US: Changing role of academic career development

While technology in its many forms has facilitated the rapid advancement of humankind - the eras of the industrial revolution and space exploration to name two - the advent of the digital age can arguably be viewed as the greatest of technological times. The ability of business and industry to communicate via the internet through email, data links, video conferencing and more has become an indispensable aspect of global commerce.

Along with the ability to communicate through the fast, efficient and widely accessible digital highways come challenges. The means to communicate does not necessarily indicate that the communication itself is effective.

Effective communications between diverse individuals and groups representing many elements of global commerce is affected by factors that include cultural considerations, language barriers and the everyday judgments we must all make regarding the appropriate use of the communication tools themselves.

Institutions of higher education have a responsibility to make available an education that provides the technical and the cultural and interpersonal skills required to be successful in the global workforce.

As described by Dr John Cencich in the foreword of our book, Career Development in Higher Education: "It is one thing to provide the pure academic foundation for their future careers, but without many aspects of mentoring and counselling, students may end up with nothing more than an empty promise of the American Dream."

Indeed, globalisation of the economies of the world necessitates the expansion of career development activities well beyond regional considerations.

Counselling or mentoring and immersion programmes can play an important role in addressing the multicultural competency needs of an increasingly diverse and technical international workforce, but that is only the starting point.

Career development in the higher education setting is not an activity that should be isolated and practised within the confines of a career counselling centre. Rather, career development activities can and should be a component of a higher education curriculum that is infused in most coursework, so that it is perceived by students as being central to professional preparation.

Academia plays a central role in providing the technical foundations by which fledgling professionals prepare themselves to practice their discipline. However, the nuance and practicalities of practicing a profession in the real world is largely down to the student and the employer.

A 19 November New York Times article, "What They Don't Teach Law Students: Lawyering", by David Segal, illustrates the point. As Segal elaborates regarding law schools, academia too often emphasises the theoretical over the practical.

Very often, the needs of a multinational workforce require a greater degree of sophistication regarding global mores than a purely academic education can provide.

For instance, many higher education institutions in the United States offer a semester or a year of international study as a means to expand a student's world-view. However, language and cultural barriers sometimes make such study opportunities little more than a semester-long guided tour of buildings, clubs and museums.

Multicultural coursework has long been a core competency in the training of counsellors, and it should be an important element in the preparation of all professionals. Meaningful multicultural training does not stop with understanding the core elements of a culture, but it helps develop an understanding of how individuals in other cultures think.

While it can be argued that such understandings only truly develop with experience, a fundamental awareness and acceptance that the American mindset is not universal could prove a great advantage to individuals entering the multinational workforce.

With shrinking educational budgets strangling American public schools, there has been an ongoing process whereby foreign language programmes have been eliminated or refocused on languages that are more reflective of current economic developmental trends.

For instance, the classical languages such a French and German are given less emphasis over languages such as Spanish or Chinese. And in order to place limits on credit loads and their associated costs for students, many universities in the United States have entirely eliminated foreign language requirements from baccalaureate programmes.

Such actions may well prove to be 'penny wise and pound foolish'. Like a life lived with limited outside influences, students without at least a rudimentary understanding of a language beyond theirs can become narcissistic, ethno-centric employees whose expectations demand that others yield to their language limitations, and never the inverse.

Given the United States' geographic isolation and education's budgetary woes, there is no ready means to create language competence solely through academic preparation. However, coursework that focuses on preparing a student to communicate in a global economy could be invaluable.

Content could include understanding the commonalities of various languages, using software to develop elementary conversational skills quickly and the use of human and electronic translators. Such coursework would be even more useful if the content of the language awareness course was specifically 'matched' to the profession being studied.

Finally, digital communications that do not take into consideration the nuance of cultures and traditions are often bound to fail.

A quality education should include coursework and experiences that assist students in understanding the circumstances in global commerce where an email is best left unwritten in favour of telephone communication - or when the telephone should be eschewed in favour of a face-to-face visit. Communication without an understanding of the socio-cultural context of the content is a recipe for disaster.

In conclusion, career development activities are more vital to the effectiveness of a competitive global workforce than ever before.

A successful education lies not only in imparting a foundation of technical competencies, but also in providing the workforce with the basic socio-cultural tools required to interact on a global stage where, increasingly, what you know is of only equal importance to how it is communicated.

* Jeff L Samide (EdD) is associate professor of counselor education at the California University of Pennsylvania, California, and co-editor of Career Development in Higher Education (published by Information Age Publishing).


Comment:

On the brief mention of the role of study abroad with regard to a student's career development, many of us in the field of international education are indeed paying quite a bit of attention to the important and necessary impact of education abroad experiences on student career development.

See my writing on this subject for the American Institute For Foreign Study and NAFSA: Association of International Educators, in particular, the new AIFS Student Guide to Study Abroad & Career Development, and The Right Tool for the Job.

Martin Tillman