What’s the Matter with College?

Lately, I’ve been seeing articles popping up both online and on paper about college. And hopefully by the title of this post, you have gathered that they weren’t positive articles.

In my opinion, I do have some gripes about colleges as well and opinions about how they can be better. I feel like a college education these days is something that is expected. It’s a few letters you can put onto your resume. It’s something that if there is not really looked at unless maybe you are at some really good school, but if not present, may be frowned upon.

Unless you majored in some type of engineering or science or math, you probably didn’t learn any actual skills you could use or offer in a post-college job, a real job, you know, the career type. Most schools teach based on theory with little to no hands-on experience. You’re left with trying to find an internship to try to get hands-on experience but wait, no one will hire you because you don’t have any skills, but wait, you have no skills because no one will hire you. And so it goes on from internships to the post college job search. I’ve actually seen this happen to quite a few people I know.

There are so many types of jobs, careers, and roles out there. Things you probably have no idea even exist! That there are people today, right now, doing jobs that you could one day have, but you don’t even know about. I feel like this is something high schools and colleges need to educate students more on. Kids grow up thinking that they can be doctors, lawyers, engineers, firefighters, teachers, etc. But do they know that they can be a web developer, a family therapist, a research assistant, a school counselor, a graphic designer, a business account manager, a marketing analyst, a compliance analyst, a salesman, an operations analyst, a journalist, a photographer, a video producer, a buyer, a product manager, an event planner, a search engine optimizer, a dietitian, a human resource person, and much much more. I feel like even the types of jobs I listed here are just very high level based on what I know and people I know. It gets even deeper than that. Students need to know these are out there, what these people do, and how to get into it. I know while growing up, sometimes they have a day where you can go to work with your parents or they’ll have career day and bring a few people in. But to make this better, why not have a whole quarter/semester or more, letting students explore careers and companies with real people and real experience. Companies should have programs with colleges that allow for this. Give time for students to explore careers that they may have never even thought about or thought they could excel in.

Teach something real, give real life experience, so that the next generation of graduates are well prepared, knowledgeable, ambitious, and capable.

What do you guys think? What was your college experience like in terms of hands-on experience? Does your current job and/or first job out of college reflect what you learned in college or what college prepared you for?