I Getting a college education is more important now than ever. The world of work gets more competitive every year. Workers in North American routinely lose their jobs to competitors from around the globe. Even the jobs that remain require new skills-remember when draftsmen worked with pens rather than computers?
In this increasingly competitive environment, a little education is no longer enough. Since the late 1960s the minimum wage in the United States has fallen from almost ten of today’s dollars to less than seven.[i] During that same time the earning power of a high school diploma has also fallen.[ii] But college degrees have maintained their value.[iii] In fact, over a full career, the difference between having only a high school diploma and a college degree could be worth well over $500,000, and perhaps more than $1 million.[iv]
Unfortunately, though, the cost of attending college is growing faster even than healthcare costs.[v] Tuition hikes are in the news every spring; increases of five and ten percent a year have become common.
A college education isn’t just expensive, it’s also difficult to complete. Only about half of the people who start college actually get their degree.[vi] It also takes longer than planned-the typical bachelor’s degree takes not four years to finish, but five. [vii]
Being the General Contractor of Your College Education
For all these challenges, students who take charge of their college education can still get more than their money’s worth from it. Really taking charge, though, means becoming the “general contractor” of the education process, taking personal responsibility for every important decision, the way a good general contractor does in building a home.
No one can do that but students themselves. All colleges and universities have professors who care deeply about their students. They also have academic advisors. However, the professors’ main responsibility is to teach classes and do research, not to advise students. And the ratio of advisors to students at the typical public university is one to nearly three hundred, so their capacity to help is also limited.[viii]
Moreover, even when there are enough great professors and advisors to go around, the wise student will be his or her own general contractor. Getting a good college education requires understanding yourself-what you like to do, what you’re good at, what you want to be. Not even a best friend or parent can do that for someone else. It’s a personal responsibility. A student who assumes that general contractor’s responsibility will follow seven rules.
Rule 1: Always Have a Career Dream.
Deciding what you want to be when you grow up is hard (even when you’re grown up). But waiting for an answer out of the blue isn’t likely to work, any more than it did for Oliver Cowdery when he tried to translate the Book of Mormon. The only way to decide what career is for you is to make your best guess and start testing it.
A good place to make that guess is in the shower. My father, Henry B. Eyring, learned that from his father. Grandpa, a scientist, encouraged Dad to major in physics. However, he could soon tell that it wasn’t working. One day he asked Dad, “When you walk down the street, when you’re in the shower, when you don’t have to be thinking about anything else, isn’t physics what you think about?” Dad said, “No.” Grandpa was disappointed, but he gave Dad good advice: “I think you’d better get out of physics. You ought to find something that you love so much that when you don’t have to think about anything, that’s what you think about.”[ix]
The people who do really well in their work have a passion for it; the financial rewards are secondary. That’s why wise general contractors always have a career dream based on something they love to do. The dream may change, but the next one will be closer to the mark thanks to lessons learned in the process. That principle also holds in the case of choosing a major, which is the subject of rule number two.
Rule 2: Always Have a Major.
Many college students think it’s fine to wait a year or two to choose their major. “I’ll finish my generals and then decide,” they say. Some of them worry that choosing too soon will just mean changing later and “losing” those credits. The fact is, though, the only sure way to find out if a major is for you to try it on for size.
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. . . . Let’s suppose, for instance, that you like politics enough that you think about it in the shower. There’s a major that could help you prepare for a career in politics: it’s called political science.
You don’t have to be absolutely sure that political science is for you. Even without a strong spiritual confirmation, you could try it on for size. In addition to studying hard for your political science classes, you could read political magazines and blogs, get involved in local campaigns, and volunteer to work for elected officials or lobbyists. If you like all of this, you’re probably a political scientist. If not, you can prayerfully try something else. In that case, you’ll have the benefit of better understanding of what you don’t like. Your second guess about a major will be better than the first because of what you have learned. The process is one of trial and error, and the sooner you start making educated guesses the sooner you’ll hit on the right answer. From this perspective, you can see that the worst major is “Undeclared.”
Rule 3: Customize Your Degree.
Getting a good college education requires more than just choosing the right major. Even the best majors require customization. One thing in particular to beware of is assuming that a major alone provides sufficient preparation for a career. Many are designed primarily as preparation for graduate study in the same field. In other words, a student who takes the major and tries to go immediately to work is likely to be under-prepared.
Especially for those students who don’t intend to get a master’s or Ph.D. degree in the same field (which is the vast majority of them), it’s critical to augment the major with other courses. That might mean getting a complementary minor, although a thoughtfully selected handful of courses from various fields might also do the job. For instance, I’d have been much better off taking a few classes in business management and accounting to go with my geology degree. That way, I would have been better prepared to compete for a job at graduation, when the price of oil had fallen from $30 per barrel, when I started, to $8.
One critical thing to watch is the number of hours required by a major. If that number is greater than 60, or half of the 120 hours required to graduate, it presents a risk of turning your four-year degree into one that takes five or more years to finish. The reason is that you’re very likely to change majors at least once. Especially as you choose that second (or third) major, watch out for the big ones. Many of the hours they require are preparation for graduate school in the same field. If you’re going straight to work or on to professional school in a field such as business, law, or medicine, you probably won’t need all of those hours; instead of the whole major, you might do just as well with the right handful of courses from it. If the major you’re selecting is going to take you past four years of college, be sure that’s there’s no other way. Most likely, there is.
Rule 4: Find the Best Teachers.
My friend Kim Clark, president of BYU-Idaho, remembers the day he got a piece of advice about college that changed his life. Before he registered for his General Education courses, he went to talk with his uncle, a university professor. President Clark asked what courses he should take that year. His uncle replied, “Don’t take courses. Take professors.”
Whenever you have a choice, take classes from the best teachers you can find. Professor Jim Gordon of BYU’s law school was one of those teachers for me. He knew the law like the scholar he was, but he also cared deeply about his students. And he was enthusiastic and funny. In our legal writing class he found a way to get us excited about such traditionally unpopular subjects as grammar and footnote formatting. Once, having read aloud a writing sample from a case in which the judge had needlessly repeated himself, Professor Gordon shouted, “That’s redundant! Not only that, it says the same thing twice.” It took many courses from Professor Gordon, worrying less about the subject than about learning from this great teacher.
These days, you’ll probably start your search for great teachers on RateMyProfessors.com. But be careful to distinguish between statements like, “This guy doesn’t care about his students,” and, “The workload was completely over-the-top.” The former complaint is one you probably want to take seriously; the latter may not be.
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. . . . Very often, the professors who care the most and are putting the most into the course are the ones who demand the most from you in return. When you find such a teacher, hang on. He or she could become a mentor and lifelong friend, as Professor Gordon is to me.
Rule 5: Do Your Best Work.
As an administrator in BYU’s MBA program I too often had heart-rending conversations with academically unqualified applicants. As they tried to explain why their undergraduate GPAs didn’t reflect their true capabilities, I felt like a building inspector, hearing excuses about why a house wasn’t “up to code.” Some applicants would say, “I goofed off my freshman and sophomore years, but since then I’ve gotten good grades.” Others would explain, “I know that my GPA is below average, but I worked 30 hours a week to put myself through school. Just imagine how well I could have done if I hadn’t worked.”
You have just one shot at college. To avoid painful conversations with prospective employers or graduate school admissions officers, wise students make sure that their college record reflects their best effort and ability. That means working at college as though it were a full-time job, spending a minimum of 45 hours per week in class and personal study. It also means understanding the requirements of each course and staying ahead of schedule. A student who does that can reap an extra benefit-qualifying for a mentoring relationship with the professor, one of the most valuable features of a college education.
Rule 6: Connect Your Degree to What Comes Next.
If you’re looking for a good first job straight out of college, it’s not enough to simply choose the right major and get good grades. To set yourself apart from the crowd of other college degree holders, you need experience in the kind of workplace you’re headed into. You can get that kind of experience before you graduate, but you have to plan and sacrifice for it.
As you set your four-year graduation plan, showing all the courses you’ll take and when you’ll take them, make sure the plan includes at least one summer internship. The primary purpose of this internship is to learn, not to make money. My son Henry Christian did his first internship after his freshman year of college. At that point, he didn’t have the college training necessary to expect a good wage at the financial investment firm where his uncle gave him a job. He worked for nothing (except for the occasional catered free lunch). But the things he learned were invaluable. They helped him get much more from the finance and accounting classes he took in his sophomore year. They also helped him get a high-paying internship the next summer.
Rule 7: Get All the Judgment-making Skills You Can.
Employers care not about what you know but what you can do. They especially value people with good judgment, those who can make important decisions for which there are no rules or standard procedures. As you go through college, look for learning situations that test your judgment. The best opportunities often come outside of the classroom-in field studies or extracurricular activities. They almost always involve close contact with professors, whose personal mentoring can be worth more than any college class, or all of them together. More than one of my college professors changed my life for the better.
So there you go. Everyone who has the chance should attend college. It doesn’t have to be as hard as you might think. And its value is greater than any dollar figure can capture.
For more information visit: https://www.majordecisionsforcollege.com
Henry J. Eyring graduated from Brigham Young University, earning a bachelor’s degree in geology and graduate degrees in business administration and law. An administrator at BYU-Idaho, he is the grandson of Henry Eyring and the son of President Henry B. Eyring.
[i] This chart shows how the minimum wage has gradually increased but failed to keep pace with inflation since the late 1960s: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:History_of_US_federal_minimum_wage_increases.svg>.
[ii] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 2008 (NCES 2008-031), Table 20-1, <https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2008/section2/table.asp?tableID=894>.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, PINC-03 (Education Attainment-People 25 Years Old and Over, by Total Money Earnings in 2007, Work Experience in 2007, Age, Race, Hispanic Origin, and Sex), <https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/macro/032008/perinc/new03_001.htm>.
[v] “Higher Education and the Federal Government,” presentation by Dr.
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. . . . Terry Hartle to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, February 18, 2010.
[vi] Actually, the national graduation rate is much lower than fifty percent for students seeking associates degrees, according to data published by The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in 2009 (<https://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?level=nation&mode=graph&state=0&submeasure=24>). The graduate rate is higher than fifty percent for bachelor’s candidates (<https://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/?level=nation&mode=graph&state=0&submeasure=27>), but varies substantially according to the selectivity of the institution, as demonstrated by Frederick H. Hess, et al, Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t), American Enterprise Institute, June 2009, <https://www.aei.org/docLib/Diplomas%20and%20Dropouts%20final.pdf>).
[vii] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/pdf/21_2003.pdf.
[viii] Wesley R. Habley, The Status of Academic Advising: Findings From the ACT Sixth National Survey, 2004.
[ix] Gerald N. Lund, “Elder Henry B. Eyring: Molded by Defining Influences,’ ” Ensign, Sept. 1995, 10.
