Many students focus on knowledge in their major as the key to career advancement. They seek programs where they can focus on specific courses that relate to particular fields of work. They hope that these courses will provide them with the tools to do specific kinds of jobs. Programs that provide such tools fall into the category of vocational or career training.
Most colleges have some career-oriented programs of study that are keyed to specific areas of the work world. Some of these are in the current high-demand fields, such as engineering, computer science, and accounting. Often, students select these much sought-after majors based on the assumption that the demand for workers in these fields will continue until they graduate and are ready to seek employment. For many, this remains true. However, they forget that thousands of other students-sometimes thousands at the same school-also see these as good fields to enter. Not only is the competition for getting into these programs very high, but competition for jobs also escalates. And eventually, the demand for engineers, computer programmers, accountants, teachers, journalists, or whatever specialty has been in high demand, is equalled by the supply of college graduates. The momentum of this situation is such that colleges continue for awhile pumping out more workers in these fields than the fields can employ.
Vocational or career training in college tends to be concentrated in those fields where the technical knowledge component is high. Many other fields cannot be studied as easily by focusing primarily on specialized knowledge in the form of procedural techniques and job-specific skills. Business administration, journalism, politics, and many other areas of study are concerned less with specific bits of procedural knowledge; instead they are aimed more at transmitting general conceptual knowledge and understanding. For this reason, a specific major is generally not a requirement for employment in such fields. People who have not majored in these areas have proven to be just as successful in these jobs as people who have completed the associated majors.
Let's put it another way by returning to our analogy of a deck of cards representing your college preparation for a career. The cards in your Knowledge suit may have high value if you are seeking a career in a technical field, such as engineering or computer science. Your Knowledge cards will always have some value, but just how valuable they will be to your career is more difficult to assess in less technical fields.
Judy chose an education major, with science her subject area focus, because it seemed practical to have a teaching certificate. But she didn't really like teaching. She liked tennis far better and played on the team for four years, yet frequently wondered what she would do with herself after graduation. Judy had taken a wide variety of communication skills courses because she liked them and had worked for a book publisher one summer, where she developed several contacts. Judy also had started a newsletter for her national sorority. She used all of these experiences to find work as an assistant editor for a popular science magazine after graduation. Although Judy did find her major concentration to be instrumental in securing her job, other aspects of her college experience and extracurricular activities far outweighed her major in leading Judy into a satisfying career. What's more, the things she learned in her major courses have served Judy well in her publishing job in very different ways than she had expected while she was a student.
Focusing too much attention on selecting "the right major" (i.e., the one that will guarantee career success) is like asking: "Should I practice fielding grounders so I can be the best second baseman, or should I work on hitting homers so I can bat cleanup, or should I practice stealing bases so I can be the best base-runner?" One-dimensional people are of limited use. To prepare for your sport, you work to become the most complete performer you possibly can. Yes, specialists are needed. But specializing is generally better done after you get your degree. To be a successful career seeker-and to gain more cards in your Knowledge suit-try to get as much from all your courses as you can.
The Generic Skills Suit
If jobs could talk, they would say that all this fretting over what is the right major is putting your emphasis on the wrong suit. While some jobs do correlate directly with specific college majors, a far larger portion of them do not. The most important fact of life in the job market is that most careers are learned and developed on the job, not prepared for in school. It follows, then, that most college graduates will have to show an employer more than a list of relevant courses on their transcripts, good grades, and a particular major to get a good job.
Generic skills are far more important than particular courses of study, in terms of both the breadth of jobs they prepare you to perform and the long-range growth and advancement potential they give you in whatever field you enter. In spite of the special benefits that come from developing generic skills, many college students ignore or slight this hidden part of the curriculum and depend instead on their major to carry them through. This means that if you don't ignore these skills, you will gain an important advantage in the job market.
Generic skills come in many forms-writing, speaking, research, computer use, problem solving, imagination, detail work, and so on. But, once again, if jobs could talk, they would emphasize strongly that skills are most useful when acquired in combination. That is, those who succeed, especially in the leadership positions that college graduates aspire to, do so because of their having many different skills, as many cards in the Generic Skills suit as they can acquire. There are more similarities among the people at the top than there are differences. And these similarities tend to be centered in the area of generic skills.
The individual cards in the Generic Skills suit are as follows:
Technical Skills: Regardless of the career you hope to enter, you should have some technical literacy. This means enough exposure to technical courses that you have an understanding of new developments in science and technology, especially computer technology, the most compelling at this time. Computerese is the newest "native language" in our culture. Courses teaching computer use for non-computer-science majors are now available at most colleges. At an increasing number of campuses (though still mostly among private colleges), students are required either to bring a computer with them or to purchase one from the school. These colleges are making certain that all of their students-including fine arts and philosophy majors-earn the technical card in their Generic Skills suit.
Mathematical Skills: You may be able to avoid math courses. Many colleges allow students to skip or minimize their face-to-face contact with mathematics, but you'll be painting yourself into a corner career-wise if you allow yourself to do this. Business is mathematical, as is public policy and much else, if you look closely enough-even music, for instance. Mathematical thinking is used to solve business problems, to design interiors, to plan research studies, and to work on many social issues. In short, quantitative problems are everywhere, and you should learn to think in these terms.
If you are still cringing from this suggestion because you have a hard time understanding and appreciating the Xs and Ys of math, consider taking a statistics course in the department of sociology, psychology, education, or economics. Statistics is math applied to particular real-world problems. Because of this, many students find statistics easier to understand and appreciate than pure mathematics. Besides, having statistical skills gives you a card in the Generic Skills suit that many other job applicants won't have. Since so many job candidates dislike numbers, those who are not afraid to venture into the quantitative realm will have less competition.
Writing Skills: Writing skills are not learned only in writing courses. Most writing ability is developed in courses that do not have "writing" or "composition" in the title. Any course that requires you to write reports or term projects or even take essay exams can help to develop your writing skills. Ask students and professors which are the best of these courses. Often they are humanities and social science courses, but they can be found in any field where a professor demands that students express their opinions, ideas, and knowledge on paper.
Every challenging job that carries responsibility requires writing skill in some form. Clear, concise writing is the clearest sign of an intelligent, well-educated individual. You can be sure that prospective employers will examine your writing ability in the letters you send, on your application form, and in other situations.
Speaking Skills: Courses to enhance your speaking skills are somewhat harder to find. Beyond public speaking courses (very useful for anyone at any stage in college), the courses that push you to become a better speaker tend to have small classes in which professors are more inclined to ask for oral reports and in-class reactions to lectures or readings, and to have classroom debates. In the best of these, professors take the trouble to give you feedback on your oral presentations. Speaking skills can also be cultivated outside the classroom, in student government positions as well as on the debating team.
People who cannot express ideas orally to others are severely limited in their career development. If you don't like speaking in class or anywhere else in public, now is the time to develop this skill, not later. If you make mistakes while learning to speak in public in college, you might be embarrassed, but it will pass. (You'd be surprised at how many people have fears and self-doubts about speaking to groups.) But if you wait until you've begun your career to make your mistakes, it could cost you advancement-or even your job.
Research Skills: The skill of assembling information relevant to a problem is useful in many careers. This skill can be developed in science courses, history courses, or any course in which you must gather information from primary or secondary sources. The ability to research is actually a set of skills, rather than one skill. It includes imagination in finding information, organizational ability, and accuracy in record-keeping and efficient methods of retrieving information. Computer skills become important especially in this last area. The more that knowledge continues to expand in the modern world, the more that knowing how and where to find it will be a crucial skill in any job.
Analytical Problem-Solving Skills: Problem solving is the most widely applied and universal skill of all, as it encompasses the ability to think logically. Science courses seem to be the most obvious for nurturing this skill, but many other courses emphasize it as well, including philosophy, critical thinking, and many liberal arts courses. Any course in which students are given a chance to identify and analyze problems and find solutions will provide an opportunity to develop these skills.
The entire hidden curriculum of generic skills should form a very basic part of your college education. Scientists must write and talk to others, managers must comprehend math and science, physical educators and recreation leaders must analyze and communicate, communicators must solve problems, and even social service workers must understand computers. A skill is not powerful by itself but rather in combination with other skills. Focusing your efforts on mastering one or a few skills to the exclusion of others may make your college learning experience "easier," but at the expense of your career potential. You might as well learn to be a superb dribbler on the basketball court and ignore shooting, defense, and moving without the ball. As a "designated dribbler," your use to any organization you join is limited and minor. If someone is to be eliminated from the organization, it will be those with limited skills. And at every opportunity the boss will be looking for someone else who can "do it all."
The worst argument of all for avoiding, skipping over, or mastering only a limited number of skills within the hidden curriculum is, "I'll get all those skills later, as I need them." On the contrary, college is the best and maybe the only chance you have to acquire these skills and improve them. College graduates who are deficient in their writing, mathematical, scientific, or speaking skills tend to become worse later on, rather than better, because they have already learned to avoid and fear these skills areas. The longer you wait to enhance a particular skill, the less likely you will ever do it-certainly not once you are on the job.
Generic skills enable you to gain expertise in almost any specific area of knowledge, even if you never encountered the related course work while in college. Graduates with a full complement of generic skills will prosper because they can use their skills to learn new jobs or techniques. In essence, they will have learned how to learn.
