are there universities that actually prepare you to get a job?

[luvcraft]

Maybe I'm just being myopic, but I can only think of two or three people I know who have graduated from UNM and gone on to find a job actually related to their degree. The vast majority of college graduates I know have jobs that don't require a college degree at all

Comments

[antje23]

I don't think this is exclusive to UNM. (since I am a UW graduate :) ) At least 80-90% of the people I work with got degrees in things like Geography, economics, or other sciences. I would say that the only way that I use my degree at work is in lunch-time discussions around environmental issues, or what ground cover is good for slope stabilization with my co-workers.

[wunderhund]

I've noticed the same thing... I think what it boils down to is that college is effective in direct proportion to the specificity of your goals going in. College seems to have done the least for people I know (including me) who went into it directly from high school, and done the most for people who did something else for a few years and then went to college later for a specific reason. Of those who did go to college right out of high school, those who finished with the same major they intended to get at the beginning (usually science or engineering related) seem to have done the best at going into fields related to their degree. I think we ought to do more to encourage people in their late 20s to go to college rather than kids right out of high school, because people at that age have a much better idea how they might benefit from education in a certain field.

[luvcraft]

I agree. I think I would've gotten a lot more out of college if I had spent a couple years living on my own with a minimum wage job before living on my own with a minimum wage job AND taking classes. I still don't know if it would've actually prepared me for a job, though.

[auberondreaming]

Yes, I agree with all of this as well.

[killbox]

The only degreed people I know who work in their field, got their jobs as interns when they were students, (engineers, CS people.. )

[brianarn]

I'd say I've generally noticed the same things.

That being said, I'm one of those people who went in, figured out what I wanted to do within my first month of college, got that degree, and have been working with it professionally for six years now, going strong with no signs of early retirement yet (sadly).

Admittedly, originally, I did go in to teach math, but in my first semester, I changed focus to computer science pretty much right away. I can see myself eventually teaching like... HTML classes at CNM or somtehing.

[zevhonith]

I more or less have a job in my field, though I didn't actually finish my degree. My field is English, though, and the careers that stem from that are surprisingly broad. I do directly use information from the classes I took as part of my degree, though.

My theory is that undergraduate degrees help people get jobs because a lot of jobs want people who have undergraduate degrees - but the field of the degree and the field of the job don't need to be the same. I think career-specification schooling usually comes from graduate schools or technical/vocational schools.

At least one exception I can see for this is education; I believe that bachelor's degrees in teaching get you teaching jobs, and I can't imagine that someone would get a degree in education and then NOT go into that field. But also, education departments tend to work more like vocational schools in terms of placement and work experience while in school, I believe.