In today’s installment of my pre-semester desk cleaning of articles that looked like blog prompts we find a couple of cases of post graduation evaluations.
The first is actually about sociologists, but could apply to any of us. According to the article in Inside Higher Ed, among the 2005 graduates in sociology 70 percent were satisfied with their major, and by 2009 only 40 percent of the same group was were satisfied. Such satisfaction loses can result from many factors including poor job prospects that make one question the value of the degree. From my minimal experience, sociology collects its share of premed types, so they have something in common with us chemistry folks. Not getting into medical school could account for some of the satisfaction gap. Particularly when one recognizes that very many of these graduates were unsatisfied by the level of career advising and graduate school advising.
Many of our own departments are guilty of not paying enough attention to student career development. Many of our programs are not flexible enough to change with the needs of the graduate schools and employers of our products. With increasing attention to outcomes and the value of degrees we would be well served to consider the value of career development within departments.
The second article is from the NY Times. It is a story about public institutions of higher education in New York City giving detailed reports to the local schools of who needed remedial courses when they got to college. At a time when nearly every high school graduate is being pushed to college it would be a useful service to provide such information to our feeder schools. Linked to standardized test scores and performance evaluations, such post graduation performance review could help high schools get past memorizing the material for the test and don’t worry about long-term education.
As I have written before, our primary product is our graduates. Preparing them for the next steps in their careers should be a priority.
T.S. Hall
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