Share or Die: A Scary Future

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As I was reading “Share or Die”, a compilation of different viewpoints from different college graduates, one chapter stuck out to me entitled “Unprepared: From Elite College to the Job Market”. In this chapter Sarah Idzik shares her story of being deceived by her college education on how her future work life would be.

To sum up her story, Sarah was the “perfect” student. She grew up in a small town and breezed through high school with no problems, excelling in her classes with all A’s. However, when she moved to the big city and got into college, she felt as though everyone around her was a genius. She was embarrassed when her colleagues would talk about things that she had never heard of.

Eventually she started to pick up on things and adapted to college life by asking questions, reading carefully, etc. She felt that she was absorbing everything in and maturing more quickly than ever before. Unfortunately, she soon realized that the culture of learning is not always compatible with the culture of the job market. The skills she learned in college weren't the same skills she needed to survive in the real world.

To add on to her problems, Sarah did not have a sense of where she was going. Soon after graduation she would have to scramble to fit her bills. She went from expecting greatness to hoping for something that paid. She eventually found a small job where she typed and printed travel documents for globetrotters. After securing this job, she was terrified to leave it in hopes for a full time job. She had worked at the job for three years and had never imagined that she would be doing this kind of work because, while in college, she had wide hopes and dreams of what she could have been doing.

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This story really makes a strong connection with what my class is discussing.  Why college? What is it good for? And is it good enough? These are all questions that we have been asked to answer in our own words. Above all Sarah’s story shows the positives and negatives of college.

First off, Sarah feels as though her college education was an awakening in her learning experience. She learned things that she would've had a hard time learning on her own. I honestly believe that this is true for anyone who is enrolled in a college or university. While in college you learn skills that are hard for someone to obtain on their own. Beyond that, Sarah learned to dream big in college and to think outside of the box, in addition to problem solving and time management. 

So, since I personally can't give my own experiences, I think Sarah Idzik's story paints a clear picture of what most college graduates can expect. The scary thing about it is that she graduated before our economic decline, so now it may be even worse for your average graduate. 

When You Really Think About It.....

Is college good enough?

I've been told time and time again from many different kinds of people about college. I've been told if you go to college and get a degree you will be able to get a job; but I've come to realize since attending college that it simply is not that easy.

If getting a job even with a degree is hard, then why are educators stressing college on students?

 

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Today’s job market is really messy. There are older, more experienced people taking jobs that usually go to early graduates. Because of this competition, having a degree no longer matters; you need a degree and job experience. In the article "Why Your College Degree Is Not Enough" an unnamed author goes to say,

“First off, a degree no longer sets you apart from the pack. Today, high school students are pretty much expected to go to college. Boomers are going back to college.  Plus, there is plethora of specialized technical colleges.  So, there are millions of other people with degrees looking for jobs just like you.  While the realization of the importance of obtaining a degree is wonderful, this shift in thinking took college graduates from the front of the line and placed them right in the middle.  This eliminated the competitive edge that a degree once provided.”

We can conclude that today you may need job experience to hold a career. But most people graduating from college were full-time students and haven’t had any experience at all. So how can a college graduate compete with an older more experienced job seeker?

Internships are great ways for students to gain experience while working on their degrees. It can be a big resume builder that can set your application apart from dozens of others that an employer will go through. Sometimes, if one gets lucky, an internship can lead to a potential career. Even if one discontinues with that type of career, they will take with them long-lasting connections that can create opportunities in the future.

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When you think about the competition in the job market it can be somewhat scary. Students believe that it will be easy to get a job, but they forget to realize how scarce jobs really are. Some people may get lucky and land a job through their luck or connections. Look at Bill Gates, he didn't have a degree. He enrolled at Harvard and didn't have a major and finally just dropped out to start his own company. Sometimes it doesn't matter what degree you have, if you have the right connections, you can have a great job.

Sadly, in the real world, the odds of the average person’s luck won’t be as great as Bill Gates's was, and that’s why it is important to learn the basic functions for having a job. Leadership is an important trait that everybody should possess. In “The Bad Habits You Learn in School” Coleman states,

"Finally, while many schools tell us to serve others, they are rarely structured to actively show us that leadership is serving others. In most educational environments, our primary goal is to serve ourselves — to improve our individual grades, to compete for individual positions, and to maximize our own employment, college, or grad school placements. But as Bill George once said in a panel discussion on next generation leadership, “We are not heroes of our own journey.” People follow leaders who care for them, who share their vision, and who are dedicated to serving a cause greater than one’s self." 

When you have a job you are serving others, whether it’s retail, fast-food, accounting, etc. you are performing tasks that will help someone else. Our education system should realize the importance of leadership and integrate it into daily teaching.

But, often in high schools they aren't teaching students to be leaders. Not only are they not teaching leadership, but they aren't teaching students to think critically for themselves. Most tests are the all to familiar scantron test, where you simply choose between A to E on a sheet that is graded by a computer.There are no thought provoking questions that requires writing, no diversity in expressing answers. In the info graphic "When C's Become A's: How Students Today Study the Least and Score the Highest" it illustrates just how much students' study habits and grades have changed over the years. When a student from the 60's studied for 40 hours a week and made a C it is hard to believe that a student of today can study for maybe 20 hours and end up making an A.

"While it is clear that investment in a college degree, especially for those students in the lowest income brackets, is a financial burden, the long-term benefits to individuals as well as to society at large, appear to far outweigh the costs."

-ERIC Digest

So overall no, I don’t think college is enough in today’s job market. But is it a good investment for the right people? Yes.  College is set up to grow and mature people. Many students who invest time in their college experience and take it seriously usually prosper more than those who choose not to continue in higher education. I’m not saying that it’s set in stone that people who don’t go to college are doomed, but what I’m getting at is that people who do go to college are better prepared for the world if they excelled in their classrooms