According to Pew, just 31% of Millennials have no plans to go to college, with the rest either in college, planning to go to college or already graduated. This may be the most educated cohort in history. Yet, there seems to be an increasing sense of uneasiness about the degree to which college is preparing them for life after college.
They are right to be concerned. Pew data also shows that in 2010, only 41% of all 18-29 year olds have full-time jobs compared to half in 2006.
By contrast, the proportion of older adults employed full-time stayed about the same. 10% of Millenials report losing their jobs recently, compared to just 6% of older adults.
The cost of a college education (amount families pay after adjusting for financial aid) according to Money magazine has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982″. Increasingly, students are funding the cost of their education via student loans. College debt constrains their post-college options and places a drag on their income for a decade or more.
With high paying jobs in shorter supply, students, grads and parents are questioning what is the true value of a college degree?
ROI as well as depth of majors and the college experience are considered when it comes to selecting a college. A MarketWatch article reported the results of a survey among 2010 high school seniors. About two-thirds reported that their families’ economic concerns “greatly” or “somewhat” influenced where they were applying to college. The decision about where to attend is also being influenced by other practical considerations such as graduation rates and percent of students employed after graduation.
Harvard has been tracking attitudes toward college among undergraduates 18-24 years old for over a decade. Over the years the study has expanded to include non-college students and 25-29 year olds. Their most recent report is based on responses from 3,000 18- to 29-year-olds from late January through late February, 2010. They found that concern about finding and keeping a job is high across college students and non-college students alike.
“The biggest thing that [college] students share with their [non-college] peers is an intense anxiety about the economy. Sixty-percent of Millennials are concerned about their ability to meet their current bills and financial obligations and 59% are worried about being able to afford a place to live. Almost half of those who are currently in the workplace are afraid that they’ll lose their job, and this fear is echoed in college students’ anxiety about their future after graduation – 84% indicated that finding a job will be ‘very difficult.’ Students are also worried about their ability to keep paying for college, with 45% of 4-year college students and 64% of community colleges expressing concern about staying in school.”
Wednesday night, Josip Petrusa and Chanelle Schneider moderated an hour-long Twitter chat using the hastage, #GenYchat (transcript here). Their topic? The “Experience Catch 22” – how to get a job or job experience without having any. The 34 contributors vented their frustrations and shared some practical advice. Most agreed that internships help bridge the gap between college and job, but often are not valued by employers. Blogger Jenny Blake of “LifeAfterCollege.com” (who just landed a book deal, congrats Jenny!), has this to say about an internship eased her transition:
“During the first quarter of my junior year at UCLA I got the opportunity of a lifetime. My political science professor and mentor suggested a possible internship opportunity for me at astartup company in Palo Alto. I grew up there and was ahead in school, so I told her and the founder I would move home to work full time if it meant I could help start the company. I anticipated filing papers…I was wrong. I had tremendous opportunities and responsibilities, but I hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to be in the real world – to work full time, to save money, to spend so much money, to be so far from my friends. As much as I loved the confidence I got from working so hard and learning so much every day, at times I felt incredibly lonely and confused.”
We were curious to see if other Gen Y had similar feelings, so we posted the question to our Super Consumer Community of Gen Y marketers. “Did your education prepare you for what your are doing? Should it have?” Here’s what they had to say:
Kyle: I feel like I come from a unique background having partaken in a specialized program at my Alma Mater called the BDIC (Bachelor’s Degree in Individualized Concentration). Essentially, what it allowed me to do was really narrow down the focus of my studies at college to the topics I KNEW I was interested in pursuing in the professional world. I had the incredible opportunity to work closely with 3 professors from 3 of the colleges within my University to design a classroom and experiential curriculum around my BDIC in Sports Marketing. My BDIC experience allowed me to handpick the courses I took and pair them with internships that allowed me to really get a hands-on feel for the subject matter. Had I not had been given the reins and allowed to work in the experiential learning aspect of my curriculum, i feel like I would have left college under prepared for the challenges that one encounters on the job. While I gained a great deal of knowledge and insight from my internships, it also didn’t hurt that it helped build my resume – I feel like I finished college with a leg up on the competition for jobs in the narrow industry of sport since I had 4 internships as opposed to 1-2.
Josip: I think education we’re getting is great and it would prepare you for that field your being educated in. The problem doesn’t so much lie in education, i think the issues lie in what happens after education. Also, sometimes education doesn’t prepare you for actual real world use. Being a philosopher, historian and many other programs that get a lot of students quite frankly don’t have real jobs associated with them. For instance my political science major does not dictate I join the government or politics. I also find that thousands of students graduate with degrees that quite useless unless you plan on being a teacher or something. Although, there are jobs for every field, the ones I mentioned at the end of the first paragraph have the most real world jobs waiting for them. My university has thousands of students graduating with political science degrees every year but I hardly see any political scientists in the real world.
Rob: This is the kind of question schools should be challenging themselves with at least once a year. I think an opportunity exists to bring more real world cases into the classroom. I know case competitions often give students the chance to sink their teeth in to real projects, but those are often some of the more challenging ones employees take on (read: looking for free consulting/ideas from students) and likely not typical enough tasks to get a solid sense of what an entry level marketing or finance person really might do at company X on a day to day basis.
Micah: Funny you should as this is a topic I have been wondering about myself very recently. I am in the midst of a Masters in Library and Information Studies and I am starting to get very worried about if I will actually have any practical skills when I graduate. Most of the coursework I have done thus far has been theoretical-based and while understanding information needs of groups and database structures seems useful, I still have no idea what it actually means to work in a library day to day. My former Master’s degree (I love college) was in American Studies, and while I learned a great deal about the culture and history of our country, I graduated with no practical work experience and went back to school after a summer working as a temp for a medical supply company. In conversations with friends recently I have started to think that if anything vocational training needs to become a more active part of our educational system. Internships are great, but since I have always had to work full time, I never had the opportunity to pursue one outside of my coursework. So basically, I have greatly enjoyed my education but I am not sure it has prepared me for active citizenry or professional life. Any steps I have made in those directions have been of my own interests and initiative.
Derek: Education itself is a wonderful thing. However, education in America today is something that is too broad. General education in college is the same things one learns in high school and middle school and even elementary school before that. This focus on general education prepares us for nothing but provides jobs for professors in the subjects. If we were to have those classes as options as opposed to being forced into them, perhaps we can begin the process of specialization. Internships further specialize but are a catch-22 in themselves. Requiring an internship as part of graduation (like Chapman University does) is an excellent idea because it helps build the résumé. The problem with requiring an internship is that not all students can afford to work for free or take time off from their paying jobs.
Tony Szymczak: Since I am in a totally different field not related to my degree my Education did not totally prepare me for what I am doing. I cannot count the number of classes that I was required to take that I had absolutely no interest in. When picking classes becomes a process of, what will count towards my degree so I can graduate on time, the education process fails. When you take a class that you really have no interest in it really destroys focus. Students face so many appeals for their attention it is hard enough to get them focused on education. The time they do spend on education should not be in classes they are forced to take because a college mandates it.
