Need Good News? Check Out Your Local College or University
by Lisa Clark-Diller
One of the joys of my job as a university teacher is that I get to see young people finding and making their way in the world. Sometimes I am part of that journey, and sometimes I just smile from afar as students plan how they might use their skills in creative and satisfying ways. As I compare their options and the resulting ventures with the same set of decisions that young people were making when I was an undergraduate, two things, both of which give me great joy, strike me. First, young people are much more creative than they were 20 years ago about what they might spend their lives doing. Second, greater gender equality has resulted in a conspicuous benefit to our church as well as the communities in which we live—and not just in the most obvious way.
The first development, more creativity and breadth of vision, has meant that the most ambitious students are not settling merely for preparing for the holy triad of law, business and medical school. In the early 90s when I was a college student, smart students rarely thought outside the box. Now students are considering a greater variety of graduate school programs such as work in public policy, outdoor leadership or agricultural planning. And the work they are doing directly after completing their bachelor’s degrees is equally adventurous—starting their own non-profits, working in Hollywood, helping shape city development in sustainable ways through their own businesses, and myriad different forms of social work.
These students are not afraid to build on their experiences and relationships from high school and university to develop entrepreneurial communities. They are braver about making connections with members of the community outside their own social circles. They jump feet first into civic society and are very skilled at turning volunteering into job experience as well as a way to identify with whatever community in which they live. Those of us who grew up going to denominational undergraduate schools often found this challenging 20 or 30 years ago. We were nervous about forming friendships and employment relationships with people outside our comfort zone. Today’s university students are much more savvy about this—and the Kingdom of God is being celebrated and strengthened in entirely new spaces.
The second development, greater gender equality, is even more exciting. Not only are the talents and energy of young women much more available to church, businesses, and the community now, but equality has also freed up young men to use their gifts in brave and interesting ways. For instance, when I was a university student, there was pretty constant consternation among church leaders that the “best and the brightest” in our church were no longer going into the pastoral ministry. By this, of course, they meant the smart young men weren’t becoming pastors. Allowing women into the pastoral ministry and giving them paying jobs released an entirely new pool of talent into our church, alongside the concomitant participation of skilled women in the business and non-profit world.
But that’s not all. Almost every school year I speak to young men who have creative ideas about ministry or service or non-profit work who have been freed up to explore these arenas because of their highly employable wives. They tell me that because their wives are earning such good money, they are free to work part-time at innovative ministries that the church is excited about, but can’t fully fund. Many women have worked in this way through the last century—volunteering for exciting ministries because their husbands supported them financially. Now men can do the same, and we are constantly seeing new and effective initiatives released by the economics of this move towards equality. This equality means that we are looking more at where the skills are that we need with less pressure to fulfill stereotypical gender roles.
Equality in childcare, with men and women both considering the care of their children something to be prioritized, has resulted in stronger families, and more flexibility regarding who does what in our society and church. We are more free to work in the areas of our talents when the scope for who-does-what-and-how-much-they-are-paid is widened. Both the young men and the young women in my classroom are considering diversity in the ways they think they’ll balance family and work and volunteering responsibilities. Employers and work spaces are becoming more open to job-sharing and children in the workplace, so that both parents can work less and spend more time with their kids. We all benefit from this.
We benefit as well from the fact that these students know they are going to have to make do with less. Unlike their parents (and my generation), they are consciously living small—choosing smaller homes, sharing resources, buying fewer material positions. They are more mobile. Some of them are even re-thinking the traditional debt-laden ways of constructing their lives. Why not live more in community—a married couple sharing a home with a single person, or a group of people sharing a house or vehicles? They know choices will be hard (though probably not how hard), but sharing financial and domestic arrangements between men and women, and couples and families and singles, releases more time and energy for the Kingdom.
I am often accused of being a Pollyanna. It is not an appellation I reject, and so I understand others in my same situation might have a different view of “young people nowadays.” I work with a rarified group of students. I get to see them at an exciting time of their lives. Human nature has not changed, and so none of these students is any more capable of good or evil than my own generation. However, these developments in our church and society mean there is much to celebrate. The parents and communities and teachers that nurtured these young people can be proud of them. My students keep me optimistic. And even as they are stressed about finding jobs they like and paying off their student loans or getting into grad school, they are also much freer to find a variety of paths to that kind of Kingdom-breathed satisfaction, which is all their parents and mentors really want for them.
What is the outlook for today’s college graduates when seeking work, as most will need to do before attempting to become an entrepreneur? Will there be sufficient jobs offered? Or, will some continue in graduate school, amassing more debt and with still no job guaranteee?
Where are the best potential jobs for new grads this year?
This is an exciting and positive blog. I do hope you are right about the great majority of Adventist young people. It gives me hope for the future.
This was not the case in my college days, as there seemed few choices for a woman–nursing and secretarial. Since I didn’t like the sight of blood, nursing was out. I took secretrial and hated the subjects that were boring and lost interest in school leaving to become a secretary! Over the years, however, I made every secretarial job more than just work by getting involved in the institution or place, such as taking classes at a university where I worked and making suggestions. I finally graduated by going to evening classes. I often wonder what I could have accomplished had I not let the culture keep me back in my youth.
Church work in pastoring or teaching would have been such a joy. Keep encouraging our youth, especially women in ministry.
How jobs and college education are related remains a heavily debated issue in higher education. Below are a few articles that represent just the tip of the iceberg in faculty and administration conversations about what students are actually getting from their education. Even though we like to say in Adventist Education that the “purpose of true education is to restore the image of God in humans”, ultimately we also are required to make sure our students can actually get jobs when they are done. We all think we are called to help with character formation in these young people, but we aren’t doing our job as mentors and participants in discipleship if they can’t get a job when they are done. This is tricky to balance alongside helping them see what their passions and gifts are. One’s passion may not be what one does to support oneself.
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Do-Your-Grads-Make-/127891/
http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Did-When-I-Couldnt/66281/
http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/05/history-majors-and-job-market-what-can.html
http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/whats-point-of-college.html
I just don’t buy that things were so bad with gender equality previously – in fact we have gone too far with programs like Title 9.
I went to college back in the dark ages of the 1970s, frequently at the top of my class, and female. I encountered no opposition or discouragement to any career I might have chosen. When I decided pre-med was perhaps not the right choice for me, my chemistry professor tried to talk me into getting into research chemistry. I felt there would have been no problem with my being accepted and excelling in any department in the university that I chose.
I feel a lot of the choices out there for students now actually lead to less thrilling career choices – anything ending with “studies” leads to a job asking, “do you want fries with that?” It seems like we’re over-educating our children for our needs and dumbing down the curriculum to match our dumbed-down high schools.
I'm sorry to see that there were not more responses to this excellent blog.
I'm one of those people who finished graduate school in the 1970s and went off into a 3-yr research post-doc at an excellent university. After struggling (and failing) to find a decent full-time tenure-track academic job, I went in the direction of a dominant passion–I became a zoological curator for a major zoological society and then a professional scientific editor for National Geographic RESEARCH. These jobs led me to a career with an NIH contract research company. Since retiring ten years ago I have been a consultant for my former employer, for medical schools, zoos, etc. My passion for learning from and about nonhuman primates enabled me to travel widely for field research and to give invited lectures and scientific papers. Education opened many doors for me. And skills I learned along the way applied to each setting where I worked thereafter. My advice to young people? Learn as much as you can. Make the most of your opportunities. Take risks.
Thanks for this, Lisa. I echo your optimism from a college professor's perspective.
Now, if we can just give our young adults the reins once in a while . . .