Despite the myriad of services that career centers at campuses around the country tout to students, today’s college graduates are more likely to receive career advice from their professors, a new Gallup study shows.
Based on Strada-Gallup data from more than 5,100 U.S. college graduates, only 22 percent reported using resources from their career services office often, a sharp contrast to 33 percent of graduates who often received career advice from faculty or staff members during their time in school.
Additionally, only 52 percent of graduates reported actually visiting their career services office in person during their undergraduate years, meaning that essentially half of all students never take advantage of these resources.
Graduates across different majors placed varying amounts of value on career-related advice that they received from faculty and staff members compared to advice from their career services offices as well.
In particular, students graduating with degrees in arts, humanities, and social sciences found that advice from outside of their career services offices was significantly more helpful in their future career planning.
These results reiterate findings from an earlier study in 2017, which found that among all of the services offered by campus career-services offices, career-related resources and advice rank as the least helpful to students.
At a time when college students are spending thousands of dollars a year on tuition to obtain good, high paying jobs upon graduation, this student feedback shows that in order to be valued more highly among graduates, universities must advocate for and “develop a clear strategy about the role of the career services office” beyond that of resume critiques and job application tips.