Why your university career centre was useless
If you’re at all like me, you probably went by the university career centre once or twice when you were in school and thought to yourself “why is this place even around?” Their career database was hopelessly out of date, and the only service they seemed to offer was giving you a computer to update your resume. They knew nothing about your particular line of study or industry, but told you to dress nice for interviews, and held career fairs where pretty much only the army showed up to exhibit.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, we’re hiring like mad right now. Since there are two universities and a college in Ottawa, we try to maintain good relationships with the schools so they’ll send the best and brightest our way. So I called one of the schools, one of which I am an alumnus, and offered up our CEO to talk to graduating classes in computer science, multimedia and the like. She was very excited to hear this.
Then she told me it would be $250.
I was extremely surprised by this. Here I was, offering up the CEO of a major company – certainly the largest agency in the city – to speak directly to a graduating class of kids who would KILL to work at a place like Fuel, but probably think they have to leave the city to do it.
I asked, “is it not in your best interests to get your students hired?”
Of course, she said yes, but that all the other schools did it, so they did too. $250 is nothing, really. It doesn’t even fall outside of discretionary spending, but it’s the principle of having to pay to provide a public service. Sure, we get something out of it too, but I would have loved to have someone like Mike talk to ANY of my classes in university. It’s an incredible opportunity for these kids.
I changed tacks, just to see where this rule was coming from. “So, what if we do something that’s more geared at educating these kids about getting a job in the gaming industry – what they should be studying, what they should be putting in their portfolio?”
“That’s fine – we wouldn’t charge for that.”
“And if we mention at the end that we’re hiring?”
“Then we’d have to charge you $250.”
Having gone to this school, and having gotten absolutely nothing out of it in terms of building my career other than meeting a couple of professors in my industry, I was pretty aphalled at this. I’ve told a number of people about it since, and they all reacted with the same incredulity. Schools are not only not trying to help you get a job, they’re actively prohibiting it by charging companies to provide opportunities to their students.
I can’t think of a better example of uselessness.
Ryan, unfortunately I have to agree with you. As a student I had similar experiences which always led me to wonder the same things. But here’s another question I’ve been left to ponder ever since graduating 10 years ago: what’s the role of university…is it to further a student’s learning or make a student career-ready? Most academics I’ve talked to almost seem to believe that these two ideas are mutually exclusive. And judging by the fact that few of us actual use our majors in our careers kind of verifies this.
BTW, asking you to pay $250 for the ‘honor’ of talking to it’s students about their after-college life only seems to point out how poorly funded these career centers are in the first place.
Maybe we have a different attitude in the UK, but next week, I’m taking part in a “Meet the Professionals” event at Bournemouth University where the public relations undergraduates organise a “speed dating” style event with those working in the locality, particularly members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. There are no rules or fees – in fact, we all get a glass of wine out of it. This has gone on for many years and works really well (but has nothing to do with the careers department).
Bournemouth, like most other UK universities, encourages real life experience alongside academic and many of the lecturers are like myself, still working in the subject that we teach. I’ve never heard of being charged to meet students over hear – but as the Universities are increasingly under financial pressure, it may yet come.
P.S. I do know how to spell here but hit the submit just as I noticed my typo – sorry.
It is entirely unbelievable that charging employers is some sort of national standard. When I did journalism at the same school, our biggest industry outreach was through internships organized by the journalism school – we had no real connection to career services proper. I guess maybe that was a good thing.
Chris, I’d agree that the primary goal of university is to advance education, but you’re right – with the standard for education being set so high these days, universities have a duty to ensure that the grads they’re turning out are educated as well as useful – especially when it comes to professional degrees like engineering.
Heather – we’ve got a few things like that here, but very few are arranged by the universities, at least that I’ve heard of.
Joe – architecture was the same way. It pays to belong to a college of sorts.
Heather, the attitude isn’t really that different here. There are events like yours and like the one Ryan hoped would happen. But, like yours, these opportunities not set up through an administrative career office; they’re set up through faculty teaching in the related disciplines. In Ontario, it usually occurs in colleges rather than universities. That’s because the former tend to turn out the new practitioners while the latter focus on theory.
Gary – I often wonder why the “theory-only” focus seems afraid of practice. For me, theory should be useful; to support practice, to challenge it or even if only to make you think. Similarly, practice is much improved by the reflection that comes from good theories.