Education for employment and career development--suggestions for young people in our family

Post high school college education has at least two purposes 1) to broaden us, make us better citizens and decision-makers, to live more meaningfully, etc., and 2) prepare us for working careers. For our young men, this education is crucial for their preparing to successfully fill their major Family Proclamation role of family provider, thereby contributing mightily to their own future happiness, the happiness of their spouse, and the growth and development of their children. For our young women, this education is equally significant, both to enable them to be a provider if circumstances require, and also as a partner in the family enterprise, homemaker, and nurturer of children.

There are many choices to be made regarding this post-high school preparation. Here are some things I have learned that might be helpful to the young people in this family:
1) Career preparation does not only occur in the college setting you receive as a young person. It is a life-long requirement. Most careers and professions are changing so fast (technological advancements, explosion of knowledge, etc.), that a person must be constantly renewing their knowledge to stay current in the field, let alone excel. Therefore most career learning takes place AFTER a person leaves higher education. A related truth is that many of us will not discover what we really want to do and what we will best best at until we have experienced a career for a number of years.
2) The majors and classes offered by universities and colleges are driven by what classes students choose, not necessarily by what will lead to good future employment or careers. Therefore, for their own protection and future, students need to have their own personal awareness and strategy, as they enroll in classes and commit to a major, as to what would be a useful career direction for themselves.
3) It seems to me that in selecting a field of study, persons need to get answers to two questions:
a) The current availability of jobs to graduates with this major, and
b) The range of options that the field has for a person to grow into a niche that might match their interests and capabilities. Hence, a critical objective for a student is to find a field of study, first, that has JOBS AVAILABLE and, second, that is BROAD ENOUGH TO ALLOW FLEXIBILITY FOR A PERSON TO GROW INTO THEIR POTENTIAL.
4) Many fields of college study simply do not offer very good prospects for future long-term remunerative employment. And, some are narrow and offer only limited options for a person to grow into a niche that matches their interests/capabilities.
5) One of the strengths of broader career paths, such as, business, education, nursing, medicine, law, social work, engineering, computer science, is that they each contain a variety of jobs that possess widely differing options for a range of worker interests, preferences, and capabilities.

For me, a useful concept is that both person interests/capabilities and job/career tasks can be represented on three dimensions that each scale from simple to complex. These dimensions are People (that, is interpersonal), Data (mental), and Things (physical). Some persons have a preference for working with people, others to analyze and conceptualize, others to work with their hands. For some it is a combination of these three focuses. Likewise, job tasks tend to emphasize one of these or to combine work with these in a variety of ways. Additionally, tasks and the skills to perform them range in complexity. In addition to personal preferences for the type and level of work, some people seem to have greater capacity to develop the highest level of skills in these various dimensions of work

For example, many jobs in the education field involve classroom teaching which requires a fairly high degree of both People and Data skills. Yet there is room in the field for persons who wants a greater emphasis on Data, as librarians, curriculum writers, researchers, etc. School administrative jobs balance People and Data skills slightly differently than for classroom instructors.

The field of law has court room lawyers on one end of the continuum (high People skill) and other jobs involving reading and analyzing case histories or writing opinions (high Data), and others balancing these dimensions.

I found a nice niche in social work, in program evaluation, strategic panning, research, and information system development that required Data skills that most social workers did not have, could not develop, and did not even want. Over time, I found that I had the ability to develop a set of skills unique for a social worker, that made my services be in demand and enabled me to work at interesting tasks and provide a secure and acceptable living for my family.

THE GOOD NEWS FROM THIS IS THAT MOST OF THE MAJOR, BROAD CAREER PATHS HAVE AMPLE OPPORTUNITY TO ACCOMMODATE PERSONS WITH ALMOST ANY SET OF INTERESTS/CAPABILITIES. In retrospect, I believe I could have found an interesting and successful niche for myself in several of the above fields.

Therefore, the challenge of choosing a direction in college work may not be so much in finding the perfect fit for your major–it is how to prepare to be able TO GET IN A DOOR TO START on a career path, in which options will be available that will become a good fit for you, your interests, abilities and needs. Which field you choose may not be so important.