#212 How to Choose a College That Delivers Career ROI, with Jeff Selingo Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  00:45

What happens when one of the most respected voices in higher education advocates that college prestige alone is no longer enough to successfully launch a young person into their career? Today, I’m joined by a dream guest, Jeff selingo. He’s a New York Times best selling author and a leading expert on college admissions, outcomes and the future of higher education. In his most recent book, dream school, Jeff takes a hard look at what really matters in choosing a college while he tackles many factors, there’s a very clear undercurrent throughout the book, skills, internships and real world experience now matter more than prestige alone. Jeff writes about and parents regularly tell me the primary reason they’re paying for college is career outcomes. Yet many worry their child could still graduate unemployed or underemployed without direction or momentum. In our conversation, Jeff explains when and why the shift toward career first thinking began the difference between foundational skills and majors, why internships are no longer optional, and what students must do during college to avoid underemployment and a delayed launch into adulthood if you want your child to graduate with confidence, clarity and real career traction, not just A diploma, this conversation will change how you think about college decisions. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  02:20

Jeff selingo, it’s an honor to have you here. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me, Lisa, this is fantastic. So when we met at Denison edge, I had just finished reading your new book, dream school, yeah. And of course, I had already previously read your previous books. There you go. I actually, not only do I have my you have sticky notes, and I’ve got sticky notes, Jeff, I’ve got, I

 

Jeff Selingo  02:46

think I know what’s in it, but sometimes I’m surprised.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  02:50

Couple of years ago, when did I say that? So I noticed in my work as career as a career development coach, I love this work, and I noticed then that there’s this through line, this undercurrent and dream school, and that’s what got me so excited. And as you were writing the book, I’m really curious you address head on, particularly in chapters five and 10. Those were my two favorite chapters. There’s a lot of career piece in there. When did you in your research and in your previous work, even find that parents began to shift to what I’m also hearing, that they’re really hiring their colleges to get their kids a career as a primary driver at investing in college.

 

Jeff Selingo  03:31

So this really started a while, a lot further back than we probably think. It was really after the Great Recession of 2008 2009 when we start to see the first clues of career focus in college, and that’s the year 2009 when a long running survey by UCLA. UCLA, every year since the 1960s surveys college freshmen. I actually remember taking this as a college freshman at Ithaca College this survey, and basically it asked them about a number of different big political issues, other higher education issues, why they’re going to college and so forth, and but the why they’re going to college flipped in 2009 from learning from some learning about something that interests me, which was number one for quite some time, to getting a job. And then we see, over the next decade, from 2010, to 2020, and even into the 2020s. A huge shift in college majors, right? So moving away from the humanities and the liberal arts like 10s of 1000s of fewer majors in those 10s of 1000s of fewer degrees awarded in those majors. Many more business majors, many more STEM majors, many more really pre professional majors, all because parents increasingly saw this as a stepping stone, as the as the pathway, as the pathway into a job. And then on top of that, you’ve seen, you know, over the last decade plus. I don’t think it’s been enough. A number of colleges really lean into including where we met, at Denison, really lean into career development. So putting a lot more money, time and effort into their career centers. Unfortunately, as I said, don’t think it’s enough, but places like Denison and Wake Forest and others really put time, money and effort into these centers and made them much more part and parcel of the curriculum and of the student experience, so that it wasn’t just something that students went to maybe once or twice, or, by the way, not at all.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  05:32

Yeah, you know, and I know you, you wrote in the book a lot about, like, this mix of foundational skills being those cross industry skills that employers want combined with specialized industry specific skills being really maybe even a bigger payoff than the major itself. But yet, here you are. You still have to write a book about finding your dream school, because it it’s focused really on these families focusing so much on over indexing college prestige or a specific major like computer science and business instead of these employer skills that they want. So what do you believe that families are still missing? And I know you talked, I went to like, every webinar that you did leading up to the book launch, and I learned so much, and I loved listening to the parents, because they’re still missing some of this. What do you think this missing piece is?

 

Jeff Selingo  06:28

Well, I think the piece they’re still missing is that they kind of trust colleges to just get this, get this right. And so what they’re thinking is, as long as my kid goes to, often, the most selective, most prestigious, well ranked college, they’re going to be fine. And that is the piece that they’re not. That they’re really missing here is that they’re really looking for institutions that will really lean into skills, not just degrees, because skills matter just as much, and in some cases, more than degrees, according to the research I did with the Burning Glass Institute, and more than anything, and I show this in the book. I have a graphic in the book that shows by major how likely you are to be underemployed. You’re so much more likely to be underemployed in every major, including, by the way, business and those pre professional degrees we’re talking about, if you don’t have an internship, at least one and more likely multiple internships in college. And so I think parents say, Oh, my kid will go to Yale and they’ll be fine. But if they don’t get those skills, if they don’t get those internships, that is a missing piece that I still don’t think parents get.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  07:34

You know, you had one story in there about someone who you did the ROI math where just earning a credential boosted their income from 5k to a 20k example, on income and just really showing that this is kind of a skeleton key, these micro credentials, these internships. Would you say internships are the single biggest risk factor for underemployment after graduation.

 

Jeff Selingo  08:02

There’s no doubt about it. I mean, the data really show that because two things that internships do that colleges can’t do, one is it does give you those very specific hard skills that employers are looking for. So students, when they go for a job interview, they could talk about what they did on an internship that could help them on the job. It’s a lot harder for students to talk about what they did in college, whether that’s in a class or in a extracurricular activity, although, by the way, I think colleges should help them do that. You are learning real skills in the classroom and in extracurricular activities. Students can’t really translate that. They can’t talk often about that, but it’s a lot easier to talk about that when you’re translating it from a job or an internship to a job. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, it gets them into the hiring pool that, you know, again, colleges can’t do that, and we know that. You know, in some big companies, 6070, 80% of the of the hiring polls come from their intern pools. So if you intern, much better chance of getting into into a job.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  09:06

There you were very clear in the book too, that it’s not just those are at those prestigious, brand name, overpriced schools that are getting these internships, right? I mean, they’re they’re looking among you’ve got a great list of schools in the back of dream school. They’re looking at those institutions as well, right?

 

Jeff Selingo  09:26

They are. I mean, this is a bit nuanced, at least. You probably saw an article just a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal that said, you know, hiring is, you know, hiring at the elite schools is back, right? Like the big companies are going back to the big schools. You cannot believe how many people sent me that article. Oh, Jeff, you know this, your book is talking about widening the lens on college. Well, now you know, employers are going back to those top colleges. You should just stop talking about that, right? Well, okay, I will give you, you know, dream school is not about not. Going to the most selective colleges, are not applying there, but we know that getting into those places is very difficult. We do know that if you go, especially to the Ivy League, Ivy plus the majority of those students, or more than a third, I shouldn’t say a majority, but more than a third of those graduates are going into three industries. They’re going into banking, they’re going into consulting. They’re going into tech, if you want to get into Goldman Sachs, if you want to get into McKinsey, if you want to get into meta or, you know, you know, the hot AI, open AI, or whatever your your chances coming out of an IV plus are going to be better. I’m not going to deny that. Or getting an internship there is going to be better. I’m not denying that, but those are a sliver of the job market, and those are a sliver of institutions. Most Americans go to a much broader range of institutions, and they work at a much broader range of employers, including, by the way, small businesses, startups, things like that, those jobs are still available to everybody else. And by the way, it doesn’t mean that if you don’t go to a Ivy, plus, you’ll never get hired at Goldman, you’ll never get hired at meta. You will. It happens all the time. You just need to prove yourself, right? You might need to prove yourself a little bit more than the kid from you know, Harvard or Yale, but it happens. And so this, you know, everybody wants, as you know, everybody wants certainty in the admissions process, and they want certainty in the job process, and there is no certainty. There’s a lot more nuance than I think we care to admit and what I’m trying to do is give people the tools to try to do their best, to put their best foot forward, so that when those jobs do open up. They have a shot at it.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  11:42

So if it’s possible to do this right, and we’re thinking about finding those right schools like, what advice do you have for you? Give lots of great advice. Everybody should read the book. But specific to this, parents want the career outcome. Employers want these skills. What advice do you have when sorting through and they can read the book and go a little bit deeper, but in creating that college list of how we look at this piece of it?

 

Jeff Selingo  12:11

So I really want to know, I want to look at the curriculum of my major, right? So what are the Are they really theoretical classes? How often am I really going to get into, you know, deep industry expertise, you know, what are, how much project based learning is there in these classes? Right? So a number of classes do work, for example, with companies. They do two or three weeks sprint jobs for companies. Companies give them data. This happens in data analytics. A lot. It happens in a lot of fields. You know do are you going to have access to work like that? So I don’t think that parents dig enough into the curriculum. Now, you can’t do that for 50 schools on your list. You can’t even probably do that for 20 schools. But as you start to narrow the list and compare schools, I would really look at the course. I still call it a catalog. Obviously it’s online, but really look at the course, course descriptions, start to ask questions of the faculty about how they teach some of those courses. That’s how you compare. Second I would really want to know how much help do I get in getting an internship. You know what are, who is interning out of my major? You probably have to ask under other undergraduates. You may have to ask again professors or department chairs or the deans of these schools you really want to get a sense of, is this easy to do? Hard to do. You know, is it required? If it’s required, I had a I met a board member at another institution whose daughter went to Clemson, which, by the way, is a dream school. So it shows that the dream schools are not perfect. His daughter at Clemson had a internship requirement in her major, which he thought was great, but then he learned they really don’t do much to help you get it. So she was kind of on her own right. Like these are all questions that it’s possible to do when you’re looking at 20 or 30 colleges, but when you start to narrow that list down, when you start to compare things. Those are the details you want to look for.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  14:03

Yeah, my youngest graduated from Cincinnati, and spring of 24 you talk about their Co Ops. Drexel, you mentioned those in the book, and we found the same thing, like it’s still up to the student to have agency in the process and be a go getter, even though it’s required and they have to go after it. So with these internships, and most schools don’t have the co op option, but schools like Cincinnati that are requiring it, many of the families assume that this can wait till junior or senior year, and then they’re kind of left floundering and drifting. What advice do you have to them about finding that agency and how can we support our kids in that?

 

Jeff Selingo  14:48

Yeah, I mean, I think this just takes time. I think, you know, there are some students who will go off to college. They won’t be spectators. They’ll jump into the process. They’ll they’ll find those jobs and those internships for very early. On. So I think that what we really want to encourage students is to get there, to explore, to find those mentors, to find people who are going to help them get those jobs. I don’t think it has to be done all at once. You know, I often hear from parents who say, Well, my kid doesn’t really have an internship after freshman year. Is that a big deal? No, but they should be doing some sort of work in the summer that leads to perhaps an internship the following summer, or maybe even the third summer. I mean, most people leave college with zero internships, or if they leave college with one, it’s usually between their junior and senior year anyway, or sometime in their junior and senior year. So this is not something you have to figure out immediately. What you want to know is, are the ingredients there to help? Is it? Is it encouraged? Right? So the thing about Cincinnati, a Drexel, a northeastern an RIT, is that the co op model is integrated into the curriculum in a way that it’s hard to get lost and it’s hard not to have a co op or an internship. In that case,

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  16:04

I love that you know, as you’re saying that about setting yourself up and doing the work, why not after freshman year? Let’s push this down younger and go earn an industry recognized credential on your own. If your college isn’t your university is not offering it, that’s going to give you skills to be even more interesting to the internships that you’re out there competing for, right?

 

Jeff Selingo  16:27

No doubt about it. And, you know, and as you said earlier, we met at Denison’s edge, which is, you know, kind of a mini campus they have in Columbus, because they’re a little bit west of Columbus. But you know, Adam Weinberg, who’s the president there has been advocating for this idea to use the time in the academic calendar. I think he said something like 40% of the year is not filled during the academic calendar. Obviously, summers, breaks, things like that. You know, in Denison even offers, you know, online programs where you could get some credentials, even over winter break, and there’s no reason why you can’t do that. You know, you might need to learn how to use Salesforce, or you might need to use how to do the Adobe Suite. Or, you know, whatever it might be in your field you might need you know all tricks, which is data data visualization and data analysis. You know, things like that allow you to have skill sets that you may not learn in the classroom, but that will be very beneficial to your resume.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  17:29

I love Dennison because here we are a liberal arts college layering on now the importance of they, you know, they have developed this program because of the importance of the skills. And a lot of times we see that, you know, the distinct liberal arts colleges and then the universities, and I feel like what they’re doing is innovative for liberal arts colleges, kind of bridging that gap. Do you see that as innovative on their part?

 

Jeff Selingo  17:56

More? I definitely do. And I, you know, I wrote about this in my newsletter recently about how AI, I think is going to bring back the creative side of colleges and universities. Everybody says, Oh, well, that’s good for liberal arts colleges. I said no, because if we just think of liberal arts colleges as the old liberal arts college, that doesn’t do it right to me, what you need to do is lean in liberal arts colleges need to do two things. One is they need to lean into the durable skills that will last a lot longer than the degree, right? Things like discernment, things like networking, things like you know how to get things done, essentially, project management, right? They don’t really do that now, or they say they do it, but students don’t know how it happens. And second is this hands on learning component, I think liberal arts colleges need to become much more apparent, much more focused on, on the hands, on learning, component of of their education. If they do those two things and still bolt them on to or make them integrate them into the liberal arts degree, I think they will do well. But many liberal arts colleges think, Oh, well, AI will just bring the liberal arts back. It’s not going to happen.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  19:04

They’re just kind of doubling down on that narrative. Yeah, on the college side, do you feel like then with as we’re talking about that is, do we have more of a structural issue in higher ed, or do we just have a communication failure for the fact that these parents are still chasing the wrong thing?

 

Jeff Selingo  19:21

Oh, I think we have I think we have both. I think we have both of a structural issue. I think most colleges and universities are still not designed to really leverage their experience and their advantages to help students in the job market, and then even if they communicate it to parents. The it’s kind of like, back in the 19, you know, I’m a, I’m a Gen Xer. So it’s like, where’s the beef, right? The old Wendy’s commercial, right? So, you know, where you would have, you know, I always say, Well, you know, people say, Well, this is great college in terms of, in terms of career outcomes. And I’m like. Okay, maybe it is, but what are they doing? What are they actually doing behind the scenes? Is it students doing it all themselves, or is the college helping them? And that’s the issue I still think we’re facing. So I think it’s a both structural and community and a communications problem.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  20:15

So as we close out thinking about parents and parents having conversations at home with their kids, and you know, you’re in this phase as a dad, I’m over here in my happy, empty nest years now, still busy, still expensive, though, by the way,

 

Jeff Selingo  20:31

well, by the way, if they don’t have a job, it just gets even more expensive.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  20:35

Well, they’re off the payroll, but I’m paying for weddings and vacations and things like that. It just doesn’t end.

 

Jeff Selingo  20:41

Doesn’t end, at least they’re off the payroll. So exactly

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  20:44

they are all off the payroll. It’s good, all five of them. So as we’re talking about families like I find that sometimes we’ve got all these tactical things that we can tell them to do, and you gave us some really great advice. You have so much more in the book, but the mindset shift I find often with those that we’re serving tends to be even more important like or maybe even needs to go first. So if there’s a mindset shift that, have, say, Read dream school, and they they’re thinking critically about this and having conversations at home, same conversations that you’re probably having in your own home, now what do you hope that the mindset shift would be that later will result in kids not being on the payroll when we expect them to be launched, whatever age that you might imagine that to be. For me, it was always I thought, well, by 23 or 24 let’s be on our own two feet and a job paying our own bills. But we’re seeing a growing number of 20 somethings in the career development work we’re doing with 15 to 25 year olds, where it’s the 20 somethings that the they’re aimless, they’re floundering, they’re falling behind. So what mindset shift do we need to do early to try to avoid that later?

 

Jeff Selingo  21:53

That’s a great question. I do think that you want the mindset both with parents and students that getting into college and going to college is not the end. And I feel like they felt that colleges universities had it right, that they would grip the steering wheel for them, and that’s not happening. And so my the mindset shift is that not only do you pick the right fit, as we talk about in dream school, but once you’re there, just like you did in high school, you kind of go outside of the curriculum. You go outside of the school that being you know, enjoy college, I’m not, I’m not telling students not to enjoy college, but that you have to do a little bit more in order to differentiate yourself from all the other graduates right now, and that might be, you know, taking a an online course to get a an online certificate that might be job shadowing somebody to kind of figure out, how do I get an internship at x company that might be maybe going away for a semester, not just study abroad, but going away somewhere else to do an internship, so you get a jump start on the summer, and you there’s not as much competition as during the summer. And you know, one of the things I keep hearing from employers is summer internships are not great for employers, because they’re just at the wrong time for a lot of them, and so a lot of them would love students for at different times of the year. So it’s just thinking a little bit differently than every other student. You’re really trying to position yourself away from the competition, and remember, all these other students are the competition. Yeah.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  23:28

Well, this has been really great if, if anybody has not read this, I’ve read it three times now, particularly chapters five and 10, as related to my work. Jeff, thank you so much for making the time to be with us today.

 

Jeff Selingo  23:41

Great. Lisa was great to be here, and thank you for reading dream school and spreading the word. Thank you.

 

Lisa Marker-Robbins  23:52

Jeff shared so much practical insight in this conversation, and one message came through loud and clear, college success isn’t about waiting and hoping it all works out. It’s about building skills, experience and direction early, with intention. If you don’t already have dream school, it’s a must read, even if your kid’s already in college, I’ve linked to the book in the show notes, and if you’re listening and thinking, okay, but where do we actually start well, I’m here to support you. I’ve created a free video called the career identification compass, where I walk parents and students through how young people can identify career direction, validate fit and begin building real momentum, long before confusion or drift sets in. You can watch it right now at flourish, coachingco.com, forward slash video, and I’ll link to it in the show notes. See clarity doesn’t come from guessing. It comes from a framework that helps your child launch with confidence. Thanks for listening. And you know what? You probably have a friend who would really appreciate this too. Go ahead and share it. Leave me a review. And I’ll see you next time