Higher education has been struggling to address some chronic issues for a while now, but it just can’t seem to find effective solutions. Here are the statistics: 50 percent of degree-seeking college students don’t make it to graduation or transfer, and 75 percent of those that do, end up getting jobs outside their degrees.*
On a statistical basis alone, these numbers are good grounds for an argument against the value of a college education.
Why would anyone waste time, effort, and money on something that doesn’t get them where they want to go? When I visit classrooms, I do my best to talk students out of wasting their time and money on college.
That’s right.
If students enroll in college but don’t have a clear sense of why they are there and where it’s leading, they’re wasting time and money and might better choose to drop out – or get help, which most don’t.
Many of them stumble into college out of high school by the momentum of parental or social expectations. Having completed a K-12 compulsory education where taller powers had decided and managed their progress through the system, they now find themselves in a place where education is voluntary. Taller powers are still standing by, but now more for advising and intervention than prescribing what’s now and what’s next.
So, the new college student takes a look around, reviews the available programs and course catalog, and chooses a degree. On the basis of what criteria? Quite often their choice is motivated by such factors as what other students are doing, the advice (or ultimatums) of their parents, what degrees are broad enough to feel safe, what industries are currently growing, or what jobs pay the higher salaries.
After all, you go to college to get a job, and you go to your job to make money – right?
At some point these students are required to declare a major field of study, which is supposed to set their focus and ensure they are taking the requisite courses for their degree. While the college is glad to take their tuition, it also needs them to finish a program and thereby add to its success data.
Retention, persistence, completion, graduation – such statistics are what accreditation agencies and external funders look at to determine whether a college is meeting standards and doing its job.
Needless to say, when 50 percent of degree-seeking students don’t complete a program, and when 75 percent of those that do complete a program end up getting jobs outside the degrees they just spent a significant amount of time, effort, and money to obtain, the numbers are both exasperating and embarrassing to college administrators.
A third persistent statistic would shed some light on what’s going on, if colleges hadn’t long ago thrown up their hands in resignation. Year after year, on nearly every college campus in the country, 80 percent of students change their major – multiple times.
It’s just what students do, runs the common response of educators.
They choose one major, discover things about the program curriculum they don’t like or find intimidating, learn more about the job prospects after graduation, start second-guessing their choice, come across information about other degrees and careers, and decide to change their major.
Not just once or twice, but multiple times.
Educators essentially put the blame on the students: That’s just what students do. They change their majors. We can’t change that (as they think inside the paradigm of intervention).
The next step for many students – somewhere in that 50 percent who don’t make it to graduation or transfer – is out of college altogether.
There’s also a good chance that those who do make it to graduation but end up getting jobs outside their degrees just came to their disillusionment on a delayed schedule. Their degree and major terminated in a career that didn’t really interest them after all, and so they found their way into something else. That’s nearly three-quarters of graduates. Seventy-five percent.
My experience in higher education has led me to take a new look at these statistics and what they really mean. Those 75-percent stats on either side of graduation are driven, I have come to believe, by something hidden in plain sight, behind that third statistic about students changing their majors.
It’s not “just what students do.” They are doing it, to be sure, and it may seem as if it’s inevitable. But it’s not.
The phenomenon of changing majors should be anticipated to some extent as students learn more about college programs, more about themselves, and more about the dynamic world of work. My observation, however, supporting students as a manager of career services on a college campus, is that a large number of them don’t have a clear understanding of themselves.
We can present students with all kinds of external options and incentives, but if they lack a clear and centered self-understanding, the choices they make are not likely to stick.
- Changing majors multiple times is a likely symptom of confusion, which is itself a mental and emotional state that every human experiences from time to time.
- Confusion can quickly generate anxiety, a feeling that things are about to go terribly wrong unless something is done very soon.
- But urgency-driven action is often frantic and sporadic, producing unwanted results or bad outcomes and adding frustration to the anxiety.
- If this goes on for long enough, exhaustion and discouragement will set in, perhaps eventuating in disengagement and dropout.
As a student’s doubt over their current choice of major begins to rise, so does their confusion, which in turn generates anxiety. It’s their drive to relieve this anxiety that motivates many students to pick a different major. They are suddenly certain that this is the answer, and their certainty saves them – or so they feel – from the suffering of doubt and anxiety.
The critical distinction here is that the student’s hastened certainty is more a therapeutic escape from anxiety than the clarity of direction they really need.
Clarity of direction, or vocational clarity, is what college students need most. Without it, that cascade of negative states and its futile escape measure are bound to repeat and persist – until the more drastic decision to drop out is made.
With a clear sense of their calling (vocare), purpose, and direction in life, students (really, every human) can hold a bigger picture and take the longer view on their lives. With that larger context in mind, they are able to make better choices and commit themselves with greater confidence to paths of higher purpose and deeper meaning.
This implies, of course, that students are giving careful consideration to their own interests, talents, intelligence, curiosity and passion, and then making relevant lines of connection to potential careers and college programs that offer the most promising pathways for their ongoing learning, discovery, and development.
In my experience working with students, the most effective way of reaching vocational clarity is by means of an interest assessment and career exploration process.
By clarifying their interests and exploring careers where their top interests are centered in the work environment and professional responsibilities, students can begin visualizing viable futures that excite them.
Ideally, the interest assessment and career exploration process would be administered already in high school. Even earlier, and the profile of each student’s interests could be used to differentiate instruction and empower their unique talents and intelligence – focusing pedagogy not on how smart they are, but on how they are smart.
By the time they exit the K-12 program of compulsory education and step onto a college campus, the student’s growing vocational clarity would guide them in choosing the right program, picking the right major, securing internships, staying engaged and doing their best all the way through.
We can also confidently predict that after graduation they would enjoy work in fulfilling careers. Colleges would be doing their job, so students can find theirs.
*Individual college or university data will vary, falling slightly or farther on either side of this nationwide average in each case.
Tracts of Revolution 