Today's 20-somethings pose new considerations for college admissions counselors
By Donald Honeman, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
Clark University April 2012
As college admissions professionals and their secondary school counseling colleagues have worked with college bound seniors during the last decade, we have in large part based our work on the assumption that a college education would prepare young people for the selection of a clear professional path that would serve them well for a productive and fulfilling lifetime.
The work of Clark University Professor of Psychology Jeffrey Arnett focusing on the phenomenon of Emerging Adulthood prompts us to take a fresh look at the post-collegiate experience that defines the lives of many contemporary twenty-somethings. Research conducted by Professor Arnett suggests that the developmental tasks facing today's college graduates present a compelling case for re-considering how we advise prospective students and their families as the college selection process unfolds. A recent Clark University Symposium for college counselors explored ramifications for our profession presented by the emerging adulthood phenomenon.
Professor Arnett's research conducted over the last ten years is based on his conduct of wide-ranging interviews with young people in the 18- to 29-year age range who cover a broad swath of socio-economic demographic categories. He learned that the traditional patterns surrounding the adoption of a professional identity have shifted (on average, young people change jobs seven times before their 30th birthdays); marriage and committed relationships are typically postponed until later in this period by men and women alike; mobility and transient commitments are the norm; emerging adults are more accepting of differences in religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation, and thanks to social networking media and the emergence of a global culture, the lives of young people are becoming less localized.
The Clark Symposium provided an opportunity for a two-day examination of the ways in which Emerging Adulthood is changing the very nature of the undergraduate experience and of the ways it impacts the work of college advisers. Professor Arnett's presentation of his findings and the discussions that followed raised a number of issues that all of us in higher education should consider:
- An undergraduate education should be broadened to prepare a student for a future that is less linear than one involving immediate entry into a professional field following graduation.
- The experiences provided by a college education should be framed to prepare a student for the vicissitudes of their twenties.
- Development of core capacities (practical problem solving, effective communication skills, resilience, and collaborative approaches to working effectively) may trump the importance of mastery of a single academic field of study.
- Internships, undergraduate research, study abroad, part time work, and cross-disciplinary academic study may be as important in preparing the Emerging Adult for professional life as a more traditional, classroom-based academic experience.
All of this leads to a fundamental re-consideration of the nature and purpose of the college advising professions. In the early stages of their Emerging Adulthood, young people view college opportunities through a different, although unfocused, lens than did their predecessors. We would be remiss in ignoring the implications of that shift for our work. Among the ones considered during the Clark symposium are these:
- Students and especially parents need to be reassured that having a clear plan and specific pre-professional purpose associated with their college choice is not only unnecessary but flies in the face of the realities students will face during and after their college years.
- College counselors and admissions professionals should find ways to identify those students whose emerging adulthood trajectories might predict success at specific kinds of colleges.
- High schools and colleges alike should closely examine their curricula to ensure that they prepare students for the uncertainties they will encounter in the upcoming years. To that end, school administrators also should develop a more comprehensive understanding of the unfolding research on Emerging Adulthood.
- While students have some unformed sense of how their lives will differ from those of their 20th-century counterparts, their parents often do not. College advising professionals should center more of their focus on educating parents to the realities of the Emerging Adulthood phenomenon.
- Realizing that a prospective college student may have a decade or more of professional, personal and educational uncertainty ahead, new approaches to the timing of the college experience may be in order. Gap years and part time college attendance may be more sensible options than they have been in the past.
- Colleges and universities may find it wise to re-think their admissions standards in light of Emerging Adulthood research findings; similarly secondary school educators may find good reason to re-consider their approach to assessing college readiness.
Professor Jeffrey Arnett has characterized Emerging Adulthood as an age of identity exploration, an age of instability, an age of self-focus, and an age of possibilities. Those of us who work with students as they enter their Emerging Adulthood phase would be well served to build an understanding of all of these characterizations into our professional lives.