No More Gold Watch Retirement Parties
The modern job market looks very different for recent graduates than it did decades ago. Gone are the days when young people earned a college degree, joined a company and moved up the corporate ladder for 25 years or more.
Today, the average worker changes jobs 11 times during their career. Some switch careers entirely, following multiple paths before settling into a specific field.
In addition, there is more uncertainty in the job market and employers often cut back on staffing during tough economic times. Moving from one job to another, one company to another, or one field to another can be the key to long-term survival in the business world.
Today’s workers need high levels of flexibility and networking skills to navigate these changes.
Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Yet Exist
Students also need to remember that by the time they enter college and graduate the job market will change. The top 10 most in-demand jobs of 2010 did not even exist six years earlier. Emerging technologies and rapidly changing innovations mean that many new graduates will be entering fields that they can’t even imagine right now.
When students see college as a way to attain a specialized degree or a job in a particular trade, they face the possibility that the field they are entering will change dramatically by the time they graduate or may not even exist in the future. Just ask the highly trained and highly paid auto workers of the past about how technology advances have made many jobs obsolete.
So, the most lucrative and exciting careers of the future may not even exist today. They may come from areas that have not yet been discovered. And some of the most successful graduates may even be the ones to go on and develop these new and emerging industries.
A liberal arts degree helps students to prepare for this new reality. Liberal arts students learn to love continually learning, changing and adapting. These life-long learners will have a far easier time of keeping up with the changes posed by a constantly shifting economy.
Because liberal arts programs focus on general education and academic development, students graduate with versatile skills that can be applied to jobs in many fields and at any level. These are the hallmarks of true college success.
For more information about liberal arts colleges and the value of a liberal arts education, please visit LiberalArtsColleges.com.
