College leaders refocus attention on their students’ top priority: Jobs after graduation

The Hechinger Report

Jon Marcus

November 24, 2023

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Friday mornings on a university campus are usually quiet times. Savvy students plan their schedules to avoid Friday classes, getting a head start on their weekends.

But at Brown University’s Center for Career Exploration, there’s a steady stream of visitors, checking out jobs and internships, meeting with advisers and occasionally stopping on the way out to scoop up a few colorful pieces of hard candy from the bowl on the reception counter.

In the center, steps from the university’s main quad and across the street from the college bookstore, everything is brand new, from the furniture to the stenciling on the window to some of the staff.

After a two-year planning process, Brown has revamped and renamed its career center and is more than doubling its number of advisers, from 13 to 28.

It’s an example of the new attention being devoted to career services by universities — even top universities, whose students likely won’t have trouble finding jobs — as consumer demand gets louder for a tangible return on investment for a degree.

At a time of intensifying competition for students, “career success” is the top reason people give for getting a degree, a new survey of alumni by the workforce analytics firm Lightcast found.

That’s driving institutions to beef up career services staffs and budgets, promote career directors to the highest levels of leadership and start offering career advising to students from the time they put down their first-year deposits.

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