A while back, I was driving to pick up my kids from school when I heard a piece on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” about how to choose a major for college in tough economic times. This was back during the recession of 2008 and 2009. The piece was headlined by a professor of labor statistics, whose basic argument is that students need to consider the return on investment when choosing a college major. They need to understand, he argued, that certain fields will have a bigger payoff. Health care was one of his primary examples: the industry is booming, so his advice was to head for jobs in that sector.

As I listened, the piece grated on me because only one viewpoint was represented here. Specifically, the viewpoint is the idea that education is primarily about getting a job. What was missing was the perspective of those who see education as an edifying experience, who believe that “training the brain” to be nimble, and to be able to “learn how to learn” are the chief values of education (for an explanation of this alternative point of view, see this post).

Furthermore, many observers (Thomas Friedman, Daniel Pink) have pointed out that many of today’s top-earning jobs didn’t exist ten years ago. And while the professor identified healthcare as a good field to head for, we can also bet that the healthcare industry may undergo tectonic shifts in the next decade (hello, Artificial Intelligence).

Just consider “communications” or “marketing.” If you had studied these in college fifteen years ago. Who would have foreseen the social networking and marketing tools that we now take for granted?

How to choose a major in the 21st Century

Anyway, I was following my friends on Twitter the other day, when someone else complained about this NPR story. This someone else was Alex Berger. Thus began a conversation about this NPR story that led him to write an extended email describing his take on education in the 21st century. In a separate post, I will reproduce his email in full (with his permission, of course).

I think more people should be having this sort of conversation about what education means in the 21st century. While there is no getting around the fact that we all need to earn a living and that our educational backgrounds do–in a very real sense–prepare us for our economic success and social contributions, a purely instrumental view of education can be self-defeating.

For example, does it really make sense to spend a bunch of money to educate oneself to read and interpret X-rays, when much of that work is being done more cheaply in India?

Or does it make sense to get a degree in accounting? Today, highly trained and able accountants in India are filling out IRS 1040s for US citizens more cheaply than H&R Block?

Translation work might seem lucrative, but in fact, it’s cheaper to pay Chinese people to translate my documents into Chinese than to pay an American with a Masters degree in Chinese language to do the same work.

The fact is that as we decide upon our major, we have to realize that the economic landscape is going to change. The professional preparation we begin in college is only the start. We have to continue to learn, modulate, and roll with the times. The labor market is going to evolve, and some jobs that pay well today may pay poorly tomorrow. Or vice versa.

So in counseling our clients about their majors, we really try to hone in on the student’s aptitudes and passions: what sort of domains of knowledge to they really enjoy?  What interests them? Then I spend time talking about appropriate learning environments. Because college is really about learning–and not merely about acquiring knowledge.

Read more on this topic with guest blogger, Alex Berger.

Get help if you need it

And if you need help in thinking about how to choose the right major, get in touch with us.  The team of counselors at Great College Advice have years of experience guiding students toward their academic and professional goals.

The post Choose A Major Based on Career Interests? Pros and Cons first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Laying off tenured or tenure-track faculty members was one of the least-common cost-cutting measures taken by responding institutions. Other uncommonly used approaches included redirecting restricted donations, eliminating athletics teams, laying off graduate assistants or student workers, and reducing scholarships.
To bolster their revenue, institutions have increased in-state tuition by a median amount of just over 7 percent, the survey found. The median increase for out-of-state students was close to 6 percent.
Institutions have also plugged their budget gaps with some of the nearly $40-billion in federal stimulus money meant to shore up public-school and higher-education appropriations for the current and coming fiscal cycles.

What does this mean for students planning their college futures?  Well, for students looking to institutions in their home states, be prepared for things like larger classes, reduced administrative support (and efficiency), and cuts to some programs.  Athletes should also research whether their sport may be likely to be cut during their four years–if you sign to a school that then eliminates its program, you’re out of luck.
Students who would like to attend a land-grant institution outside their home state may find it easier to get accepted this year, as institutions scramble to increase revenue by finding out-of-state families willing to pay the full price of admission.  (As always, money talks).
For a full listing of the members of the APLU, go here: https://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=249 .The list includes many of the major public universities in the United States:  UCLA, Berkeley, University of Colorado, University of Connecticut, University of Alabama, etc.), but also a few private universities (notably MIT and Cornell)
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

The post Land-Grant Universities Consider Restructuring to Cope Budget Crisis first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

This video, which first hit YouTube a few years back after a classroom teacher in Colorado gathered some provocative statistics to show at a faculty meeting.

It’s a must-see for any high school student or parent of one. It ends with a question.

Give it a look: it’s only five minutes long. And once you start watching, you’ll want to view it again and again.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

The post Did You Know? Deciding on a College Major in 21st Century first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Yesterday Inside Higher Ed‘s Scott Jaschik reviewed a new book entitled Off-Track Profs:  Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education, which documents what we know and don’t know about the impact of adjuncts in higher education.  The authors also explore the reasons for the growth of adjunct faculty at some of the country’s research institutions.

I won’t spend the time to repeat Jaschik’s review…give it a read.  I plan to read the book.

Suffice it to say, however, that college administrators and boards of trustees have little idea about how much teaching is performed by non-tenure track faculty.  Their policies–and enforcement of whatever policies may exist–are fuzzy at best, and these trends do have an impact on the educational experience of undergraduates.

[And if senior university administrators don’t have any idea about the impact of adjuncts at their own institution,  you can jolly well bet that admissions counselors won’t know! If you ask, you’ll just get the party line based on goofy statistics that don’t mean a thing.]

One finding at the University of Michigan bears out what one of my readers commented about with regard to student-to-faculty ratios:  often the non-tenure track faculty have much better teaching evaluations than the tenured faculty.  Adjuncts are often better teachers. This fact does beg the question whether tenure is really a useful institution in the 21st century university.

We  may also inquire as to whether the accepted wisdom that “good research informs teaching” holds any grain of truth.  Research faculty obviously believe in this link.  But to read undergraduate teaching evaluations, it appears that most students do not believe it–or at least to not experience the benefits of that research in the classroom.

What does all this mean for you as you seek the best college for you?  First, treat student-to-faculty ratios with skepticism, and second, make sure you seek out the best teachers you can find once you are on campus–regardless of their job title.

College Consultant

The post Adjunct Faculty and Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Universities Don’t Know first appeared on College Admission Counseling.