College tuition is running in the tens of thousands of dollars, and costs are only rising.
Smart parents started saving when their children were toddlers. But there’s another smart strategy that’s often overlooked: career testing before the student heads off for higher education.
Before the recession and for many years, young people enrolled in colleges and universities without having a clear sense of direction and the potential careers they were best suited for. Now, they're getting out of school and entering the worst job market since WWII.
Many parents who looked forward to having an empty nest now have the opposite: children who are coming back after graduating from college because they can’t land a job other than pushing papers or flipping burgers.
The problem is that the kids are heading off to college without a clear career strategy. When they finally graduate, they don’t have a clue what career they are best suited for.
These interesting facts about students demonstrate there’s a lot of uncertainty about their educational and career choices:
- One out of five students change their major between admission and first day of class.
- Nearly three out of four students change majors at least twice before they graduate.
- Students graduating from high school today will change jobs 10 to 15 times over the course of their working lives and change careers as many as three or four times.
A career test can save literally thousands of dollars in educational and career missteps by helping students focus their studies on coursework that will help prepare them for a career that's right for them.