Courses to Careers – Helping Graduates Overcome Tunnel Vision

Reflecting on my college experience, “career” was not a term often thrown around by myself or my fellow classmates. In fact, I could not describe the location of my campus career center if you asked. Surely one existed, but in my college mind, the career center was reserved for driven, data-minded business majors, not a scrappy young graphics art major too entirely focused on wondering how I was going to afford school supplies while pulling all-nighters in desperation to complete my schoolwork.

I was convinced that upon graduation, I would be hired into a high-paying job by a top-tier employer. And now looking back, I was not the only college student dreaming of a job market that would stretch out its loving arms to accept us upon graduation. The kicker is, my fellow alumni and I graduated in 2016 in the midst of a labor market shuttering its doors in fear of a growing recession. The lingering effects of which are still being felt by college graduates today.

Missed Populations

Dr. Sullivan argues that students are no longer a homogenous group where everyone is actively seeking a job. He classifies this missed population as “passive students” that are less likely to use the career center. This includes students that are not active jobseekers, those going to grad school, online students, those in international studies, entrepreneurs, night students, and older students that feel out of place in the career center.

I would also argue that there is a significant population of students so focused on studies that have “missed out” on opportunities provided by the college career centers. In turn, these students are not interfacing with employers under this traditional model – missing “real-world” scenarios that teach students how to market their skillset. They believe that it will all work out following graduation, but experience something entirely different when that time comes.