Over the nearly 25 years I’ve been teaching, I’ve distributed a survey to students at the beginning of every semester. One of the most telling questions on the survey is “Why Are You Going to College?” Of those who answer, the overwhelming response has been “to get a better job.” I understand. That’s the reason I went to college.

But better jobs and careers aren’t the intended product of education. Or, at least, they’re not supposed to be. The product of education is a well-rounded graduate with an improved ability to think. That’s what most college professors and administrators say.

So, from where did the “better job” idea originate?

After World War II, the GI Bill paid for the college tuition of millions of returning Vets. In fact, Vets accounted for about half of all college enrollments immediately after the war. And Vets with degrees got good jobs.

Those Vets urged their Baby Boomer kids to go to college. And they did. Boomers did well in their careers, too.

That where the “college = better job” equation originated. But omitted from that equation is that the American economy boomed after WWII.  It’s likely America’s Vets and their children would have done well regardless. But a college education was credited with those successes which served as examples for those generations to send their kids to college.

But conditions are different now. The employment market is flooded with underemployed and unemployed college grads. Their degrees have placed them only at parity with the existing glut of recent college graduates. Employers feel new grads lack workplace skills and they blame the country’s universities.  Business and trade media reports today’s graduates are entitled and unmotivated.

Boomer parents may remember being criticized similarly: “Those kids wear torn jeans, have long hair, and their music is awful!”

Employers and the media blame institutions of higher education for turning out students who don’t have skills necessary to operate in the workplace. Skills including writing for business, presentation techniques, and collaboration.

Still, it seems many who cite college as a necessity for “a better job” assert a degree has become the minimum cost of entry into the job market. That idea doesn’t fit with reality since, despite their promises and advertising, universities don’t teach workplace skills. “Workplace skills” aren’t academic subjects! Hence, the term “academia!” Besides, university environments are vastly different from those found in the commercial workplace.

Although a university is a business wherein administrators conduct the business, most classroom professors work at a university and enjoy a protected environment. An environment of academic freedom, the freedom to express ideas without fear of penalty, retaliation, or retribution; an environment void of the profit motive—and one in which it’s extremely difficult to lose one’s job. They haven’t lived in, nor learned from, a pressurized profit & loss environment. That makes it impossible for them to teach the skills necessary to flourish in commercial sector careers, evaluate what a student’s strengths may qualify her for when entering the workplace, what the workplace will demand of graduates at graduation, or offer much more than credit for internships or letters of recommendation.

Operating in a business environment requires a type of thinking I doubt can be understood without living for profit & loss.

Colleges and universities, though not without faults, are wonderful sanctums. That’s one of the reasons I’ve developed a passion for teaching.  I love my students.  I’m dazzled by the brilliant people surrounding me. I adore being on a university campus.

But the days of going to college to get a better job are gone. Students must pursue degrees to meet the minimum cost of entry—or perceptions—of employers.

Starting freshman year, students must start assessing their own strengths, interests, weaknesses, needs and wants to discover how they can operate in the commercial sector. Professors aren’t qualified. University career centers aren’t equipped. Career coaches—well, what is a “career coach” and what are their credentials, anyway?

We’re in the midst of an economic revolution, the result of technology do jobs that could be performed previously only by humans, the largest generation in history entering the workplace, and the collision of turbulent political, economic, and cultural environments.

College students have two missions today: 1) to absorb as much as they can from the intellect with which they’ll be surrounded with for the next four years, and 2) to learn all they can about themselves and the commercial sector during that time and develop a plan to make a successful launch into the workplace upon graduation.

It’s no longer a time and place to prepare for a better job. And it’s too risky to wait until graduation to land that better job.