Hope for the mal-employed

  • February 9, 2012 12:11 pm

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of articles asking the question “Is College Worth It?” The articles focus on pretty much the same set of issues: the high cost of a college education, the huge post-graduation indebtedness of many students and the worth of majors that are not job or career specific.

 

I want to be on record that I think colleges cost too much – not necessarily too much for what students get access to, but more than getting a good education needs to cost. The consumers – students and their parents – could do their part to lower costs by recognizing that things like state-of-the-art exercise facilities, plush residence halls, and on-campus mental health professionals add to their overall cost and by deciding these are not the elements on which to compare colleges.

 

Indebtedness is, of course, related directly to cost. But consumers do have some controls over what they borrow, including the relative expense of the college they choose and whether they borrow only the minimum amount they need. There is no convincing evidence that an education at an Ivy League campus adds enough to one’s success to make it worth the difference in cost from a good but less highly regarded school.

 

Yet to me the most egregiously irrelevant arguments about the worth of college relate to the choice of major. Indeed, in the current bad economy, many graduates are working at jobs superficially unrelated to their college major. Someone even felt the need to invent the word “mal-employed” for this situation.

 

Anyone who knows anything about the history of professional work in the United States can explain that this situation of doing a job unrelated to your major is not new. It hasn’t been more than two or three decades since most college graduates majored in the humanities and social sciences. And how many of those history majors ended up doing history for a career? How many philosophy majors found careers in philosophy?

 

Research into the backgrounds of corporate CEOs reveals that a large majority of them majored in areas outside business, economics and management. The true value of their education was much more than their major.

 

It is a real head-scratcher to read the same columnists who talk about the rapid and continuous change in our culture also arguing for narrow specialized education for jobs that may be gone tomorrow.

 

Don’t let these writers scare you into stupid choices about your education. There are many academic routes to gaining the kinds of skills that are needed in the work world.

 

Two Kemper Scholars Meet Up in Botswana

  • January 23, 2012 9:53 am

By chance, two Kemper Scholars, one from the class of 2013 and one from the class of 2014, have ended up in the same program in the same exotic location for a study abroad semester.

 

 

Elise Beckman (2013) of Lake Forest College and Megan Slavish (2014) of Beloit College are both enrolled in a program focused on globalization, the environment and development at the University of Botswana in southern Africa.

The program is sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) to which Lake Forest College and Beloit College both belong. Elise and Megan are studying with fourteen students in the Botswana program this semester.

 

 

Both are taking a Setswana language course and a course which studies the demographics of AIDS/HIV within Botswana. Each will also be conducting research on a topic of their choice. Elise, for example, will be researching the impact of socioeconomic backgrounds on university students’ perceptions of contraception and the prevalence of AIDS/HIV within Botswana.

 

 

This program includes travel throughout Botswana and South Africa, including trips to Johannesburg, Maun, the Okavengo Delta, Victoria Falls, and the Jwaneng Diamond Mine. In addition, they will both be interning or volunteering at a non-profit organization within Gaborone. Megan is still in the process of confirming her internship, and Elise will be volunteering at the Baylor Children’s AIDS/HIV Clinic.

 

 

“Studying abroad in Botswana has already been one of the most rewarding and insightful experiences of my life,” said Megan.  “It has challenged me to evaluate my patterns of behavior and my perceptions of people and places.  While there certainly have been struggles during my time here, I have truly enjoyed participating in a new culture, meeting new people, and exploring new places. This experience will help me appreciate not only the wonderful Botswana culture but my own culture as well.”

 

 

Echoing Megan, Elise noted that “Being in Botswana has opened my eyes to the importance of self exploration and discovery as an undergraduate. This experience is forcing me outside of my comfort zone and allowing me the opportunity to explore a very different part of the world. I am thrilled to have the option to study African history, politics, and economics while actually living in an African nation. I look forward to returning to the United States with a different perspective on world politics and the importance of travel.”

In photo Megan Slavish (left) and Elise Beckman in Botswana

Hiring trends: Good news for liberal arts students!

  • January 4, 2012 2:04 pm

 

One interesting aspect of the Associated Colleges of Illinois is that the Board of Directors is made up of both college presidents and business leaders.  As a result, we can quickly spot trends in the worlds of higher education and business.  As we finish 2011, I’ve noticed some trends around hiring new college graduates emerge that I’d like to share with you—and these trends are good news for liberal arts students!

 

 

Trends in hiring new college graduates:

 

 

  • ·        Recruiters are willing to look across a variety of academic majors to find a god “fit” for their companies. 

 

  • ·        Employers are looking for a flexibility. Increasingly, adaptability and being able to manage change are important qualities that recruiters are looking for.

 

  • ·        Along with a broad-based liberal arts background, internships in which students have built skills in internet and marketing functions are highly valued by employers.

 

  • ·        Employers continue to value entrepreneurial talents and creativity. Projects and internships that demonstrate these qualities are highly prized.

 

  • ·        Employers continue to hire from the intern pool demonstrating the importance of internship  experiences.

 

 

All of these current trends underscore the long-held beliefs of the James S. Kemper Foundation that a college-level education in the liberal arts complemented by workplace experiential education represents the ideal preparation for life and work, especially for careers in administration and business.

Successful leaders are made, not born

  • December 17, 2011 12:17 pm

        In May three social scientists — Maia Young, Michael Morris, and Vicki Scherwin — published an article about their research on perceptions of visionary leadership.  Titled “Managerial Mystique: Magical Thinking in Judgments of Managers’ Vision, Charisma, and Magnetism,” the article reports on three studies these academics conducted on how people assess leaders’ abilities.

        I find their most interesting conclusions to be those concerning “magical thinking.” The authors hypothesize that people project charisma and vision on leaders for whose successes they cannot see the “mechanical causes, such as long hours and hard-won skills.”

        These conclusions provide a helpful caveat for those who aspire to careers in organizational management and leadership: it is a mistake to think that leadership is some innate personality trait rather than something gained through applying one’s talents in experience, practice, attentiveness, and reflection.  Leaders are more made than born, even if people generally do not understand that.

      Conclusions in this article can be seen as reinforcing the legitimacy of points made by Malcolm Gladwell.  A common theme that appears throughout his 2008 book Outliers is the “10,000-Hour Rule,” a concept based on a study by Anders Ericsson. Gladwell argues that there are a great many variables that explain extraordinary success, but a very important variable is the inordinate amount of time and energy successful people put into gaining expertise through practice.  For example, he anecdotally illustrates his point with reference to assertions that the Beatles put in 10,000 hours of playing in Hamburg before they started playing in Britain and became an “overnight success.”

      So no matter what the average person may assume about the magical abilities of successful leaders, the most reliable way to become one is to work very hard at developing your skills and at doing your job.

 

Liberal arts students in today’s challenging job market

  • December 3, 2011 8:00 am

 

A guest blog by Jerry Fuller, Executive Director of Associated Colleges of Illinois

 

Many liberal arts students I talk with are concerned about what they can offer employers in today’s challenging job market.

 

I tell them that they have much to offer.  Certainly they have the critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication skills that have always been the hallmarks of a liberal arts education.

 

In addition, liberal arts students can offer:

  • Technology skills, such as their online network that companies can leverage for crowd sourcing; social media knowledge to design Facebook fan pages, and skills at posting YouTube videos;

 

  • Good grades that demonstrate diligence, intelligence and work ethic—all key traits employers are looking for, especially in new hires;

 

  • Enthusiasm.  All entry level employees need training, but by demonstrating a sincere enthusiasm, people will want to train, mentor, and promote you; and

 

  • Experience.  The most desirable trait any student can put on their resume is a set of professional skills acquired through internship experiences. Internships are invaluable for making the transition from the academic world and launching a career.  Ideally, students can have internship experiences the summers before their junior and senior years. But the important thing is to start now—wherever  you are in you college career, get to work with the help of your college’s career center to set up one or more internships.

 

It’s not so much what one studies that makes career success, but how you can bring to bear the process of assimilating and analyzing information, and then utilizing that analysis to solve real world problems that makes all the difference.

At the intersection of “poetry and processors”

  • November 22, 2011 9:00 am

       James Scott Kemper, the creator of the foundation that bears his name, genuinely appreciated Benjamin Franklin as a model of the educated person and a lifelong learner.  Ambassador Kemper valued the way Franklin combined hands-on scientific inventiveness with a lifelong commitment to being liberally educated.

       In an editorial titled “On Liberal Education and the Insurance Business” which he wrote for Insurance magazine in 1965, Ambassador Kemper recommended that top managers should read Franklin’s autobiography.  Later he argued “Since liberal education must be a continuous process, companies must provide a climate where liberal education can flourish, company programs must not solely be concerned with training in particular aspects of the business. Training is necessary but not enough. Training makes employees experts in answering questions. Education helps employees to determine what questions should be asked.”

       That observation warms the heart of this former liberal arts college dean, for it undermines the notion held by many that a liberal arts education is not a good preparation for the workplace.  The quotation also helps explain why the mission of the James S. Kemper Foundation is built upon the belief “that a college-level education in the liberal arts complemented by workplace experiential education represents the ideal preparation for life and work, especially for careers in administration and business.”

       Ambassador Kemper’s commitment to Benjamin Franklin’s model of lifelong learning and to liberal arts education came to my mind again after I read an October 29, 2011 essay in the New York Times by Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Apple founder Steve Jobs. [You can read Isaacson's NYT essay here.]

       Under the headline “The Genius of Jobs,” Isaacson’s essay seeks to answer the question of whether Steve Jobs was “very, very smart” or a genius. After comparing Steve Jobs’s mind to Bill Gates’s and Einstein’s, Isaacson concludes that Jobs was different from Gates and not at the same level of genius as Einstein. He concludes “Bill Gates is super-smart, but Steve Jobs was super-ingenious. The primary distinction, I think, is the ability to apply creativity and aesthetic sensibilities to a challenge.”

       “In the world of invention and innovation,” continues Isaacson, “that means combining an appreciation of the humanities with an understanding of science — connecting artistry to technology, poetry to processors. This was Mr. Jobs’s specialty. ‘I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,’ he said.”

        Indeed many have commented on Jobs’s ability to blend technological inventiveness and aesthetic sensibility to create aesthetically appealing products that work well and do very useful things.  As Benjamin Franklin and James S. Kemper knew, poetry and humanities are inseparable parts of ingenuity; and ingenuity is a critical part of being an excellent leader.

       Isaacson’s article concludes “America’s advantage, if it continues to have one, will be that it can produce people who are also more creative and imaginative, those who know how to stand at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences.” And creating such people is the mission of the James S. Kemper Foundation and the liberal arts colleges with whom we collaborate.

 

Do job recruiters like your social network face?

  • November 9, 2011 9:00 am

      Some months ago I posted a couple of blogs under the title “To Market, To Market.” They dealt with the need for job seekers to be aware of their web presence, both positive and less-than-positive. The underlying point was that potential employers are checking up on applicants, especially their self-presentation on social media.

      Now in a piece at the Mashable website, Erica Swallow has reported on a study by the social media monitoring service Reppler which surveyed over 300 “hiring professionals” to determine how much they  consult social media to research applicants.  The short answer: a lot.    

      I would like to say I am really Gen Y hip about social media and discovered this on my own. (I’ll bet “hip” is not a word hip people even use these days.) The fact is, my friend Jerry Fuller, executive director of the Associated Colleges of Illinois, reader of the Kemper Foundation blog, and occasional contributor sent me the link.  But, hey, it still shows I was ahead of the curve on this issue.

     The original article is worth taking a look at. [You can click here to read Erica Swallow’s original post.] It is pretty stunning to see that 91% of respondents said they “use social media sites to screen prospective employees” and that nearly 70% have used what they read to reject a candidate and nearly 70% have used what they read to hire a candidate. The survey even shows you the kinds of information to which they paid attention.

      I think one of the key words in the report is “screen.” That suggests that those who have been rejected will probably never know why and will not get the chance to correct any impressions in an interview or correspondence.

      Once again I would recommend that college students carefully review their online presence and get a few pairs of more objective eyes than your own to help. And, rather than repeat them, I suggest you consult my earlier posts with ideas about how to create a more helpful web image of yourself. You can read To Market, to Market by clicking here.  You can read To Market, to Market Part II by clicking here.

Kemper Foundation Receives NSEE Award

  • October 25, 2011 6:32 am

 

NSEE President Jim Walters (left) presents the NSEE Outstanding Leader in Experiential Education Award for the Kemper Foundation to Foundation President Ryan LaHurd

The National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE), the nation’s premier organization supporting the use of internships and other experiential education in higher education, has awarded the James S. Kemper Foundation its 2011 Outstanding Leader in Experiential Education: Foundation Award.

 

Dr. Ryan LaHurd, the Foundation’s President and Executive Director, accepted the award on behalf of the Foundation’s Board at NSEE’s 40th Anniversary National Conference in Dallas, Texas.

 

NSEE is a nonprofit membership association of educators, businesses, and community leaders. Founded in 1971, NSEE serves as a national resource center for the development and improvement of experiential education programs nationwide.[ For more information see http://nsee.org ]

 

The Outstanding Leader in Experiential Education Award, given annually by NSEE, recognizes a business, foundation, or corporation that has demonstrated outstanding support of experiential education through its financial, programmatic, or volunteer commitment to the field. 

 

The award citation noted that “The Kemper Scholars Program provides an extraordinary experiential education opportunity to students enrolled full-time at 16 Kemper Scholars liberal arts institutions located throughout the United States.

 

“Throughout their time in the program, students are supported by Dr. Ryan LaHurd and the Kemper staff Edward B. Smith and Diane Mattison who have developed clear outcomes, activities and indicators of success for participants. Regular strategic reviews of the program have brought into focus the high quality of the participants’ academic work as well as their high performance during their internships. The Kemper Fellows Program offers support for internships in arts management at selected arts and culture organizations in the Chicago area.

 

“As noted by Kathleen McNichol, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Kemper Scholars program at LaSalle University in Philadelphia in her letter of support, ‘The commitment of Ryan LaHurd and the staff of the Kemper Foundation to the professional development of the Kemper Scholars is very impressive.’”

 

Launched in 1948, and conceptualized by James S. Kemper, founder of Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company and related Kemper Insurance Companies, the Foundation is committed to helping shape the future leaders of American organizations.

 

The Kemper Foundation’s philosophy and mission is that a college-level education in the liberal arts, when complemented by workplace experiential education, represents the ideal preparation for life and work, especially for careers in administration, organizational leadership, and business.

Risky business

  • October 6, 2011 1:00 pm

       At the orientation for Kemper Scholars just after Memorial Day each summer when they begin their ten weeks of experiential education in Chicago, I give a little pep talk about things to think about and work on. Developed from our experiences with Kemper Scholars over the years, the advice is intended to help them get the most out of the summer.

      One of my pieces of advice is “Step out of your comfort zone; take some risks.” Only occasionally one of the students, accidentally or intentionally, interprets my words to mean “try climbing up the scaffolding of a skyscraper under construction.”

      Most understand that I am talking about psychological or emotional risk taking. As Stanford University psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck argues in her work, students who identify themselves as the “smart kids” often stay in the narrow range of their past competencies because failure might throw their self-definition into question. And they can miss out on a lot by doing that.

      It was gratifying, then, to hear almost three-quarters of the students in their public presentations at the Kemper Scholars Conference in August choose to speak, among other things, about something they had learned from stepping out of their comfort zones.

      There were grace notes of satisfaction, pride, and even surprise as the students described their experiences with risk taking. Supporting Dr. Dweck’s research, most of the risks concerned stretching into areas where they were not sure they had the skills to be successful. To their credit, a number of the students even spoke about how they had failed in the attempts but learned something valuable. And these admissions occurred in front of an audience of seventy-five including peers and faculty or staff representatives from the Kemper Scholars Program schools!

               What gave the students the courage to take these risks? For sure it was not just my advice.  I cannot give a scientifically researched answer. But based on my experience with students I feel confident in suggesting it can be explained at least in part by an environment try to create where (1) reflecting on and talking about attempts and failures is encouraged, (2) a group of students with similar accomplishments is going through and talking about challenging new experiences, (3) adult mentors encourage their explorations and discuss with them the results in a non-judgmental way, and (4) no one is being graded.

               In many ways I think the last quality is perhaps most important. After fourteen or fifteen years of being judged by and rewarded for good report cards, students need an opportunity to try something where they themselves are giving the only grades.

The Importance of the seemingly unimportant

  • September 29, 2011 2:30 pm

Guest blogger Jerry Fuller, Executive Director, Associated Colleges of Illinois (ACI). Mr. Fuller and the staff of ACI are very much involved with programs related to experiential education, internships, and the preparation of college and high school students for professional work.

       I’ve always been amazed by the number of student interns that complain about the boring tasks  they are asked to do. I’m even more surprised to hear this in the midst of a challenging economic environment when internships and jobs are scarce.

       While answering the phone, filing documents, and running to get your boss lunch aren’t the most exciting parts of an internship experience, I suggest every intern tackle these tasks with as much enthusiasm as they would tackle big, challenging projects for four reasons:

          1. Everything you do has a larger purpose.  It is important to find the ultimate purpose in the work you are doing.  It is ok to ask your supervisor what the Power Point  presentation you are working on will be used for. If it is for an important sales pitch that will significantly grow the business, your task is  crucial to the growth of the company.

          2. Your reputation.  You build your reputation by how you do your work—even the menial work. You want to be known as someone who completes all assignments with a positive attitude and an excellent work ethic.

         3. Prove that Millennials aren’t lazy.  Too many supervisors have a bias that Gen Ys are lazy and have a sense of entitlement.  Prove them wrong!  Hard work is a great way for you to stand out and help fight this unfortunate bias.

          4. Become a great supervisor. The more you know about every job in the organization, the better off you are.  Most good managers I know won’t assign a task that they haven’t done themselves.  Do the grunt work now that will help you be a great boss later.