1st Edition
By Anthony J. Arcieri and Marianne E. Green

Myths about College and Careers

Case Study: Andrew

Andrew, a senior English major, worked hard throughout his college years. An honors student, he completed a thesis on a 16th century poet. In his junior year, he was invited by his professors to present at a national conference and served as a teaching assistant for a freshman composition class. Andrew never received less than an A- on any of his papers. He devoted so much time to his studies, however, that participation in any activities or community service was out of the question. During the summers, he waited tables at a local restaurant to earn spending money, and took courses at a nearby college. By the second semester of his senior year, Andrew was eager to tackle the job search process. While he knew that graduate school in English literature was a future possibility, he was tired of school and wanted some real world work experience first.

Since he had confidence in his writing ability, he looked at jobs in advertising, news reporting, or editing, sending his resume out in response to newspaper advertisements and on-line job listings. He also attended job fairs and interviewed for technical writing positions through the on-campus interview program.

The results were disappointing. Andrew received few invitations to interview for the positions he found in newspapers and on-line. His conversations at the career fair and his on-campus interviews led nowhere. Andrew found that employers were visibly impressed by his sterling academic record, but were put-off by his lack of career-related skills. Most employers wanted to see writing samples illustrating the application of his writing skills to real world situations. Copies of Andrew's term papers just wouldn't do.

Both Andrew and his parents were confused and concerned. Andrew had excelled in his classes, achieved honors, and been lauded by his professors, yet he had difficulty demonstrating to employers how his skills would transfer into the workplace and help them solve their real world problems. He was passed over in favor of students whose resumes showed related internships, jobs, volunteer work and leadership but who did not have his high record of academic achievement. What had gone wrong?

College is still about academic achievement-and hard work in that arena will certainly be rewarded. But academic work alone is no longer sufficient. Andrew might have made more effective choices during his college career if he and his parents had been aware of some of the common myths about the connection between college and career.

Myth #1

A college degree guarantees a good job.

Few parents, and even fewer students, still see the college degree as an automatic ticket to a good job. The steadily increasing pool of college graduates has served to inflate the entry level requirements for sales, service, managerial, and other positions from a high school diploma, a generation ago, to a bachelor's degree in the 1990s. Even though college graduates tend to earn higher salaries in the course of their working lives, and have more opportunities for advancement and job mobility than high school graduates, the bachelor's degree by itself cannot and does not guarantee satisfying and well-paid employment.

Myth #2

Good grades in college ensure a good job.

Employers still use your grade point average as an indicator of your ability to assimilate information, your aptitude for learning, and your propensity for hard work. By achieving recognition through academic scholarships, Dean's List, and election to honorary societies, you boost employers' confidence in your ability to grasp and absorb new information and apply it on the job. But employers also consider other skills and abilities in selecting new hires. The National Association of Colleges and Employers cites several employer surveys which rank interpersonal skills, teamwork, communications skills, leadership skills, and related work experience as very important criteria in evaluating college students for full-time positions (Job Choices 1999). These skills are usually developed through the second college curriculum, experiences beyond the classroom, laboratory or lecture hall.

Myth #3

Your college major determines your future job.

All majors are created equal in that they provide a rigorous, in-depth look at an area of scholarship. Some majors, however, come equipped with built-in second-curriculum opportunities because they are linked to specific careers. For example, a nursing curriculum includes both a theoretical classroom component and hands-on experiences in a hospital setting. The same is true for education majors; classroom work is complemented by student teaching experience in an actual elementary or high school classroom. Nursing and education are examples of majors which blaze a clear path toward a specific career. Business and engineering majors also tend to be more job-oriented.

Conversely, liberal arts majors, especially in the humanities (English, history, foreign language, art history, music, etc.) and social sciences (sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, international relations, geography, etc.) are usually structured to match up with areas of academic scholarship, rather than careers. Even math and science majors do not usually include real world applications as part of the curricula-the emphasis is generally on information acquisition and research methodology.

Does that mean only students in "job-linked" majors are employable? Of course not. Other students just have to be more conscious about supplementing their majors with hands-on, practical experiences. In fact, no matter what you decide to major in, it is still up to you, the student, to shoulder the responsibility of investigating career options and developing career-related skills by being proactive: joining the student chapter of Save the Whales, working on a senatorial campaign, pursuing a summer job at Du Pont Pharmaceuticals, volunteering at the animal shelter, interning at the Department of Corrections or shadowing an alumnus during his day on the job as a corporate lawyer. You just can't depend on your academic major and college curriculum to build the necessary bridges to career options and future employment!

In today's booming job market, recruiters for sales, marketing, managerial, public relations, human resources, technical writing and social services positions are willing and eager to interview graduating seniors with any major, as long as candidates appear to have the required aptitude, skills and experience to succeed in training and on the job.

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