Excerpt
SUMMARY: This time of year, high school seniors and their families are thinking about where they’ll be headed to college in the fall. In “There Is Life After College,” author Jeffrey Selingo examines how one’s post-college years are influenced by crucial choices made before students even enroll. Selingo sits down with William Brangham for a conversation.
FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA: No matter what path any of us on the stage took to our success, we all know that completing your education past high school is the most important thing you can do to reach your dreams. That’s why we’re here. So, while you all might be in awe of us, let me tell you, we are in awe of you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): High schoolers and their parents are obviously focused on what school they will go to, but a new book argues there are more important things to consider.
The book is called “There Is Life After College.” Jeffrey Selingo is the author. I talked with him yesterday.
Jeff, if I can discern a basic thesis from you book, it’s not so much where you go to college, but it’s what you do while you’re in college. Is that right?
JEFFREY SELINGO, Author, “There Is Life After College”: That’s right.
It used to be as long that, as you had a bachelor’s degree from a college, any college, really, you would be golden in the job market. It was really the way that you got jobs years ago.
But now the fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of noise around the signal of a bachelor’s degree. So it’s really important what you do while you’re there, the experiential learning that you get, internships, projects, study abroad, and activities like that, cocurricular activities, whether it’s athletics or clubs.
And, most importantly, you don’t take on too much debt. The more debt that you take on in college, the fewer options you have after college to take essentially any job you want anywhere in the country, which would be good for your career, and instead you’re basing your career decisions on how much money you’re going to make.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In one of the early chapters of your book, you categorize graduates after college into three categories.
You have the sprinters, the wanderers, and the stragglers. What do those delineations tell us about post-college life today?
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