Last month, my fellow columnist Bobby Doyle argued in “The endless pursuit….of what?” that the purpose of class is to foster creativity. While I agree with Doyle, I wish he had asked the bigger question: what is the purpose of college itself?
Most every student on Grounds has, at some point, asked themselves a form of the question: “What is the purpose of school, and why I am here?” Most would agree the overwhelmingly popular answer is to get a decent job. If this is true, the University should do everything in its power to assist students in acquiring jobs. I would argue, however, that the University fails to sufficiently aid students and furthermore even inhibits students to a certain degree from obtaining work after college.
Before I attack the University, we must acknowledge that several outlets around Grounds do exist to serve students and aid in their job searches. For example the Career Center, On-Grounds Interviewing and Cavlink all grant students opportunities. However, these efforts alone do not fulfill the University’s role in assisting students with finding a job.
The University should minimize academic requirements for fourth-year students in order to alleviate stress and allot students more time to pursue job opportunities. Of course, the most fundamental purpose of school is to provide an education, and this pillar must remain, but the system can be tweaked to accommodate both education and transitional (post-graduation) help.
In the current system, fourth-year students are required to focus on grades just as much as, if not more than, younger students. While fourth-years struggle with theses and grades, they must also divert their attention toward finding a job. This unequal balance leads to a fall either in academic performance or in the job search. If academic requirements were ratcheted down a bit, students would have less stress and therefore feel more comfortable searching for jobs.
Perhaps fourth-year classes should become pass/fail — a technique MIT employs to transition freshman to collegiate life. This implementation would still mandate a minimum level of academic participation in terms of credits and workload, but it would drastically lighten the course load for fourth-years, thus alleviating stress and allocating them more free time.
The University should also entertain the idea of encouraging personal interaction between students and advisors. The University could assign fourth-years personal career advisors with whom they must meet. In the current system, students are required to meet with their faculty advisor only once in the fall semester of the fourth-year when registering for class. However, students need more assistance.
I suggest each student should have a personal career advisor who would meet with the student monthly, or more, throughout the year. These meetings, unlike current faculty advisor meetings, would primarily focus on life after college. Advisors could provide insight, advice and employment connections. While some students might neglect such assistance, certainly others would benefit from such interactions.
Simple changes like these could drastically help students transition into life after college. Even if a student simply plans to work for his parents, advisor meetings and a lightened course load will undeniably benefit his fourth-year experience. Critics might claim students of all ages go through external stresses and that fourth-years, therefore, should receive no unfair advantage, but balancing job searches and school is a unique issue of time management. The University should devote more time and energy toward accomplishing the goal of acquiring a job for each and every individual student.
Nate Menninger is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at n.menninger@cavalierdaily.com.
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