3 Careers and Internships: Connecting Career to College
3 Careers and Internships: Connecting Career to College
Lakeisha Mathews and Linda Bruce
Career Exploration
There are any number of reasons students decide to come to college. Can you identify your tops reasons for choosing to pursue a degree? Some students choose to attend college right after high school to pursue a specific career. Others, choose college because they do not have a defined career goal and want to explore their options. There are also adult learners who return to college or start college after starting a family to change careers or advance in their career field. Chances are regardless of why you decided to attend college or what college you enroll in you expect your academic experience to help you advance professionally.
Employment Rates and Salaries
Consider, too, the following statistics on employment rates and salaries for college graduates. College does make a big difference!
- The average college graduate earns about 75 percent more than a non-college graduate over a typical, forty-year working lifetime. (U.S. Census Bureau)[2]
- In 2014, young adults ages 20 to 24 with a bachelor’s degree or higher had a higher employment rate (88.1 percent) than young adults with just some college (75.0 percent). (NCES)
- The employment rate for young adults with just some college (63.7 percent) was higher than the rate for those who had completed high school. (NCES)
- The employment rate for those who completed high school (46.6 percent) was higher than the employment rate for young adults who had not finished high school. (NCES)
- Employment rates were generally higher for males than females at each level of educational attainment in 2014. (NCES)[3]
- Over the course of a forty-year working life, the typical college graduate earns an estimated $550,000 more than the typical high school graduate. (PEW)
- The median gap in annual earnings between a high school and college graduate as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010 is $19,550. (PEW)[4]
Perhaps most important, an overwhelming majority of college graduates—86 percent—say that college has been a good investment for them personally. (PEW)
Despite the desire to launch, advance or change your career path after graduation, some students’ complete college and struggle to find meaningful work. This is because career planning is an action-oriented process that must be engaged in during your academic experiences starting in your freshman year. It is often too late to start career planning in the last semester of your senior year. Job searching takes 3–6 months and longer in some industries. And, that is not including taking the time to reflect on the type of work you want to do, the positions available, and ensuring that you are career ready.
So what is career planning?
According to Schermerborn, Hunt, and Osborn (2002), “Career planning takes the form of structured opportunities” to work on career issues. The authors go on to explain that the steps involved in career planning includes map