how internships are obtained, any co-op agreements the school has, and whether or not professional experiences are required for the program the student is interested in.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t judge the college by its type.<\/b>\u00a0 Liberal arts colleges used to be criticized for their ivory tower attitudes toward professional components in curricula.\u00a0 Today, the same schools often house thriving business and engineering programs, and have flourishing internship programs.\u00a0 Remember, colleges are having their own identity crisis right now.\u00a0 Investigate how schools are balancing the two components by researching the breadth of the distribution requirements in the curriculum and how integral their professional programs are.<\/p>\n
There are colleges out there who have remained true to student development while incorporating professional components into their educational priorities and there are those who are continually willing to sacrifice developmental components in education in an effort to appear more dedicated to post-graduate job placement.\u00a0 Weeding out the latter can be a challenge.\u00a0 By understanding the culture of higher education today, remaining skeptical of increasingly strategic marketing, and asking the right questions while on campus, students ought to be able to find their way to an institution that equally values their development as a person and future professional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As high school seniors prepare to graduate and attend their chosen colleges and universities, a new wave of students are preparing for what should be their summer of visiting campuses and deciding where they will submit applications in the fall.\u00a0 With so many colleges and endless factors to consider, it can be helpful to state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[41,40],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career-advice","tag-career-advice-2","tag-career-search"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n