Ill-equipped Graduates: Making the 'Right' Choices

Over the years generations of bewildered graduates have been comforted by Mary Schmich’s words:

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

 However it seems Schimch’s advice is outdated. Now more than ever there is an expectation amongst employers for graduates to have a clear idea of what they want to do with their lives, how they plan to achieve their goals, and an array of relevant experience. The term ‘transferable skills’, a shining beacon of hope for any student pursuing a humanities degree is losing its effectiveness as in today’s workplace graduates are expected to have concrete knowledge and experience of the field in which they wish to forge a career. This can be seen in the reduction of generalist entry level positions offered by governmental and international organizations. Whereas in the past a number of generalist graduates would be recruited with an eye on specialist skills developing over a number of years, nowadays it seems having a specialism is one of the only ways to enter prestigious graduate schemes with the UN, government and many aid organizations.

Of course, this may seem absurd. Most graduates having been in education for seventeen years do not have a clue about their future career because they have not had the opportunity to use their skills in the workplace and discover what they really excel at. Furthermore entering a world with such an abundance of career options many graduates have continuously changing ideas about their future, thus may not have limited any prior work experience, volunteering or additional qualifications to one specific role. The result of this is a delayed generation of adults stuck in ‘gradulthood’, Flitting from one internship to another, living at home and working menial jobs to make ends meet whilst trying to figure out their specialities and gain the necessary experience to getting a paid job.

To have relevant experience in a specialist field by the time you leave university implies that students are expected to have tailored their education and work experience from AS-Level onwards to this career; that their course choices, degree and work experience have been chosen in accordance to the wants of a future employer. By suggesting that teenagers must be aware of what they want to achieve from an earlier age shatters one of the greatest attributes of adolescence, idealism. Since I was seven I have wanted to pursue roughly 110 different careers ranging from pilot to florist. This was not down to indecisiveness or lack of direction but the fact that I was simply exploring my options; deciding what I enjoyed and how to turn this into a career in light of changing interests or knowledge. There was never a doubt in my mind that if I wanted to I could achieve these goals, an idealistic confidence that the next generation, raised in a world of recession, unemployment and nepotism, may not have the pleasure of enjoying.

It seems Britain’s colleges have left a generation unequipped with the knowledge of how their educational choices will affect their future job prospects, a failure worsened by the lack of careers advice and assistance offered by universities. Colleges need to be more aware of the implications of their student’s decisions five years down the line and offer more practical advice to students choosing their courses as to what value their qualifications will hold in the future. The downside of this is that Britain’s young people have to make ‘life’ decisions earlier than ever having the pressure of a career overshadowing their education and the ideal of ‘pursuing what you love’ perhaps compromised.  

Whilst the necessity for school leavers to begin seriously thinking about their career at sixteen may seem overwhelming, being aware of your employment prospects when deciding which A-levels or degree to take is a way to avoid becoming just another unemployed graduate statistic. College and University careers services need to offer more practical help to students and really emphasise the value of languages, extracurricular activities and work experience. If students can be encouraged to pursue internships, join societies and learn languages then these skills and experiences will help them narrow down their career choices and gain specialist knowledge in a field, making them more employable when graduation comes around and less likely to fall into the trap of gradulthood.

*This article is also published at www.hongkongmorningstar.com*