A New Approach: 4 Fundamental Interests

A New Approach

What is needed is a new approach to helping young people identify their deeper and more fundamental interests in life as a basis for making smarter decisions about college, majors, jobs, and careers. The superficiality of current guidance approaches is the root cause of both anxiety that young people and their parents feel about these impending decisions and the high frequency of poor decisions that are made. For example, families may be swayed into choosing certain majors and career paths by superficial information and advice, particularly found on the internet (the world’s largest source of misinformation), such as lists of the top hot jobs this year, which college majors earn the most on average after graduation, or which jobs have the most long term security in face of outsourcing and economic ups-and-downs. The media, particularly prime time TV, bombard young people with false and misleading images of various jobs that frankly will not turn out to be exciting and fun as they are made to appear. For decades teaching has been portrayed as very fun and rewarding on TV. Recall for example, popular shows like Room 222, Fame, Welcome Back Kotter, Saved By The Bell, and more recently, the smash hit Glee; and the hit movies Goodbye Mr. Chips, Dead Poets Society, Stand And Deliver, Lean On Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus, and many more. The downside of teaching--that it is hard work with relatively low pay and the kids are not always adorable and funny—is almost always overlooked. It seems that half of America’s high school graduates want to go into forensic science following the success of crime scene/forensic laboratory shows in recent years. There is nothing wrong with these shows as entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with going into forensics. But choosing majors and careers based on media portrayal of jobs is risky at best because it creates false expectations about what that job and career are going to be like.

The problems, of course, do not lie in reading the lists of hot jobs, high paying jobs, etc.: such information can be interesting, informative, and occasionally even helpful. The problems come from two sources. First, it is risky to be swayed too much by reported trends and predictions, some of which lack insight into what is really behind the numbers, and some of which are of questionable validity in the first place. Second, it is a major mistake to base educational and career decisions on such superficial criteria alone, even if the data were accurate and valid. Certainly, if the “hot jobs of the future” line up with deeper reasons to consider a particular major or career, then all the better. But basing such decisions on superficial criteria alone has a high risk of not working out in the long run. Bloggers, journalists, editors, and other media producers, for example, have proven their fallibility in predicting societal changes and employment trends. By the time a young person gets through college, for example, the once “hot job” may have cooled off, possibly for reasons that were not obvious just a few years earlier. It should be alarming to anyone that the so-called “hot jobs” change significantly from year to year! Clearly, basing educational and career decisions on such fickle media coverage is a very bad idea.

Level	Criteria for Choosing A Major, Job, And Career
Superficial	Hot Job Areas High Paying Jobs Media Portrayal of Jobs “That Sounds Like FUN” Recession-Proof Jobs Best Jobs For Your Personality
Intermediate	Find Your Purpose Develop A Mission In Life Identify Your Spark/Legacy/Bliss Follow Your Passion Capitalize on Your Aptitude/Abilities
Deep	Fundamental Interests: Basic Priorities And Goals In Life

A large portion of America’s self-help industry focuses on educational and career choices. The Gallup Organization’s Strengths Finder (Rath, 2007) is popular right now, for example, and Richard Bolles’ annually updated What Color is Your Parachute? has been a worldwide bestseller for over four decades. These resources clearly have been entertaining, informative, and helpful to people for a long time. But each and every one is also limited as a basis for making educational and career choices because it fails to get at deeper underlying motivations and priorities that guide people’s lives and enable them ultimately to construct meaning out of what they did and accomplished.

How can discover those deeper motivations, priorities, and goals? One obvious way is to talk with older people, particularly those whose working life is behind them, as they reflect back on their jobs, careers, and lives. Listening to them, we can begin to see that people have very different fundamental interests that lead them to set different priorities and goals in their lives. Achieving these goals leads to a satisfying, meaningful, and fulfilling life. Not achieving these self-determined goals leads to lack of fulfillment and some degree of disappointment and regret. Fundamental interests, therefore, are the basis on which people validate their lives--that is, construct meaning, value, fulfillment and satisfaction in their jobs and careers and ultimately in life. Surprisingly, there are just a few major ways that people complete the sentence

I had a satisfying/meaningful/fulfilling life because I ________________________ .

One response is very common, in fact, almost everyone says it: I found most meaning and value in my relationships with family and friends. There may some hermits out there somewhere, living in cave in Tibet perhaps, but for the rest of us, close relationships are key to meaning and satisfaction in life. Of course, this is not necessary about work: You are going to have friends and family regardless of whether or not you go to college, and regardless of what major, job, and career you choose. You are going to spend about half your waking adult life at work, going to and from work, thinking about work, and working when you are not actually at work, and for the most part this will not involve your friends and family. The other half of your waking life, you can spend with friends and family. So let’s regard this as a universal way that almost everyone constructs meaning in their lives and this is not necessarily informative about college and career choices.

Outside of friends and family, many people find fulfillment in their accomplishments. They’ll say, for example that they worked hard and were highly successful in their career; they might have worked their way up to an important position; took pride in their prestigious title; had been given responsibility, power, and authority in their job. Part of their success may have been manifested in a high standard of living: they lived in a nice house, drove a new car, had material comforts and even wealth.

This type of answer stems from a strong achievement motivation that drives some people. Achievement oriented people strive for success defined and demonstrated by power, position, title, and role in their environment. They strive to be important in other people’s eyes. They want to be in charge, to control resources, and yes, make a lot of money and support a high standard of living. Other people respect and look up to high achievers because of their position. For achievement oriented people, working up to a position of importance, power, authority, and high pay defines personal success and ultimately validates their life. It yields deep meaning and satisfaction for them.

A fundamental interest in your life might be to strive for high levels of achievement. This is not necessary greedy or self-serving. Nor is it necessarily due to some deep inferiority complex, as some psychologists have suggested. Achievement is an important positive motivation and one that has made America great. The history of America has been largely the history of high achievers. Achievers are not necessary selfish, shallow, or power hungry. In fact, as you may know, compared to the rest of the world, American’s give far more money to charity than any other country. Much of this comes from high achievers who, as they make more money, feel the need to give more back to worthy causes.

Many studies show that first-born child and only children in particular tend to be more conservative and achievement oriented than later born children. Do parents just put more pressure on them to achieve from day one? Almost everyone has some degree of achievement motive. The key issue is where achievement ranks in your own personal priorities for your life.

Another thing that older people say is that they take pride in learning and acquiring knowledge throughout their lives. Motivation to learn is another fundamental interest that orients people toward accumulating a high degree of knowledge and understanding. Knowledge oriented people are curious about the world and have an insatiable drive to learn more about it. They are oriented toward a “life of mind” in that they constantly ask questions and seek knowledge and understanding. For them, admiration and respect of others comes from people recognizing their high degree of intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and--the ultimate compliment—wisdom. They like being sought out by others to answer questions and solve intellectual problems. Their satisfaction comes from always learning more, and never stopping learning in life. This satisfaction is primary internal: It is intrinsically rewarding to answer their own questions. They often have no need to prove their knowledge to anyone else.

How do achievement oriented and knowledge orientated people differ? Achievement oriented people are driven more by extrinsic rewards and they seek more social validation in their lives than knowledge oriented people. In other words, achievers want people to see, acknowledge, and respect their achievements. Knowledge oriented people are more intrinsically motivated and care little about social comparison, title, or role. Knowledge oriented people are more intellectual, whereas Achievement oriented people are more materialistic.

The question is not if you have either achievement motivation or motivation to learn: Everyone has both. High achievers may seek and value knowledge, and people devoted to knowledge may have some degree of achievement motivation as well. The key issue is the relative priority these two fundamental interests have in your life. You can only have one top priority at any one time in your life. The other priorities are not unimportant, but there can be only one #1, and that will be more important in constructing meaning in your life than the other lower level priorities.

The third type of fundamental interest stems from mastery motivation. Mastery motivation is the desire to develop your talents and skills to their highest possible level. Doing so is very deeply satisfying to mastery oriented people and is a strong basis for validating their lives. Such people say that they had a meaningful and satisfying life because they worked hard to perfect their art, craft, sport, or discipline and they reached a high level of proficiency and performance. In other words, they developed their talents and skills to a level of absolute mastery. Mastery motivation is very strong in some people. They simply cannot stand not being good at things that are important to them. They do not have to be good at everything—that’s perfectionism, which is often destructive in the quest for life fulfillment.

Mastery oriented people distinguish themselves from others and earn respect and social validation by publically demonstrating their skills or wares. Musicians, dancers, actors, and performers of all kinds, as well as athletes, artisans and craftspeople such as potters, weavers, woodworkers, glassblowers, and in fact everyone who relies on complex physical-motor skills to do their job is mastery oriented. A chef, neurosurgeon, Olympic athlete, ballet dancer, Zen master, even a ping-pong champion, may be driven to be best in the world at what they do. Their commitment drives them to endless training, rehearsal, and practice to develop ever higher levels of expertise and ultimately, total mastery of their discipline.

Doesn’t mastery overlap with knowledge and achievement? After all, mastery must involve learning and it is clearly an achievement to be best at something. Yes, they are related, but they are also distinctive in important ways. Knowledge is mental (I know and understand), whereas mastery is physical (I have skills and can perform). Knowledge can be completely private, in the knower’s head, so to speak, whereas mastery is usually demonstrated publically. You can share your knowledge (give someone an answer, for example), but you cannot give them your skill; you can just show them your skill. With mastery, the goal is improvement of skill to a level of proficiency. That can lead to achievements which in turn can lead to positions of power and authority, but those are just a consequence of mastery, they were not the primary goal. Conversely, achievement motivation leads people to seek positions of power and authority whether they require any degree of mastery or not. Mastery could contribute to achievement, but for achievement oriented people it is not the primary motivation or goal.

Lastly, some older people looking back at their lives take great pride in and derive deep satisfaction from the fact that they developed many deep and enduring social relationships. They derive meaning from being embedded in an extensive and intensive network of relationships. Such socially oriented people are “people people,” and they often pursue jobs and careers that not only put them into frequent interaction with people, but also often involve caring, sharing, advising, and helping others. Such people are driven by the “social imperative” to band together, build, and maintain social relationships in life. For them, people and relationships are the top priority in work and in life. A commitment to serving others extends beyond the normal circle of friends and family that almost everyone has to an indefinite number of people with whom they will have contact in their lives. Likewise, their commitment to people and relationships extends across both their leisure time and their work hours. Friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors, clients, are of top interest to get to know, to communicate with, to empathize with, and to care about, support, encourage, guide, and help.

The Abilities-Interest (A-I) Matrix

The Abilities-Interest (A-I) Matrix

Abilities must be part of any systematic approach to identifying majors, jobs, and careers, but only broad abilities as discussed above, and they are primarily useful in the negative direction—lack of abilities can help eliminate certain types of jobs. A person’s broad abilities must then be used in combination with what they define as important to do and accomplish in their lives. It is not just what someone regards as “fun” or “interesting” to do in life, it is much deeper. These are “fundamental” interests because they are deep, longer-term goals and priorities, as opposed to more superficial and temporary interests. Fundamental interests develop during the transition from adolescence to adulthood and can serve, in combination with individual abilities, as a useful basis for guiding life decisions about college, majors, jobs, and careers.

This combination is called the Abilities-Interest Matrix and it helps individuals focus both their strengths and weakness and their fundamental interests and priorities in life. Neither abilities nor interests alone will suffice as a basis for making life choices. Choosing a particular career path based on either abilities alone or interests alone can be a big mistake. It is essential to take both into consideration in order to make smart decisions.

Abilities

There are many different ways of dividing up and labeling different human abilities. One popular framework was proposed by Howard Gardner in his best-selling book Frames of Mind (1983) in which he postulated nine basic human “intelligences”—what most of would call “abilities.” There is good consensus among psychologist and educators about at least six of these abilities, which have been given various summary labels by different authors. They are:

Ability	Alternative Labels	Description
1. Math	Quantitative Skills Logical-Mathematical Analytical Skills “Math Brain”	Good with symbols, numbers, and math. Strong abstract mathematical reasoning, symbolic logic, and mathematical problem solving.
2. Verbal	Linguistic Skills Language Skills	Good with words and language. Excel at reading, writing, and learning languages. High verbal memory.
3. Visual-Spatial	Graphical Skills Artistically Talented	Ability to visualize and create curves, shapes and spatial forms, motions, and relationships. Strong aesthetic and design sense. Visually artistic.
4. Physical-Motor	Bodily-Kinesthetic Athletic	Good body awareness and control. Ability to memorize and reproduce complex body movements with coordination, timing, efficiency, and grace.
5. Musical	Musically Talented	Skilled at perceiving, memorizing, and reproducing sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. Sensitive to subtle differences in rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, and melody.
6. Social	Interpersonal Skills “People-Person”	Skilled at interacting with others. Highly sensitive to others' perspectives, feelings, and motivations. Capable of developing deep and lasting social relationships.

As outlined above, your strengths don’t necessarily narrow down your choices of majors, job, about careers—at least not very much. But, knowing your strengths can help focus your search in promising areas for you. Your lack of certain types of strengths, on the other hand (let’s not call them “weaknesses”) are extremely important to identify and can definitely eliminate many majors, jobs, and careers from any further consideration. So, a first step toward finding yourself in the A-I matrix is to identify not only your strengths, but also your areas of “non-strength.” For example, if you are not good at math, you are almost certainly not going to be an engineer, mathematician, statistician, actuary, accountant, scientist, math or science teacher, and so forth. Lack of strong verbal and language skills will nearly rule out being a writer, reporter, translator, copyeditor, novelist, speechwriter, court reporter, etc. If you lack visual-spatial abilities you almost certainly will not be an artist, sculptor, graphics designer, illustrator, web designer, architect, city planner, or choreographer. Without strong physical-motor skills, you are very unlikely to be a professional athlete, dancer, stage performer, craftsperson, tradesperson, or lots of other occupations that require physical performance. If you are not musically inclined forget about being a musician, music teacher, recording technician or engineer, singer, conductor, or composer, etc. If you are not socially skilled, you are not likely to be a counselor, therapist, social worker, customer service representative, teacher, supervisor, salesperson, or politician.

Identifying lack of strengths is the first half of the A-I matrix. The other half is fundamental interests. Fundamental interests are basic life orientations that define what is important to you and provide the basis for constructing meaning in your life. People have different fundamental interests because they have different motivations that drive them to set different priorities and pursue different ideals and goals in their lives. In the end, satisfaction with your life will come from achieving the goals that are important to you—that is, goals that match your deepest motivations and fundamental interests.

It goes without saying that anyone who does not achieve goals they set for themselves will be less than satisfied with their life. The important point here goes far beyond that: Anyone who achieves the “wrong” goals—goals that they do not value because those goals do not match their fundamental interests— they will be as unsatisfied with their life as if they had achieved nothing at all. In other words, the only way to live a satisfying and rewarding life is to be true to yourself by pursuing and achieving things that are fundamentally important to you. Anything else will be deeply disappointing to you in the long run.

Know Thyself

Know Thyself

The age-old maxim “Know Thyself” stretches back to well before the Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates (400 BC). It captures the importance of self-understanding that is echoed throughout the centuries in the writings of likes of Alexander Pope, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and many others. Getting to know and understand yourself is a major developmental task of childhood and adolescence and it takes on even more importance during the transition to adulthood because it is the only solid basis for decision making about the future. It may sound obvious, but it is true: If you do not know yourself, you are more likely to make decisions that do not fit you, and you will regret these decisions in the long run. The better you understand yourself, the better basis you have for making smart decisions that fit you.

Young people (and their parents) who are panicked about deciding what to do after high school often protest, “I don’t know what to do!” and “How can I know what I want to do for the rest of my life?” What they are really saying is, “I don’t know myself well enough yet to make smart decisions about the future.” A big step in the right direction is to start working on understanding yourself. A key developmental task is to develop perspective so you can see yourself more accurately and objectively and insight into who you really are—your individuality, your interests, and your values, priorities, and goals. Of extreme importance for decision making about the future is to understand your own strengths and weaknesses and your deeper interests, priorities, and goals in life. For most people, these will be the only true basis for making life decisions.

Approaches To Vocational Guidance

There are lots of sources of college and career advice out there for young people making the transition to college. Most of it is not very helpful, and some of it is highly questionable. The common approach to vocational guidance for almost 100 years, for example, has been to see how your self-reported abilities match those reported by people in different jobs. The assumption is that if your abilities match people in a given job, or match what somebody thinks that job requires, then you would be a good candidate to go into that line of work. There are serious problems with this approach. First, just because you have the abilities to do a job does not mean that you will like it. It could be a major disappointment to go into a job because you can do it, only to find out that you hate it! Second, almost everyone has lots of abilities that match many different jobs, maybe hundreds of jobs. The abilities that occupational inventories ask about are not very specific to a particular job. In fact, when employers are asked what abilities they want in new employees, they almost always cite fairly broad attributes like good communication skills, ability to work in a team, good problem solving skills, creativity, or they cite virtues like honesty, integrity, accountability, and so forth. Clearly, none of these abilities help narrow down job choices in any meaningful way.

Of course, abilities are important to jobs, but in the opposite way that they are normally used. Your individual pattern of strengths and weaknesses don’t tell you what you should do, they tell you what you should not do. Of this, there can be no doubt. If you are not good at math, for example, you definitely have little potential to go into engineering. High level math skills are primary tools for all engineers, period. Likewise, if you have weak verbal skills and cannot write well, you should definitely not go into journalism. If you have poor physical-motor coordination you probably should not consider being a woodworker, potter, weaver, painter, or artisan of any kind; a dancer or dance instructor; a performer, or a professional athlete. If you are not mechanically inclined, you are poorly suited to be a repairperson, plumber, electrician, mechanic, and so forth. It may sound trite to say “Don’t go into fields that you are weak in,” but that is about all we can get out of ability inventories.

The fact is that it is not helpful to say “Get a job that capitalizes on your strengths,” Why not? For almost everyone, their relative strengths could match a very wide range of possible jobs. Any attempt to identify specific abilities to match specific jobs would be ludicrous. Could we use the question, “Would you be good at holding an electrical device with a glowing rod at one end and fusing two pieces of metal together?” to identify future welders? No, of course not. It does not matter if a person said, “Yes! I would be good at that!” This approach is fatally flawed. Even if the person is right: (1) they might be good at many other things as well, and (2) they might not like welding whatsoever. Lack of abilities can eliminate possible jobs, but abilities will never provide a valid basis for choosing specific jobs for anyone.

After ability inventories, the next most common approach to vocational guidance is based on personality. It sounds appealing at first that if jobs require different types of personalities, then assessing individual personality must provide a valid basis for optimally matching people to jobs that suit them. It sounds good, built it does not work. At all. It is simply not true that people currently in any specific jobs have similar personalities. In fact, the opposite is true. Take a look at people in virtually any vocation and you will find a wide variety of personalities. Yep, all over the map. But surely, certain types of people must be better at certain jobs, right? Nope. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), for example, is one of the most widely used and researched personality inventories in the world. Decades of research have failed to find any relationship between the MBTI personality types and job performance or job satisfaction. The results are so clearly negative that the publishers disavow any use of the MBTI for personnel assessment or employee selection.

How Important Is Your College Major?

Is the college major all that important? Yes and no. It can be, but does not have to be. It is more important for anyone going into a ‘vertically integrated” program that prepares them for a specific profession, such as nursing, engineering, architecture, actuarial science, accounting, etc., than for “academic” majors. The good news is: A major university may have well over 100 undergraduate majors, and only a handful are highly vertically integrated and therefore require early entry and lead to a specific professional career. Most majors are broad and flexible, so they permit later entry and they prepare people for a very wide range of jobs and career paths after they graduate.

Your undergraduate major might not “determine the rest of your life,” but at minimum it will determine to some extent which courses, or at least types of courses, you have to take to get your bachelor’s degree. It will also likely influence at least to some extent your first job and initial career path. For most majors, after that first job, all bets are off. Statistically, you are unlikely to be working in a field related to your major ten years after you graduate. All that being said, it is advantage to pick a major that you like, and one that leads to types of jobs that you might stay in for a while.

Unfortunately, some students do make a mistake and get into a major, particularly a pre-professional one, which leads them to a job that they do not like at all. A high proportion of education students, for example, do not last long teaching in the public schools. In some school districts, half of the new teachers drop out in their first two or three years. Why does this happen? It seems safe to say that these young people did not know what teaching was going to be like. They may have had a false impression, shaped perhaps by the media, of a more idealized teaching experience. In addition, they may have underestimated the amount of work required to be a good teacher, and over-estimated the rewards, financial and otherwise. So they quit and move on to something else, with a bachelor’s degree that has limited relevance to most other jobs.

There is no question that a major that leads to a more acceptable first job or two is better than starting all over right away. Many, if not most, people will start over someday when they change careers, but of course, there are some who will stay in their career path for a long time, a few for their entire working life. Since most people will not stay in their career path very long, those who crash out after just 1-3 years are just ahead of those who will change careers at a more common and acceptable period (say 5-10 years). What difference does it make if you change careers after 2 or 3 years versus 6 or 8 or more? I think anyone who prepared for a job for four or more years of college and lasted only one to three years is going to experience some regret. They are likely to feel that they wasted their college years. They may feel that they could have been further ahead had they picked a different major and career path.

Reducing Pressure on College Decision Making

Many young people and their parents are concerned, fearful and even panicked about making choices about what to do after high school. Should I go to college? If so, which one? What should I major in? What job should I try to get? Admittedly, these are often the first big decisions that young people play a central role in. Additionally, they may feel ill prepared to make decisions are going to “determine their rest of their lives.”
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1. Longitudinal follow up studies have shown that ten years after college graduation, most people are not working in a job related to their undergraduate major. So, the idea that choosing a major will “determine my whole life” is completely and demonstrably false. College is higher education, not training for a specific job.
2. People these days change careers several times during their lives. This was not true 100 years ago, but it is now, and it is especially true of younger generations born in the 1980’s and later. They don’t just change jobs, they switch to completely different fields. Obviously, the specific knowledge and skills gained in their college major will not generalize to completely different jobs. What carries over is general competencies, basic communication skills, abilities to gather, organize, analyze, and summarize information, write clearly, make clear and compelling presentations, work effectively within a team, identify and solve problems, and so forth. None of these skills are unique to any major.
3. Most, but not all, college majors are flexible enough to allow entry after the first three or four semesters of college. It can be an advantage to get into a major early, but for most majors it is not necessary to declare early be successful. In fact, many liberal arts colleges do not let students declare a major until they register for the first semester of their junior year. There are a few “vertically integrated” majors where the courses are almost all specified and many courses are prerequisites for the next course in the sequence. Not starting off in the sequence right away, therefore, creates a problem. Choosing the major later would require extra time to go back and pick up the missed courses. Engineering and Nursing are two examples of highly vertically integrated majors. However, many of these fields have alternative entry points to get into the profession. Nursing, for example, has BS to RN retraining programs to prepare people with virtually any undergraduate major to become registered nurses.
4. You might envy someone who says they already know what they will major in, but their decision-making is not over. Ask someone who says they are going to major in Engineering, for example, which field of engineering they are going in to: Aerospace Engineering? Biological Engineering? Chemical Engineering? Civil Engineering? Electrical? Computer? Industrial? Nuclear? Moreover, each field has many subfields. Civil Engineering, for example has four subfields: Geotechnical, Structural, Transportation, and Environmental. And each subfield has specializations: Within Civil Engineering, for example, Structural Engineering has specializations in Earthquake Engineering, Wind Engineering; Architectural Engineering, and Ocean Engineering. Do these choices matter? Yes they do! They will determine which courses you take, what type of job and pay you get, and where and what type of environment you work in. How’s that for pressure?
5. The Masters is the new bachelors. More American adults today have a masters degree or higher than had 4-year college degree in 1961. Not surprisingly, a bachelor’s degree is not the golden key to success the way it was fifty years ago. Many young people today will go on to get a masters degree during their working life. In fact, a masters degree is increasingly required for entry level positions in many fields. Most professional masters degrees do not require a bachelors in a particular field, but accept smart, motivated students with almost any undergraduate preparation. Lack of undergrad courses in an area may force a student to take additional prerequisite courses in the masters program. But it does preclude students from choosing a field after they finish their bachelor’s degree.
6. Lastly, the pressure to make decisions under uncertainty—where we don’t have enough information, and do not know how things will work out—is a universal aspect of human life. It does not apply just to choosing a college or major. So get used to it. Everyone is in the same boat when facing decisions throughout their lives—choosing a spouse, choosing between job offers, buying a house, deciding to move, etc. It seems worse to young people facing big decisions for the first time. One of the lessons to be learned is that no one has all the information they want or need before these decisions have to be made and no one has a crystal ball to look forward and see what will happen in the future.

Global Megatrends That Impact Your Decisions About College

Background
Several global megatrends have building since the millennium and have converged to create a “perfect storm” of new issues to consider when making college decisions. Parents and youth need to be aware of these trends and broaden their perspectives about college education in the 21st century to make the best college choices now and for the future.

In a “Flat World” in which jobs can be easily outsourced to less expensive workers around the globe, for example, job-specific knowledge and practical skills are less valuable and will no longer guarantee employment (at least not in the US). A new “creative class” of employees is also rising around the world—employees who are more versatile and adaptive thinkers, problem-solvers, and creative idea generators. Trends like these--along with the mounting pressure to get at least a masters degree, the growing importance of working effectively in diverse multidisciplinary teams, and the fact that more and more people are increasingly changing not just jobs, but careers many times throughout their lives—are forcing us to totally rethink the purpose and value of college education.

The world is changing rapidly, the job market is shifting under our feet, and no one can tell what jobs and careers may be like in just a few years. The college choice that makes the most sense today is one that provides a nurturing environment for the development of the whole person; for building personal strengths and generalizable skills; and for producing more competent, creative, and adaptable human beings who are not just prepared for a job—they are prepared for life.

#1. The Flattening of the World (Tom Friedman). The convergence of technologies that has allowed seamless global communication, collaboration, supply chaining, and especially outsourcing is rapidly and radically redefining the job market for young people entering the workforce. Almost any task that can be broken down into components that can be outsourced to less expensive workers around the globe will be. Parents and youth underestimate degree to which this impacts current and future jobs and careers in the US. This global trend also increases the importance of remaining adaptable throughout one’s life and as Freidman puts it, “learning how to learn.” Specific job-related knowledge and practical skills rapidly become obsolete in the flattening world. Adaptability will be the most critical asset a future worker can have. Without question, this diminishes the value of certain kinds of pre-professional college programs, while raising the stock of broad liberal arts education.

#2. The Rise of the Creative Class (Richard Florida). There is an emergent economic class of knowledge workers, intellectuals, and creative professionals who are becoming more valued by society (and employers!) because they fuel economic growth as the West shifts from agriculture and industry to a knowledge-based economy. The premium is therefore shifting away from static knowledge and practical skills toward more versatile and adaptive thinkers, problem-solvers, and creative idea generators. The obvious implication is that the development of fundamental competencies such as reading, writing, speaking, being able to find and appraise information, conceptual and critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, etc., are becoming more important than acquisition of “practical” knowledge and job skills. And this, of course, is exactly what liberal arts education has always been about.

#3. The Master’s is the New Bachelor’s. The demographic trend in the US shows that this is literally true: More adults today have a master’s degree or higher, than had a bachelor’s degree in 1961. In other words, a bachelor’s degree today is about equivalent to a high school degree a half-century ago. For many careers, a bachelor’s degree is no longer the entry level degree. A master’s degree is not only becoming required to move up the career ladder, it is increasingly required to get an interview for certain types of first-rung jobs. A very high proportion of job descriptions on websites like Monster.com, for example, include the phrase “Bachelor’s required, masters preferred” and this is increasing every year. This obviously places more importance at the undergraduate level on the development of basic competencies and permits professional specialization later at the master’s level. In other words, students have more time to develop, define, and refine their interests before specializing. The idea of a broadly based bachelor’s degree leading to professional specialization at the master’s level is new to many parents and young people.

#4. The Rise of the Multi-Career Lifestyle. Life history research indicates two important trends related to education and careers. First, 10 years after graduating, most people have jobs unrelated to their college major. Despite all of the agonizing that many college students go through in selecting a major, it is simply not true that it determines their job or career path. There are “vertically organized” fields where specific training leads to specific careers--engineering and nursing are examples—but for most people, only general competencies carry over from college to their actual work. Second, people are changing careers more frequently throughout their lives compared to just 50 years ago. It is well known that Americans change jobs an average of 8-10 times in their lives. What is less known and is accelerating is that they are changing their careers—literally doing something completely different. Like the old board game “Chutes and Ladders” people who have climbed up one career ladder often slide down to a lower position and salary to start over on another. But they are increasingly willing to do so and, in fact, their success in one career may enable them financial to start over at a lower rung on a different ladder not just once, but several times in their lives. Undoubtedly, the increase in dual income families since WWII has enabled one spouse at time to start over in a new field, while the other maintains a higher level of income. Again, the implication for college education is obvious—only general competencies carry over to new careers. Or to say another way, four years preparing for a “temporary” job is not smart. Four year building deep and broad competencies for a lifetime is.