Global Career Compass
Leveraging Education Abroad for Student Career Development & Employability
Access, Innovation, Equality & Social Mobility
I just attended a conference on the theme, “Bridging the growing divide in [U.S.] higher education.” Topics included, education for upward mobility and what isn’t working; educating for democracy & global competitiveness. Readers of this blog know I’ve been writing on this theme from differing angles over the past three years.
Speakers pointed to a new era in the coming 10+ years – in which families and students will sharply sort out their options for selecting a college, and a learning environment, which best suits the aspirations of the student and the labor market (which everyone agreed was changing more rapidly than the typical traditional four-year curriculum!).
There were important questions raised: Is college – as we now know it – going to remain the conventional escalator to the good life & a job? How do we design a learning environment which offers “innovation opportunity” to students? As colleges widen the doors of access to a more diverse student body, are they capable of catching up to the social problems which low-income students bring along (e.g: poverty, single-parent homes, un-preparedness for the academic expectations on a traditional residential campus). How well equipped are campuses to integrate students who lack “social capital” and thus find it hard to adjust?
And in 2013, in a blog, I wrote:
“…The question at hand is how far our society must go to tinker with our more traditional college majors aka English, Sociology, Anthropology, Music…add your own – so that we reduce the number of bartenders, taxi drivers, waitresses, retail clerks,,,add your own…with college degrees biding their time until they perhaps save enough money to –you guessed it – return for the MA degree they need to really start their career.”
The President of Arizona State University stated that we needed to move toward creating academic institutions with a “range of identities,” whose curriculum and learning environments support “changing pedagogies” to accommodate the needs of students from more atypical backgrounds (not just the B or A high school students now sought after).
Eleven large public research universities, committed “to the belief that every American, regardless of socioeconomic background, should have access to an affordable, high-quality college degree” have established the University Innovation Alliance at www.the UIA.org
Graduating “Employable” Students
I’ve just completed a new book chapter with Dr. Cheryl Matherly from the University of Tulsa, titled “Higher Education and the Employability Agenda.” It will come out in a textbook sometime this year (Palgrave) on Higher Education Policy and Governance. We spent many months conducting quite a bit of background research on this topic and looked at material from both North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. If you’re interested at all in reading about youth unemployment – sometimes a euphemism for the un or under-employment of university grads – I’d urge you to see my twitter posts!
The first fact which is a bit hard to get your head around is that there are, according to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 75 million “youths” who are unemployed –whether they are university graduates or not, this is a huge part of the global population which is not contributing to the global workforce. Whatever struggles we may have with our young grads, it pales by comparison to the problems facing developing nations or our two largest emergent economies: China & India. Zimbabwe’s graduates face a bleak job future in their economy; about 90% of these youths are unemployed after graduation. Despite the growth of excellent universities in China and India, these institutions educate a small elite cohort of their youth populations.
The mismatch between the high expectations youths have when going to college and the reality that their educational experience does not adequately prepare them for available jobs in their local or regional economies is a disappointment to all actors: the student, the university and to potential employers.
Closing the expectation gap is essential. One way this can happen is for universities in the developing world to place a priority on training and funding career service professionals and creating space within their institutions for career offices. There are very limited examples of such offices in Algeria, South Africa, India, and The Philippines. In most instances, these initiatives are funded with external financing from international agencies.
Here are two references you’ll find of interest:
Asian Development Bank, Improving Transitions From School to University to Workplace (Rep.). (2012, June). Retrieved from Asian Development Bank website: http://www.adb.org/publications/improving-transitions-school-university-workplace
Association of African Universities. (2013). Transforming African Higher Education for Graduate Employability and Socio-Economic Development. Retrieved from http://www.aau.org/sites/default/files/announce/GC13%20Proceedings%20-%20final.pdf
Musings & Comments About Value of International Education and Coping With Uncertainty
See the unsettling analysis by Richard Slimbach, about the purpose of higher education in the Sept-Oct, 2014 issue of the NAFSA International Educator (sorry, available only to members online). He critiques the usual assessment of campus internationalization which focuses on inputs (dollars spent) and outputs (study abroad students); he suggests that it’s more important to examine the “educational product” itself – the student. “What kind of student do we expect to form, for what kind of world…”
Over the years, I’ve regularly commented about what others have written online in essays or blog posts… here are a few selected statements which reflect my point of view:
“…there are very few campuses in the country [the U.S.] whose study abroad or career service offices are equipped to provide the kind of [integrated] advising and oversight of learning outcomes at each stage of student decision-making and participation in study abroad.” (My research for the 2014 monograph on Campus Best Practices Supporting Study Abroad & Student Career Development confirmed this judgement)
“…while true that employers value a great many of the skills which students gain through study abroad, the best way to assist them [students] build upon their experience in the marketplace is to provide purposeful and intentionally designed preparatory programs for students before they leave campus, while they’re abroad, and after they return to campus…”
“…the benefits…
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2014 in review– Thanks for connecting! Happy new year to my readers!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
2014 Conference Presentations, Blogs & Workshops on Education Abroad & Student Career Development
2014 was a busy year for Global Career Compass! I was able to address issues on a variety of themes to diverse audiences:
NAFSA Annual Conference (http://www.nafsa.org/Attend_Events/):
“Linking Education Abroad & Student Career Development: Effective Advising Practices”
“21st century Skills & the Workplace: Challenges for Education Abroad Professionals”
NAFSA Blogpost (http://blog.nafsa.org/2014/05/08/strengthening-the-campus-study-abroad-advising-process/): “Strengthening the Study Abroad Advising Process”
NAFSA Embassy Dialogue Committee (https://edconeducation.wordpress.com/): “Applying knowledge outside the classroom: What is the regulatory environment of work placements in U.S. & abroad”
European Association of International Education (EAIE) Blogpost https://www.academia.edu/9113421/International_Education_and_Employability_Matching_Expectations_of_Students_to_the_Global_Workforce): “Matching Expectations of Students to the Global Workforce”
University of Minnesota Career Integration Conference (http://www.umabroad.umn.edu/professionals/career-int/resources):
“Employer Perspectives on Value of International Education in the Global Workforce”
ISEP (International Student Exchange Program, http://www.isep.org/About_ISEP/who_we_are.asp): “Matching Student Expectations of Education Abroad to the Global Workforce”
Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit (http://www.youtheosummit.org/agenda_2014)
“Mind the Gap: Linking Career Development Theory to Workforce Outcomes”
AIFS (www.aifs.com): “Study Abroad & Career Counseling,” Workshop for Connecticut colleges and universities
Resources for Campus Internationalization
For more information -and hot links to resources – about campuses with innovative practices, see my Campus Best Practices Supporting Education Abroad & Student Career Development at http://www.aifsabroad.com/advisors/pdf/Tillman_Best_Practices.pdf
While I have found no causal connection between campuses with strong internationalization policies and robust practices when it comes to linking study abroad & career service offices to advise students on their study abroad decision-making, this portal provides an important compendium of resource links for review: http://campusinternationalization.org/
On the other hand, it is more likely that campuses with strong leadership advocating for internationalization of their campus will, of necessity, support active engagement by faculty and administrators in making the case to students that international experience matters and is an integral component of their undergraduate education.
But this is not enough. The advising process, per se, needs – more often than not- to be harmonized between the two offices most often visited by students when it comes to sorting out their options for off-campus learning: career services & study abroad.
Is College the Wrong Place to Prepare for Work?
Perhaps we need to re-think the sequencing of learning: at our four-year residential institutions. Students have to figure out out for themselves how to acquire skills which foster the likelihood of their employability.
I’m thinking about this question as the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a piece reviewed in the NY Times: http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2013/02/21/are-career-oriented-majors-a-waste-of-a-4-year-higher-education/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
One-third of new programs [created at four year institutions] in the last decade were added in just two broad fields: health professions (where credential inflation is rampant) and military technologies/applied sciences (probably a reaction to the September 11th attacks). The 1990s saw similar growth in the number of majors. Indeed, nearly four in 10 majors in the Education Department data didn’t exist in 1990.
Any of us would recognize those new majors by just glancing at the list of undergraduate programs at almost any college these days: sustainability, athletic training, sports management, new media, gaming, homeland security, and so on. This trend, which has persisted for five decades, has been bemoaned by some as a flight from the arts and sciences to the practical arts.
This question has seemed…
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That Includes Me
If world news has gotten you down of late –read this post!
The real value of study abroad isn’t that it can transform individual lives, it’s that study abroad can transform all of our lives.
Study abroad transforms lives by increasing awarenessand empathy. Successful programs, like the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program, begin this transformation during the pre-departure orientations. YES students coming from 40 countries with significant Muslim populations to the United States for an exchange experience are well prepared. Their orientation topics have included: how to be a young ambassador, bullying, financial management, media relations, law enforcement, volunteerism, privacy, religious beliefs, and race relations. Each topic addressed builds awareness and empathy.
The 11th cohort of more than 800 YES students will arrive next month to a country engaged in recently intensified national dialogue on race relations. These remarks by President Obama on Trayvon Martin are extraordinary for their awareness and empathy, and relevant for YES students:
There are very…
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Plenary Connections: Shiza Shahid
A beautiful and evocative description of the devastating impact of a young girl in India being married off at a young age…and why the work of the Malala Fund is so important.
Number of Vietnamese students abroad up 15% in 2013
An International Educator in Vietnam
ICEF Monitor (4 November 2014)
We have published two significant updates on Vietnam over the past 18 months. The first, a guest post from market specialist and international educator Dr Mark Ashwill, provides a strong foundation in the important trends and conditions that have shaped the Vietnamese education market in recent years. A second post, “Spotlight on Vietnam: quality issues, demand for study abroad and graduate employability,” offers updated information on outbound student numbers through 2012 and on the important relationship between quality of education and employment opportunities at home and the demand for study abroad.
Both posts point to an important education market in Southeast Asia, one where outbound mobility has grown strongly over the past decade and where demand for study abroad continues to be driven by concerns over capacity and quality in the domestic education system, and also by a hot economy and rising family incomes.
The…
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