From the minute the last cap hits the ground at graduation, the pressure is on for college students who aren’t on the grad school track to become full-time employees. But some of them are finding their job hunt a little bit easier than others. The question is: are colleges offering enough support to help them succeed in the professional world?
For many American students, the hefty price tag of college tuition is an investment in a better future. Yet, according to the McGraw-Hill Education's Future Workforce Survey, only 4 in 10 college students feel "very" or "extremely" prepared for their careers.
College career centers on campus typically offer aptitude tests, resume tips, practice interviews, career counseling, and more. With so many resources at students’ disposal, it seems like career preparedness would be a given for graduating seniors. But stats and surveys suggest effectiveness varies for career centers.
Career Center Success by Numbers
The Gallup-Purdue Index Report published in 2016 sheds some light on the disconnect between the apparent abundance of services offered on campus and the way students respond to them. This survey of more than 11,000 U.S. college graduates evaluates career services and mentorship opportunities at colleges across the country.
The overarching problem does not seem to be a lack of awareness: 63 percent of students did visit their college career center at least once. While 17 percent of them considered their experiences with career services “very helpful” and 26 percent "helpful," 37 percent found them "somewhat helpful" and another 17 percent "not helpful at all."
Students who did consider their college career center to be "very helpful" were more likely to agree that their university prepared them well for life outside of college and that their education was worth the cost.
How to Best Utilize College Career Centers
Perhaps part of the reason some students do not feel like their career center was helpful has to do with the type of services they utilized.
While students who simply took a career aptitude test and chose to forgo other services might not feel as adequately prepared for post-graduate adulthood, the research shows that students who established connections with mentors or who gained hands-on experience at internships thrive.
Gallup asserts through its findings that "mentorship and applied internship experiences are strongly linked to increased employee engagement, higher wellbeing later in life and graduates’ feeling that their degree was worth the cost."
For college seniors searching for direction in their job hunt or college juniors seeking to learn from experience in an internship, the alumni connections and professional networking opportunities career centers provide can be invaluable. Students who are skeptical about their college career centers should investigate the partnerships they can cultivate before they write off career services for good.
How College Career Centers Can Improve
On the other hand, college career centers ought to improve awareness about the full capacity of their services and make sure they are encouraging students to build the relationships they need.
Gallup’s report says that "undergraduate internships have been linked to more job offers upon graduation and higher starting salaries for graduates." If that is the case, career centers have a responsibility to impress the importance of internships onto as many students as possible.
If students receive the right kind of help earlier on in their college career, they will be more likely to feel prepared to enter the workforce when the time comes. Gallup finds that "graduates who had very helpful career-services experiences are 5.8 times more likely to say their university prepared them well for life outside of college."
Ultimately, the responsibility for student success is shared. Students ought to expect a certain level of guidance from their universities since they are paying for better career opportunities with their money and their time. Wise career counselors will recognize how critical it is to focus on building relationships with students before sending them into the world.
