How to Choose a College That Delivers the Value you Really Want
It’s time to rethink the way we understand the relation between choosing a college and preparing for a career.
Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is a wonderful mid-twentieth century coming of age novel. It centers on Charles Ryder and follows him from his initial arrival at Oxford University as a teenager through his career as a painter and finally to his position as an officer in the war.
Unlike his best friend, Sebastian (who lives at the titular Brideshead estate), Charles does not come from old and boundless money. But he participates in Sebastian’s wealth as they share a lavish lifestyle while attending Oxford together. Charles, Sebastian, and their cadre focus on—shall we say—the finer things in college. Worried that Charles is squandering his education, his cousin Jasper drops by his rooms at 11am on a weekday. In a foreshadowing of darker things to come, Charles brushes him off and then offers him champagne: “I usually have champagne at this time of day,” says Charles.
In another scene, the derelict crew drink cocktails and eat gull’s eggs (a delicacy) in Sebastian’s apartment when Anthony Blanche, the most decadent of them all, grabs a megaphone and recites T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland from the balcony “to the sweatered and muffled throng that was on its way to the river.
“I, Tiresias have foresuffered
all," he sobbed to them
from the Venetian arches—
"Enacted on this same d-divan
or b-bed,
I who have sat by Thebes
below the wall
And walked among the l-l-
lowest of the dead"
A remarkable aspect of Waugh’s depiction of Charles’s college years is the relative absence of study. I suppose a story about young people learning Latin, history, and rhetoric wouldn’t make for good reading. And how many college novels demonstrate the same imbalance of social life vs. study? Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons, Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, Michael Chabon’s The Wonder Boys. A similar list of movies would be endless.
The fact is that when we think about college, when we imagine it, we don’t think of the hours upon hours spent in classrooms and at desks reading. Instead, we might think of building lifelong friendships, exploring new ideas, and going on adventures. In fact, research shows that students’ relationships with faculty and peers are the strongest predictors of satisfaction with one’s college experience upon graduation (Gallup Purdue Index). Though few of us picture ourselves reciting modernist poetry from memory in our dorms, Waugh’s depiction is actually typical of the social environments that dominate our mind’s picture of college. And any student of culture knows that how we imagine our experiences really does affect how we experience them.
In turn, this skewed way of thinking about college influences how young people choose which college to attend. We picture ourselves in a certain place and social setting, and the most attractive picture wins.
How do people choose a college?
How do 18-year-olds today actually choose which college to attend? There’s no single answer, and much depends on social and economic demographics. But a couple years back, I spent time talking with high school college counselors in Southern California—at public schools, private schools, and homeschool groups. What I learned may or may not come as a surprise: 18-year-olds’ college decisions are predominantly personal and often irrational. That’s not to say that they’re irrelevant, but rather that they don’t fall within the expected scripts of “reasons to choose college.”
“My friend’s brother went to UCSB and seemed to like it.”
“I got a brochure from Denver University sophomore year and have wanted to go ever since.”
“The woman at the college fair was really friendly.”
“My dad went to Baylor and said he’d pay for it if I went too.”
What do you think most people would guess is the #1 reason students choose one school over another? The answer: majors and jobs. Many believe that students choose a college for a singular major that will set them upon a specific career track. And that’s what universities want you to believe, that job training is the reason to attend college. Just look at the marketing.
But what most people think is the #1 reason is more like the #10 reason. In fact, the college counselors were spot on. Most 18-year-olds’ reasons are personal and do not follow the university-driven script that says people choose college for a specific job.
Michael Horn and Bob Moesta studied how people choose college in a book aptly called, Choosing College. They employed a “jobs to be done” consumer model where they determine what jobs 18-year-olds hire college to do for them. In other words, when a student chooses to attend, say, Gonzaga University, what will that specific school do for them that another school or even another product can’t do as well?
Most common reasons for “hiring” a specific college include meeting the expectations of others or oneself; getting away … but often not too far away; taking that next step in life; and simply going to the “best” school they get accepted to. Notice what is not on that list: getting a job; choosing a specific major; getting a certain kind of vocational training.
The reasons students choose colleges are personal, but they’re also part of customized equations.
GEOGRAPHY vs. COST vs. WHAT MY PARENTS WANT vs. HOW MUCH THEIR BRANDING APPEALS TO ME
These equations are not insignificant, but college is a huge investment and should be considered with clarity. Most of us are not independently wealthy like Charles’s friend, Sebastian.
Be Informed
Education is not consumption. At Hildegard, we seek to form young people who will make culture and not merely consume it. Still, we are all consumers when we enroll at a college.
Many universities offer a proposition: you invest lots of money and four years, and we’ll give you . . . what exactly? Jobs, networks, credentials, memories? Career preparation is typically the first promise that universities make. Yet it’s a promise worth interrogating. If you do, you’ll find that it isn’t a promise that universities can keep, at least not as they’re currently structured.
There are some facts that big universities don’t want you to know.
First, only 27% of grads have careers in a field related to their college majors (Washington Post).
Second, 80% of college students change their major at least once, and many do more than once (National Center of Education Statistics).
If we combine these two statistics, we find that only 5% of grads will have careers in professional fields related to their college majors. That’s an astounding fact that contradicts the reasons universities tell you to choose them.
Say you choose a certain school because of its major in Public Administration, counting on its promises that a specific program will train you and launch you into a stable career. According to the statistics, there’s only a 5% chance that you’ll have a career in Public Administration. And even if you did, consider the fact that 61% of college grads would go back and change their major if they could! (bestcolleges.com).
So we know that, statistically speaking, universities do not actually launch most of their graduates into specific careers. Now let’s explore universities’ promise to prepare you for the workforce.
A significant majority of employers report that college grads are not job ready (JobOutlook, 2018).
85% of the jobs that will be available to grads in the year 2030 haven’t even been invented yet (Institute for the Future and Dell Technologies, 2018).
Let’s add the cost of college to this equation:
Fewer than 1 in 5 college grads say that their education was worth the cost (Strada Education).
The average student loan debt is more than $30,000 (Inst. for College Access and Success)
The price of college is increasing 8-times faster than wages are increasing (Forbes).
How should we choose a college?
Do these statistics mean that students should not work hard at college to gain skills that will make them employable? Absolutely not. Data shows that one’s academic performance in college indeed correlates to future career gains.
But what these statistics do suggest is that we should rethink the way we understand the relation between choosing a college and preparing for a career.
1. Prepare for a number of career paths, not a specific one.
Outside of a select few majors, do not expect to have a career in a field connected to a certain major. This should affect the way you think about choosing a major. But that’s a topic for another post.
2. Understand what you’re paying for.
If you’re paying $40,000 a year to experience a different part of the country, then own that reason. If you’re paying $1,500 a year to a community college for the chance to be among the mere 30% who transfer to a four-year school, then acknowledge the risk.
3. Embrace your passions.
If one’s major isn’t a strong predictor of future success, then what is? Research shows that a student’s drive and performance are much better indicators of a thriving career. So when you choose which college to attend, think about what will motivate you, what will challenge you.
4. Consider alternative colleges.
If you look at the information above and think, universities don’t seem to be doing what they say they’re doing, you’re right. There’s a crisis in higher education. Enrollment is down. Colleges are closing. And graduates are complaining about the return on their investment. But there’s hope. In an economy like ours, when something is broken, new solutions emerge. New schools with alternative approaches to education, vocation, mission, and finances are on the rise. Such schools tend to be affordable and focused on what matters to them most.
P.S. Hildegard College is California’s newest alternative institution of higher education. We are a community of seekers and builders. We strive to learn what is true and good, and we join together to take action. We look to the past to change the future. If you’re interested in learning more and keeping up with the latest news and programs, subscribe to our mailing list.
P.P.S: There’s a wonderful ten-part BBC miniseries of Brideshead Revisted starring a young Jeremy Irons that everybody should watch—but only after having read the book first!
