Career Centers Get the Short End, Students Get the Shaft

I’ve experienced way too little about how career centers and universities operate. Every campus I come across seems to do things differently. One commonality I fail to understand is why career centers run on shoe-string budgets. The latest news from NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) is that the average amount that four-year colleges and universities allot for career services per student is about $10 whole bucks.

Let me get this straight. The annual cost of education these days [according to the College Board] at a four-year public institution of higher learning is about $6,185 for public institutions and $23,712 for private schools. So, out of all that tuition, only $10.53 [to be exact] trickles back to students in the form of career services? Can that be right?

Actually, I think less than half of students ever utilize career services and less than half of career centers have services of direct benefit to internships. Now we’re getting somewhere.  What’s more is that my sources tell me the NACE study is flawed because it does not account for the full operating budget, most of which is staff compensation. And we all know the good work of career centers is about its people. They’ve got plenty. What more could they want? Don’t they bring in tons of other money without having to rely so much on institutional funding? Let’s imagine we could double their funding to average about $20 per student. Would they even know what to do with all that cash?

I’ve got it. They can hand out free sticks of gum to every student they can interest in taking a photocopy of that résumé guide. There you have it. Problem solved. Good thing too, ‘cause now universities can go back to their true priorities: giving faculty more incentives to publish instead of teaching better.