How to Avoid the Trap of Going to College

When I visit students in classrooms as the manager of career services on a college campus, I stand in front of them, introduce myself, and gesture as if I am pulling open my shirt to reveal an imaginary superhero insignia.

Greetings! I am here to save you from the trap of going to college.

This trap has a lock and the lock has a combination, I continue. When you understand the combination, your risk of falling into the trap of going to college will decrease dramatically.

Then I write the combination on the classroom whiteboard: “80-50-75.”

Eighty percent of students going to college will change their major multiple times.

I see heads nodding in my audience: Done that.

This tells us that students are trying to decide why they are in college and where they are going, but many can’t figure it out. One thing is for sure: they are confused.

A consequence of this persistent confusion is that half of students going to college – 50% (the average between four-year universities and two-year community colleges) will not complete their program or transfer. It’s not that they are not capable or intelligent enough to succeed, but perhaps they come to realize that college is a waste of time and money – if you don’t know why you’re here or where you’re going.

Now I draw an invisible line with my hand down the middle of my classroom audience.

So, 50% of you will complete your program and graduate – congratulations! But hold on. Here’s the final number in the combination of that lock on the trap of going to college: Seventy-five percent of college graduates end up getting jobs outside their degrees.

Eyes widen.

Typically, the blame for this last statistic is pinned on the job market. There just aren’t any openings, so these graduates have to find Plan B – or is this now Plan C? The more likely reason, however, is that these disillusioned graduates, who were certainly successful in completing their programs, come to realize that the occupations their degrees prepared them for aren’t really all that interesting.

What about the 25% who do find jobs that align with their degrees? Well, they can be further divided into those who end up loving what they do, and others who discover that their job is stressful, exhausting, uninteresting or even flat-out boring.

Whether they were chasing the salary, following in the shoes or taking the advice of family members, or just “going to college” because that’s what you’re supposed to do after high school, they came to the painful realization that they had climbed a ladder which was leaning against the wrong wall.

How can students avoid the trap of going to college? By clarifying the big picture and long view of their life, which includes a career doing work they will love.

When we are curious about someone’s occupation, we don’t typically ask them about their salary – at least not at first. Instead we ask, “What do you do?” What types of activity are centered in the day-to-day responsibilities of their job? Work is inherently about activity – manual, mental, creative, social, strategic, and routine. Any occupation will center 2-3 of these types of work activity.

Getting paid a high salary for work we don’t enjoy or find interesting, but that instead makes us feel stressed, burned-out, or bored, can nevertheless motivate us to show up – for a while.

Eventually we will reach our threshold: How much of our life at work are we willing to spend doing something that doesn’t connect to our interests, intelligence, and talents?

For many the answer is, “Quite a long time.” Which explains why the notion of work in our day is associated not primarily with creativity, satisfaction, enjoyment and meaning, but rather with “labor,” strain, necessity, and exhaustion. Work is what you have to do, not what you want to do.

But can work be a generator of satisfaction, fulfillment, and even joy? The answer is Yes – to the degree you find it interesting.

John L. Holland (1919-2008) found that the correlation of interest to activity, and types of activity (just six) across the wide variety of occupations in the world of work, is a strategically useful concept in the quest for a promising career and in the productive engagement with responsibilities of work in one’s current occupation.

College students – preferably in the earlier secondary grades, before they arrive in college – need a lens that can help them better understand what they have within themselves (interest, intelligence, and talent) and identify occupations in the world of work that center the types of activity they already enjoy and find interesting.

This is how they can develop vocational clarity, which will guide them in making good, sustainable choices in college – and well beyond.

A good tool can filter out the noise and help students focus in on the signal.

By using a career site like O*Net (the Occupational Information Network, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor) and its Interest Profiler tool, students can avoid the trap of going to college and instead find their path through college into careers doing work they will love.