Is it fair to expect seniors to make major career decisions?
There are some students who are ready to think about their careers in their first year. Others will start thinking after they graduate, and then it’s perfectly acceptable to take time off to figure it out. That’s why there’s this increase in one- to two-year positions, and why Teach For America was the number-one employer at Duke last year. It’s not because all those people want to go into teaching, although some will. But there are an awful lot who are going into Teach For America, because they don’t really know what they want to do, and it’s a good way to spend a couple of years. Do parents misunderstand what a liberal-arts education is? I think a lot of them are buying the brand. They’re coming to highly selective schools because, they say, “I know that if my kid’s got that brand, that they’re going to be set for life.” If parents do not put all that pressure on their kids to say, “You have to have a job at graduation,” that can be really helpful to the students. The job search is o
