September 23, 2011

By Connor Casey

In a recent Huffington Post [column](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-selingo/colleges-jobs-plan_b_962681.html), Jeff Selingo, editorial director of The Chronicle of Higher Education, argued that although colleges are giving students the necessary credentials for employment, they are not preparing them for actually getting and having a job in the real world.

Selingo has been writing about higher education for many years for several publications and has been seen as a leader in innovative ideas for universities worldwide.

“Colleges and universities aren’t being mentioned much in the continuing debate in Washington over a jobs program,” Selingo said in his column. “But in the face of zero growth in employment, higher education should play more of a central role in any jobs agenda. In the short term, colleges could create programs to help close the ‘skills gap’ that right now keeps some three million jobs from being filled, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

The MU Career Center offers a wide variety of resources that help students across all aspects of job education, including constructing a professional resume, simulating a job interview, searching for job opportunities ranging from internships to full-time positions and even applying for graduate school.

Supervisor Sean Navarro said he believes the center is doing its part to aid students in the real world.

“Our job here is to help prepare students,” Navarro said. “Because of our size we can’t help the entire campus, but we do help those that seek our services. We are always striving to provide the best service possible, and if that means a student comes in one time or 15 times, we will help them to the best of our ability so that the student feels fully prepared.”

The center’s most extensive resource is its Career and Major Exploration series, where students can take three different types of tests, Missouri Card Feed, Self-Directed Search and Discover, to determine their abilities and what occupation would best match them.

“We’re not going to tell them that the results are the end-all be-all, but we do show the students how to view the results and make some decisions from there,” Navarro said. “For example, if a student feels that they are particularly artistic, and the results depict the opposite, we are going to show them that they really are and should consider that when assessing their skills.”

All of the resources, with the exception of the Self-Directed Search and Discover tests, are absolutely free and require no appointment to receive help.

The efforts of the Career Center can be observed in the employment percentages of MU graduates. According to the most recent polls by the MU Department of Enrollment Management, 52 percent of all graduates from fall 2009 and summer 2010 are currently employed, with seven of MU’s 11 colleges having a graduate employment percentage of over 50 percent.