On a fairly quick “student life” tour of a state university this week, I noticed some things are radically different. Forgive me if it doesn’t have much to do with academics and job placement, as the student guide really didn’t talk about that much. Instead:
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| Giant fiberglass mascots are new |
· Whiz bang technology seems to have been put to use mostly in large campus buildings, such as perfect acoustics in a music hall or cool computerized systems in the library.
· Tutoring help is much more available and without social stigma, apparently.
· Part of your college bill is for $100 you get each semester to spend in the coffee shop, activity desks or dining halls that are NOT the dorm cafeteria. (I want the coffee shop contract, please.)
· The “gym” is now a state-of-the-art facility with rock climbing walls and exercise equipment, and students are encouraged to get a personal trainer and get or stay in shape through all kinds of classes and programs.
· Freshmen and incoming new students take a “trip” together (not acid) a few days before school begins to meet other people and get to know the geographic area in which the school is located. The school seems to place a good deal of emphasis on whether kids are happy.
Some things stay the same:
· Sports are still out-of-proportionately important.
· Large classes are still held in large lecture halls (auditoriums), and students still look bored and unengaged.
· Small classes are taught in lecture mode in classrooms, and the engineering ones are still almost all male.
· The geology exhibits of rocks and minerals has not been changed since what appears to be the 1950s.
· Women-only and men-only dorms still exist.
· Dorm rooms are still roughly the size of a death row cell, with just slightly more cinderblock charm.
· The student tour guide referred to the “freshman 15” in regards to added pounds from cafeteria food.
· Professors are still crammed in tiny, cluttered offices and still post office hours.
· Dorms still have a resident assistant who looks after you, sort of.
· You can still resell your outrageously-priced textbooks.
· You still, at 18, are expected to declare a major and decide -- within the next four years and without spending an amount of money that would clear your parents’ mortgage -- what you want to do with the rest of your professional life.
I don’t underestimate the important life experience of bathing in a communal bathroom, getting your snail mail (if any) out of a little metal box with a key, and possibly living in close quarters with someone you don’t know and will grow to hate. But that last point about making a career choice at 18 or 22, even, seems to be a major flaw.
I don’t see any systematic change or paradigm shift in how we teach or advise or mentor, other than knowing a lot of students do internships before graduating. A bachelor’s degree is still mostly filled with at least two years of classes that have little or nothing to do with your chosen profession – or any other – and classes are still mostly taught by lecture, by which some people do not learn.
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| You have to tell college women this, really? |
I’m not dissing the value of a broad, liberal arts education. If I was an important blogger, I'd piss a lot of academics off here. There is value in learning for learning’s sake, in art, in culture, in an experience of gaining an educated perspective. (This, despite the fact that a sign apparently needed to be posted inside the women’s bathroom stalls that said, “Please Flush Toilet After Use.”
I’m just saying, after all those years, I would have expected more would have changed….something big, something in the SYSTEM of how we educate people to go out into the world and earn and contribute.
We have seen that these young people will change careers, what, eight times in their lifetimes? They don’t go back to college each time, so how are we preparing them for this? ARE we preparing them for this? CAN we, since some of those jobs may not exist now? Are we preparing them for jobs that exist NOW in which they can actually pay off their student loans in a fairly short and reasonable length of time?
At the re-sale book stand, one text book jumped out at me: Botany. To tell the truth, I could have reached over and grabbed that book, just for pleasure reading. I wanted to major in biology but couldn’t hack the two years of chemistry and one of physics, so I ended up as an English major (journalism) with a biology minor, mostly just to get done.
Today, long story short, I am a financial advisor. (Which is more proof that English majors can do anything. And, yes, that last sentence was incomplete.)
I love what I do, I love my clients, and I think I’m pretty danged good at it.
But, looking back, if I had known at 18 what I know now – about jobs, the sucky parts, and the important parts, and that every day you have to roll out of bed and see the same people and do roughly the same thing for 40 or more hours a week, and that, yes, job pay and benefits count – I may have chosen differently.
A botany major with a business minor might have meant I could have run my own greenhouse, or run one for someone else. Or just enjoyed putting my fingers in potting soil and making things grow. Or experimented with ways to grow things better, sturdier, faster.
As a newspaper reporter, I interviewed a city planner – a job I never heard of at 18 -- and thought, “THAT would be a great job, creating green spaces and helping decide where development goes.”
I have a morbid fascination with oddities, so perhaps I should have gone into police work. Or psychology. Or moved to Las Vegas or the Wisconsin Dells. Or managed a buffet restaurant.
And I love to cook and bake, but my college didn’t offer a chef school or a hospitality track, so I never explored it.
I asked a couple good friends if they would have chosen differently, now 30 or more years later.
One, a retired public relations professional in her early 60s, graduated as a teacher because women either did that, nursing or social work. Instead, ”I think professions more suited to my capabilities and personality would be some sort of engineer, architect, interior designer or business owner,” she said.
“I had entrepreneurial talents at the age of 10 when I started my first company - making Christmas decorations out of felt and sequins and going door to door in the neighborhood selling the prettiest at 50 cents. And, then there was the shoe shine company. I would ask to polish anyone’s shoes for money. And, then there was the book I started to write - I thought " A Woman's Guide to Car Repair" would be a winner as I found that some mechanics take advantage of a damsel's car in distress. And, there were many other ideas that still race through my head on business start-ups.” She has a profitable side business, but never spent her working life doing that.
Another 50-something friend noted that an internship would have been helpful to her early on.
“Also, I have always loved to travel and wanted to be a flight attendant for a few years before college. But my parents and advisors told me if I did not go to college immediately after high school I would never go. Then I felt the pressure after college to get a professional job and get married – instead of being a flight attendant. I did not get married but got a job in my field.
“Medicine was an interest of mine and I love animals. Had I taken the few years to travel and get to know myself better I may have become a vet – which I would have loved.”
None of the three of us are unhappy nor unfulfilled. In fact, we are pretty darned smart, accomplished cool women!
But while the mores may have changed, and more options are available, the college-at-18 system is still in place. It’s either that, or the military and then college. Without a four-year degree, we’ve been told, your earning power is miniscule.
As much as this country cannot afford a brain drain, maybe college should not be de rigueur for all smart, motivated kids. I have known several people who have juggled a job, family and college later in life. It’s not easy, but they are motivated, and they almost always get impressive grades.
What may ultimately lead to a radical change is spiraling costs of even a public-school education. More and more kids are wanting to avoid spending $80000 on a four-year degree that does not guarantee them a job, let alone a fulfilling job with earning power to pay it back.
Necessity, like always, is the mother of invention. There is hope, though change is slow.
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