Best Cities For Job-Seeking Grads

After years of acquiring arcane knowledge in challenging classes and performing arduous tasks dictated by their professorial overlords, recent college grads are handed a final assignment to complete with alacrity and general excellence: get a good job with your shiny, new diploma.

Where in America are newly graduated scholars most likely to find gainful employment? Turns out they may not have to leave their off-campus housing. As it happens, an abundance of research activity and highly skilled workers means that bustling university towns are great for business, and an excellent place to look for that first job out of college.

An article on the abcNEWS Money web site explains:

Research universities tend to be great environments for business, as they're flush with cheap, highly talented labor (recent grads), and the massive research and development budgets universities have. Plenty of the world's top companies, including Dell, Cisco Systems and Google, began in university settings.

Universities provide the future educated labor force and are centers of innovation, which creates an ideal ecosystem for start-ups," says Antonio Ubalde, chief executive of ZoomProspector.com, a San Francisco-based corporate relocation and start-up consulting firm. He notes that new technologies developed in many schools wind up growing into businesses of their own: "Research universities spin off academic innovations into commercial enterprises."

In general, college towns also tend to be more interesting places in which to live, with the kind of well-developed cultural and intellectual diversity that can help keep sharp minds happy, healthy, and growing. Strong economic environments and the ever-present need for student housing also makes real estate in university burgs a better than average investment.

As an adjunct to the abcNEWS article, Forbes.com lists job growth, university employment, and other details about the cities that made the list of their "Top College Towns for Jobs" (click here to view the slideshow).

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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.

Enter The Three-Year Degree

With college costs skyrocketing, the economy contracting, and America falling behind international competitors in the educational arena, is the three-year undergraduate degree an "idea whose time has come?"

Although the four-year degree has been the predominant model for higher education in the U.S. since before the Declaration of Independence, three-year degrees are standard at England's Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and more than a few American colleges have been experimenting with the "express degree" idea for some time, now.

The idea has it's adherents as well as it's naysayers. Molly Corbett Broad, current president of the non-profit American Council on Education and former president of the University of North Carolina, lauds the idea. Derek Bok, president emeritus of Harvard, is a detractor.

From an article appearing last May in the Washington Post:

At Chatham University in Pittsburgh, a three-year bachelor of interior architecture will be offered without summer courses, allowing students to get into the job market a year earlier, school officials said. School officials reconfigured the four-year degree by cutting the studio classes from 14 weeks to seven.

"It's a creative solution to a lot of different things," said program director Lori Alexander. "Students enter the workforce quicker, they save a year of tuition and they can go on sooner for graduate study. And no, they aren't missing anything. Academic quality stays the same."

If three years is too long to wait, Purdue University's College of Technology has begun offering a two-year bachelor's degree!

Are quickie degrees a good idea?

Undoubtedly, for those able to handle the increased work and stress load, the economic savings and other advantages may outweigh the downside of compressing the traditional four-year undergraduate education into just three years. For those more affluent students unable or unwilling to give up their non-academic lives for three years of ultra-intense academic commitment, however, the four-year model will almost certainly be a better fit.

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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.

NO MUSIC While Studying

A common point of contention between parents and teenagers is whether or not to allow listening to music or other “multitasking” activities while doing homework or studying.

Many teenagers attempt to multitask while studying. And some of them do quite well in school.

The question, however, is not whether certain very bright students can multitask while studying and still get good grades. The real question is whether these same students, and especially average or underachieving students, would do better if they were to focus only on their studies, without interfering distractions.

My own experience, based on nearly four decades as a professional academic coach, is unequivocal. I think it's a big mistake to allow any multitasking while doing academic work – whether involving music, instant messaging, video games, or any other distractions. Yes, people are different, and certain people find multitasking easier than others. But it’s common sense that no one, no matter how talented, can pay attention to and concentrate on two different tasks (never mind four or five) as well as he or she can on just one.

Do the following experiment right now:

Try thinking of two different things at the same time, say: the taste of strawberries, and the quadratic formula. In the exact same instant of time, think of both things. Can't be done! The best one can hope to do is rapidly switch back and forth between the two thoughts, dulling mental focus and wasting valuable energy.

Obviously, mindful unitasking works far better in terms of quality and efficiency than does frenzied multitasking, and this distinction becomes critically important when applied to important academic activities like doing homework, writing papers, studying for tests, etc.

The problem is that studying and homework are often boring. They aren’t always fun things to do. Unfortunately, many parents have allowed fun and instant gratification to rise to the top of their teenagers’ lists of values. Boredom is seen as a big deal. It is not. Boredom is rooted in discomfort intolerance, a learned behavior which can be a big deal, however.

Parents need to remember, and children need to be taught, that it's called home-“work” for a reason. It's not supposed to be fun; it's supposed to get done, and done well.

Work is, by definition, generally not fun – at the moment you’re doing it. But it’s a lot of fun later on, when the mega-rewards of consistent, disciplined effort and deliberate sacrifice toward worthy goals come pouring in (e.g. success, happiness, money, pride, confidence, a plethora of life choices, etc.).

Contradicting the hedonistic value systems of too many Americans is the fact that boredom is not the worst experience a person can have. Parents must to learn to say “no music” and make it stick without fearing the momentary displeasure or rolling eyes of their own teenagers. Teenagers would profit by learning to sacrifice overrated comforts and delay gratification for the much greater pleasures that attend the accomplishment of major life goals later on. Indeed, most American students would do well to aim to become more self-motivated and self-disciplined, less dependent on external stimulation, and more honestly self-reflective.

Still a multitasking holdout? If so, I have a question for you:

How many tests have you taken with the comfort of your favorite music playing in the background?

The correct answer is zero, driving the final stake through the heart of the notion that it's somehow a good idea to listen to music while studying. Clearly, if you train yourself through repetition to need the support of energizing background music in order to focus your mind and perform at your best academically, the end result will not be pretty.

If maximum success in school is important to you: NO MUSIC (or other distractions) while studying!

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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.

Career Choice In The Age of Outsourcing

American students are now being confronted with a critical new question: how to "outsource-proof" one's choice of college major and career path?

The global market is forcing a redistribution of wealth from formerly wealthy nations like the United States and those in the European Union to those traditionally poor countries with ever increasing numbers of well-educated citizens, like India and China. Many jobs that have traditionally gone to local American workers can now, in the Information Age, be done for a small fraction of the cost by skilled workers and technicians overseas. As the outsourcing boom born of the internet miracle continues to expand, and the economic playing field worldwide levels out in the face of competition from workers and professionals in other nations able to provide needed services for far less money, salaries in the U.S. and E.U. will likely decline over the next few decades compared to those in other countries. For the foreseeable future, American and European professionals will have to adjust to continuous downward pressure on salaries while those in other locales experience the opposite phenomena.

What advice, then, should American parents give their college-bound children regarding educational majors and careers? As economic boundaries blur, and given the unstable, unpredictable outlook for professional employment opportunities here in the U.S., how do we help prepare the next generation of American young people for success?

Excellent online resources now enable parents and students to research and analyze various career paths in just a short while. At these sites, critical factors such as average salary, predicted job growth in the U.S. over the next 10 years, stress level, a "day in the life," etc. can be examined and compared in great detail, often yielding surprising results.

For example:

Did you know that there's an "under the radar" professional job that offers tip-top growth, quality of life, flexibility, and attainability, a median salary of almost $80,000 per year, and is highly resistant to outsourcing ... yet requires only a bachelors degree? It's the exciting Physician Assistant field (For more information, click the associated link in the U.S. News and World Report "Best Careers 2007" table, referenced below.)

Below are some links to help you begin your research on hot career paths for early 21st century college graduates:

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My favorite general career path resource is the U.S. News and World Report careers site, located in the Money & Business section of their main site:

http://www.usnews.com/sections/business/careers/index.html.

Featuring advice on topics as diverse as best careers for 2007, top government jobs, whether or not grad school makes sense, socially conscious careers, overrated careers, calculators to comparing job offers and cost of living, etc., this site is a fantastic place to start.

Their "Best Careers 2007" table offers a quick overview of the most promising American careers.

In addition, ace career consultant Marty Nemko has written several excellent articles on the U.S. News site that deserve special attention, among them: Most–and least–rewarding careers, and Get-Ahead Careers for 2007.

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The Johns Hopkins University Career Center Web site offers numerous links to online career and job-related resources:

http://www.jhu.edu/~careers/links.html.

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Finally, the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics offers all the information only a huge government bureaucracy can assemble.

Two of their online databases provide detailed, current information on just about any job and career field imaginable.

They are the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and the Career Guide to Industries.

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Contact Chris

borlandeducational.com

Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.

Learning And Earning: It's About Basics

We all know the importance of getting a college education. A college degree is the new high school diploma. It's amazing just how big a difference it actually makes to one's financial bottom line.

A recent article at washingtonpost.com makes this transparently clear:

"... while families at all educational levels have benefited from rising home values and stock market gains, the better-educated have enjoyed skyrocketing wealth, with college graduates recording an average net worth four times greater in 2004 than that of high school graduates."

The article goes on to report that while the incomes of families headed by college graduates have improved substantially in recent decades, real incomes of families headed by those with only a high school diploma have actually fallen by as much as 11 percent during the same period.

In another article, the Associated Press reported U.S. census data showing that, on average, college graduates in America earn almost twice the income of those with only high school diplomas (the ratio increases to nearly three to one for those with advanced degrees).

Nowadays, education is indeed the coin of the realm, and financial security and comfort necessarily require a good, university-level education. However, this in turn now increasingly depends on better elementary and secondary education than that available to most children in America (hence the phenomenal growth of the private practice education industry, of which I'm a part). Our educational system is producing inadequate results at best, relegating more and more young American students to the middle or bottom rungs of the ladder of international academic competitiveness. Because of an accelerating trend toward second-rate achievement in American schools, our teenagers will likely face increasing competition from more capable, better trained, more highly motivated foreign students clamoring to enter top American universities in the coming decades.

Our personal and national economic interests lie, therefore, in providing excellent basic education for our children, and on the rapid resuscitation of failing U.S. public schools. First of all, this means funding of good, public preschool programs for all youngsters in America, since universal preschool is by far the most powerful and cost effective way to quickly improve results in our schools, restore educational parity with the rest of the world, and ensure our future standing in the world economy.

Ultimately, American parents are the ones accountable for the success or failure of their own children. Following the bad examples of governmental leaders, corporate heads, sports figures, and others, Americans are becoming dishonest softies, for whom "playing by the rules" is only for fools, "discipline" and "rigor" are bad words, and "taking the easy way out" is the accepted norm. Parents who care and who know better simply cannot allow their children to fall behind in school. I'm always rather amazed and somewhat disheartened when perfectly capable high school students come to me for academic coaching addicted to their calculators (still not knowing their math facts by heart), unable to hand write legibly or organize their papers, etc. – that such basic deficiencies have been allowed to go uncorrected for so long.

In the current educational climate in America, often characterized by systemic sloppiness, grade inflation, cheating, corner-cutting, and general mediocrity, a good report card no longer guarantees actual competence or real accomplishment. Today, parents simply must take an intense interest in their children's early academic achievement. Without being obsessive, parents should micro-manage the progress of their children through the 6th grade, at least, to insure full mastery of essential academic skills. Otherwise, we as a nation risk losing the race in the new global market place. A cursory glance in the rear view mirror already shows China, India, and a host of other nations quickly gaining on us, threatening to take the lead.

More and more, it's all about basics.

And more than ever, it's more important than ever before.

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Contact Chris

borlandeducational.com

Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.