An Exploration of College Career Services

The purpose of higher education has long been contested over the years. There have been two schools of thought around this issue, viewing a college degree as either a means towards Utopia or a means of utility (Appiah, 2015). The utilitarian perspective focuses on the tangible outcomes that result from a college education, specifically around skills acquisition and employment opportunities. On the other hand, the Utopian perspective views college as a venue (in both the literal and figurative sense) for self-exploration and self-discovery that ultimately molds a student into becoming a well-rounded member of society who can contribute to its advancement through developed ideas, skills, and values. With the trend of increasing costs of tuition seeming to continue for the foreseeable future, the question around higher education’s purpose remains at the forefront of this highly debated topic. Because the majority of students transition after college from the classroom to the workforce regardless of whether or not they have adopted a utilitarian or a Utopian motivation for pursuing higher education, it is crucial to explore a pivotal resource that serves as a bridge in this transition: the college center for career services.

At its core, a career center provides valuable resources to students that prepare them for post-college employment. Career centers offer services to students who are faced with the difficult decision of choosing a major, learning about various career fields, and securing internships and jobs (Schaub, 2012).

This paper will (1) explore the function of career services; (2) provide historical context around its existence; (3) examine the role of career services within different institution types including liberal arts and research colleges, minority-serving institutions, and community colleges; and (4) outline future trends and implications in the ongoing discussion around students’ return on investment.

Students look to their career services offices to aid them in identifying career options, gaining knowledge about companies and industries, searching for job opportunities, preparing professional documents such as résumés and cover letters, developing interview skills, and evaluating offers (Schaub, 2012). There are several core ‘basic indicator” programs that comprehensive career services offices would commonly include: assessment and computer-assisted guidance, career education and outreach programming, career fairs, career information, career planning classes for credit, experiential education and internships, individual career counseling by appointment, intake or drop-in advising or counseling, job listings and résumé referral services, and on-campus interviewing (Garis, 2014).

However, in response to the utility versus Utopia concept, many career centers are moving towards models that answer the needs of both sides. While career centers have most often been known to meet the vocational development needs of students such as the ones outlined above by Schaub and Garis, they have also had to begin incorporating competencies around helping students develop additional skills that are necessary for success on the job: time management, multitasking, collaboration, grit and perseverance, etc. The stakeholders of career centers have also shifted to include alumni of the institutions they serve (Garis, 2014).

At New York University for instance, the Wasserman Center for Career Development has defined its mission as “empowering students and alumni to succeed at every stage of their career and professional development by creating opportunities to develop the essential skills and experience necessary to thrive in a global economy” (2016).

A historical review of its evolution over time is necessary to further understand the function and purpose of career services, specifically around how it has answered the shifting needs of students in response to fluctuating external elements like the economy and technology.

Career services in American history traces its roots back to the early 1900s, when a man by the name of Frank Parsons took his vision of a better world and, between 1906 to 1908, established the vocational guidance movement. This movement created the Vocations Bureau in the Civic Service House in Boston, Massachusetts, which is regarded as the nation’s first career center (Jones, 1994).

Parsons himself described the purpose of the Vocations Bureau:

The purposes of the Bureau would be “to aid young people in choosing an occupation, preparing themselves for it, finding an opening in it, and building up a career of efficiency and success. And to help any, young and old, who seek counsel as to opportunities and resources for the betterment of their condition and the means of increasing their economic efficiency” (1908).

Several years after the establishment of the Vocations Bureau, industrialization and a post-World War II baby boom created an influx of students in the 1920s and 1930s. This then heightened the need for educational and vocational guidance for graduating teachers, and resulted in faculty’s slow movement away from their mentoring roles (Vinson et al., 2011).

In the 1940s and 1950s after World War II, higher education and career guidance shifted towards a focus on job placement. A booming economy and a rising employer need for qualified candidates, as well as the need to find employment opportunities for graduating war veterans who had availed of their GI Bill educational benefits served as key markers of this era in career services (Casella, 1990).

The 1970s and 1980s moved career services from the passenger seat to the backseat in a student’s college journey. During this time, higher education as a whole was transitioning into a development model, placing the responsibility of learning and educational outcomes in the hands of students themselves (Kretovicks et al., 1999). This new model forced students to own their career development and job search, while employers and recruiters also started taking ownership of their respective “matching process.” Career centers, as a result, were able to move away from job placement duties and return to their original functions of counseling students, aiding in career planning, and preparing students for their job searches (Casella, 1990). Instead of measuring a career center’s success through amount of job placements, metrics such as number of student appointments and attendance at workshops and other events became the field standard (Dey & Cruzvergara, 2014).

In the 1990s and 2000s, the dot-com boom saw the rebirth of increased competition among employers for young, innovative college talent. This manifested in a career services realignment of how it engaged employers and facilitated connections with students. Career centers began to formally organize and host programs such as networking events, career and job fairs, and recruitment activities (Dey & Real, 2010). As the availability of funding became tighter at the university level, career centers also started to adopt a sales-centric model, piloting corporate partnership programs as a way to generate revenue while simultaneously positioning students for employment opportunities with these corporate partners. During this time period, universities started to define a career center’s success based more on student learning outcomes and less on student attendance and participation in career-related programs (Dey & Cruzvergara, 2014).

On the heels of the economic recession of 2008, career services as a whole is currently at a phase of repositioning. Instead of being a resource that is most often utilized by students only as they approach graduation, career centers are being introduced to students as early as freshman orientation to ensure that students are actively keeping professional development in mind throughout their entire college career. While standard offerings such as career counseling, résumé assistance, and career programming remain, career centers are continuing to evolve and determine how to meet more than just the obvious vocational needs of students, and supplement these traditional services with more ways to connect with professionals and alumni (Dey & Cruzvergara, 2014).

It is apparent that career services has experienced a rich history, affected by interesting forces such as changing economy trends, the rise of technology, and shifting development models within higher education. This evolution has affected the way career services exists and functions at various types of institutions, such as liberal arts and research colleges, minority-serving institutions, and community colleges.

Students pursuing a liberal arts education prove to be challenging stakeholders for career centers because a career path for these students tends to be broad, fluid, and less defined than the career paths for students pursuing study in an applied professional program such as business, education, engineering, or medicine. However, the liberal arts degree is far from dead. Andy Chan, who oversees the career center at Wake Forest University, said:

“If universities want to preserve the liberal arts, they have a responsibility to help those humanities majors know how to translate their studies into the work world” (Dominus, 2013).

Various studies have been conducted to examine the value of a liberal arts degree and its relation to employment outcomes. The vast majority of liberal arts graduates find themselves employed, earning salaries that are significantly higher compared to high school graduates. Over time, liberal arts graduates close the earnings gap that exists between them and those who study science, math, and engineering (Humphreys, 2014). In a survey of employers conducted by Hart Research Associates, 93 percent of employers agreed that “candidates’ demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major” (Hart Research Associates, 2013). While this study’s findings may seem promising, liberal arts as a whole still faces several challenges in relation to career services: pressure on the student to illustrate to employers how their education warrants employment; competition with non-liberal arts student talent for the same roles; dispelling the assumption that career services is a brief, point-in-time activity rather than a long-term process (Nell, 2003). In this case, career centers at liberal arts and research colleges focus on helping students identify transferable skills and communicate these as valuable assets to an employer.

Another type of institution to explore alongside career services is minority-serving institutions, which are institutions that experience high enrollment among minority students. With the United States being a country that stands on diversity and history, and a country so richly affected by the presence and contributions of various cultures, minority-serving institutions are crucial to American higher education. The concern around improving minority students’ participation and success in college continues to grow (Li, 2007). Career counselors are called on to possess competencies around culture, and not just simply awareness (Sue & Sue, 2003). Cultural competency is guided by a framework of an “awareness of oneself as a racial/cultural being and of the biases, stereotypes, and assumptions that influence worldviews and awareness of the worldviews of culturally diverse clients” (Sue et al., 2007). Five factors that should be considered for improving multicultural competence within career services include: (1) understanding cultural career history, (2) considering outcome expectations, (3) supporting self-efficacy, (4) teaching networking, and (5) challenging our own cultural biases (Orbé-Austin, 2010). Because the college experience of minority students is multifaceted as they negotiate multiple social identities, career center staff must understand career development constructs from the cultural context of the individual student, select assessment tools that avoid stereotypes and bias, and advocate for minority students whose cultural groups and identities have historically been oppressed (Heppner & Duan, 1995). For minority-serving institutions in particular, the presence of professionals of color in career centers is incredibly important to ensure that students see themselves modeled among career services personnel and that services are delivered in a “culturally responsive way” (Abdul-Alim, 2016). In this application, cultural competence does not only refer to culture within a race context, but also within the context of other social identities such as religion, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness, gender, etc. It is imperative for career centers at minority-serving institutions to approach career offerings through the lens of cultural competency, ensuring that they are taking extra measures to provide access to opportunities and provide equity in resources, when compared to predominantly white institutions. Career centers must also take into consideration the concept of intersectionality, as it is “a powerful tool for understanding, constructing, and deconstructing: the experience of identity, the complex and mutually constituting nature of social identities, the relationships between identity and larger social systems, and the interwoven nature of manifestations of social oppression” (Wijeyesinghe & Jones, 2014).

The final type of institution to examine within the context of career services is community colleges. Much of the population that matriculates at community colleges is first-generation students. This is due to less strain on the student when it comes to elements such as affordability, admissions requirements, academic program, and location or proximity to the student’s home. A study conducted in 2016 by Alicia J. Harlow and Sharon L. Bowman explored the career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) and career maturity of community college and first-generation students. “CDSE is defined as the extent to which individuals believe they are capable of making an appropriate career decision” (Betz & Hackett, 1981). The study reported lower levels of career maturity among first-generation students compared to nonfirst-generation students, while non-first generation college students reported the lowest levels of CDSE among all groups studied. Community colleges play a key role in workforce development, as they are producing a niche batch of middle-skill professionals:

Middle-skill careers that require an associate degree have typically been offered in employment areas such as accounting, automotive services, computer information systems, law enforcement, emergency medical technology, nursing, pharmacy technology, dental hygiene, surgical technology, hospitality management, fire protection, and culinary arts (Myran & Ivery, 2013).

This growing niche within workforce development warrants the need for career services at community colleges. It is predicted that by 2018, two-thirds of all jobs in the United States will require at least a college-level certificate, associate degree, or licensure (Lumina, 2012). That being said, community colleges are in a unique position to be a powerful force in moving people from being educated to being employed. In response to the population and future trends rising within community colleges, career services must be delivered at a high quality level, which includes heightened exposure to occupational information, assistance in goal setting, and increased self-exploration (Myran & Ivery, 2013). Funding at community colleges for career services are most likely extremely limited, which poses a challenge for career centers in providing what is necessary to make their students workforce-ready. They must be more resourceful in identifying cost-efficient resources that are more easily accessible, keeping in mind various barriers that may exist for students such as family obligations, language deficiencies, or even competition with a student’s work schedule if they are working while attending school.

With such a rich evolution over time and many nuances in structure and operations depending on the type of institution at which it exists, career services continues to change with grace as it moves to the future.

One of the proposed shifts in career services is the application of chaos theory of careers (CTC), which conceptualizes career development as a “dynamical system characterized by complexity, interconnectedness, and susceptibility to change.” Essentially, this is a designed career services model that encourages students to explore, prepare, start, and adapt, with the concept of adapting being the most important. Due to the rapid pace of change in today’s world, career goals and plans must not be so rigid. CTC can help students remain open, flexible, and adaptable in the face of complex changes (Pryor & Bright, 2011).

A more collaborative approach between academic advising and career services is another proposal for the future. Because there is a direct tie between what a student learns in the classroom and what employment opportunities a student is thus prepared for, it is proposed that the departments that guide students in these two areas must also have a direct tie. This would result in a more cohesive strategy for the student with an emphasis on the connection between education and employment. Academic advising and career services working in tandem means that students would benefit from curriculum and career guidance that are not mutually exclusive. This partnership might be implemented in the form of shared programming, resources, and interventions (Ledwith, 2014). This collaboration might also prove beneficial to tackling the issue of institutions having to lower costs, as two functional areas could potentially be consolidated into one entity.

Additionally, data-supported transparency around students’ future potential in a certain career might be a trend that affects the future of career services. Between the increasing competition for talent, dwindling resources, and ever-changing workforce demographics, organizations are grappling with these two questions more and more: (1) How to best identify and classify employees into various types of talent pools for accelerated development and succession planning efforts; (2) Whether or not to tell people into which pool they have been placed (Church & Rotolo, 2016). By employers incorporating more data-supported transparent employee performance assessment tools in their organizations, the insight provided to career centers around what makes people hirable and leadership-ready will be easily available to share with students, thus better informing students on how to best prepare for career success.

Finally, data and assessment is a pivotal piece of this puzzle that makes up the future of career services. The constant changes that career services has experienced over the years has produced several key performance indicators used to measure the value of career services at an institution. It is important to continuously assess student needs, student participation, student satisfaction, and student outcomes (Makela & Rooney, 2014).

Career services has come a long way since its beginnings within the Vocations Bureau founded by Frank Parsons in the early 1900s. The field was born out of an identified need to empower, prepare, and build up the youth to move into chosen occupations. Choosing a career is no doubt one of the most significant decisions faced by all students, and career services is a vital resource in this milestone. In a way, career services provides a student with his or her final mode of instruction within a formal educational setting, and so career services has a duty to serve students with the most appropriate and relevant offerings and programs to prepare them for Utopian utility in a utilitarian Utopia.

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