Colleges Need to Teach Personal Branding - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Colleges Need to Teach Personal Branding - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career This year will be my 5 year reunion for college and while checking the Luther website for Homecoming information, I took a glance at the tuition costs for next year.   And even though I knew college tuitions have been skyrocketing, I was still shocked by the number:   $32,140   Thats over $10,000 more than when I started there in 2001. Granted, most students dont pay nearly full tuition.   (I definitely didnt!)   My college has tons of scholarships and merit awards, and tries to make going there as affordable as possible.   BUT $32,140 is still   a lot of money!   And its not even close to the worst.   In fact, Luther didnt even make the list of the top 100 most expensive colleges in the US.   The most expensive colleges, Bates College, Middlebury College, Colby College, Union College (NY), Connecticut College and George Washington University all charged students over 40,000 last year not including room or board! Even public universities are skyrocketing in price.   Tuition is shooting up 15% at a time, adding thousands to the price of a degree. Learning what can be applied What really bothers me about the sky-high tuition is that so many grads are struggling to take what they learned in college and use it how to get the job they want. Students who graduate with marketing or business degrees at least have the advantage that their major directly correlates to what they want to do.   English majors and other liberal arts majors who want to work as professionals do not. I cant tell you how many English majors Ive talked to are struggling to get a good job in this economy.   And it makes me really mad to hear that. When I studied how the American workforce is changing for my masters degree, I learned that employers dont really care what major their potential college-educated employee studied.   Its much more important to them that job seekers are able to communicate well, manage their time, work well with others and be creative. All those are skills that anyone in any major can develop.   English majors especially should be able to excel in communicating. Do colleges fail to help students connect the dots? So then why are they struggling?   I think its because (despite their claims and high sticker prices) colleges fail to teach students to talk about how the things they learned in their college major prepared them for success in work and life. Im a prime example.   I studied one of the least practical majors at my college: Classical Languages.   I learned 5th century BC Attic Greek and Latin.   I read Homer and Caesar and Herodotus.   I spent hours learning languages Ill never speak in my life.   If I went to Greece, I wouldnt even be able to ask for directions to the bathroomthats how useless my college degree is! If I were a normal person and was asked about my major, Id simply tell people: I studied ancient Greek and Latin.   Then theyd ask what I was planning to use that for, and Id say Nothing.   Then theyd dismiss me not only as someone without desirable skills, but also as someone impractical who didnt consider her future when she was picking her college major. Luckily, Im not normal.   My mothers an entrepreneur who has been teaching me how to promote myself since I was 9 years old.   And, when I was in college, I had the fantastic luck to go to a conference where I heard a speech by Peggy Klaus, the Brag Lady, who teaches people how to toot your horn without blowing it.   So I knew from the start that when I talk about my college major, I need to help people understand why it was such a great choice for me. So when I say I studied Classical Languages, I tell people that I loved studying ancient Greek because   its incredibly challenging we learned as much in 2 semesters of Greek as I learned in 5 years of Spanishand because it pushed me to work harder in school than Id ever had in my life.   I also tell them that I found the basic business and communications classes at my college to be boring, and that I learned a lot more about business by taking the upper level classes and reading the top business books. (Which I could happily discuss in detail.) Ive never had a problem communicating how valuable it was to me to study Ancient Greek.   Its even been an advantage for me, because it makes me stand out and gives me a chance to engage the person interviewing me in a story. Failing at connecting But I know its different for a lot of my friends.   They dont know how to talk about their major in a way that makes business sense.   They dont even understand how a Classical Languages background, or an English Literature background translates into the very job skills that employers need.   Theyve never learned to make that connection. Im not one of those people who think colleges should tone down the impractical majors and focus on teaching specific job skills to students.   There are far too many advantages to pursuing a subject that interests youboth for employees and employers.   Companies run out of ideas and stagnate if all their employees have the same background.   And, the business world changes so quickly that its almost impractical for colleges to focus on teaching only business skills.   The textbooks wont even be published before theyre obsolete. Helpful courses on selling yourself What I do think, however, is that colleges need to start teaching their students to sell themselves.   Students need to learn how to talk-up their skills and abilities. They need to be able to explain how spending a semester studying Spanish in a third world country translates into desirable traits for an employer.   They need to learn how to brand themselves not as the impractical English major but as someone who really understands communicating and how to write well.   (Another trait that employers look for.) For an education worth over $100 thousand dollars, colleges should send out graduates who know how to leverage their degree to be successful.   Its not enough to simply educate them in whatever field they choose.   Its not enough to show students where to find the Career Councilorsespecially since most students wont take advantage of it.     And for $100 thousand dollars, colleges shouldnt make it the students responsibility to discover how their degree applies to the real world. Author: Katie Konrath writes about creativity, innovation and “ideas so fresh… they should be slapped!” at www.getFreshMinds.com.