What Jobs Are Our Students Really Headed For?

A colleague sent me this essay by Nicole Matos called "Too Tired to Hustle" from Inside Higher Ed. I enjoyed reading her reflection on the mismatch between the jobs community college students were tracking toward and the "good jobs" of the future.

Courtesy HowStuffWorks.com

From the piece...
Flipping through a semester’s worth of self-introductions is like an obituary pamphlet for Old Economy employment. Again and again, they express a desire for mostly public or public-ish, long-term, safe and stable, even unionized, positions: firefighting, criminal justice, firefighting, nursing, nursing, teaching, teaching, teaching, radiology, firefighting, criminal justice.

Even from our position in the Arts & Sciences, many of our students expressing a desire to transfer out are often seeking the next "safe" career track instead of one that is challenging, innovative, or will require them to forge their way. I wonder if we are doing enough to instill the ideas of self-promotion and the entrepreneurial spirit that has reshaped the modern "at-will" workplace, where your value to an employer may be limited to a short-term contract or specific project.

On those students who come to us with low-self esteem or a previous history of failure...
The problem with making your own luck is that it requires so much previous luck. To be nimble, to be ready, to have the excess emotional capacity to take future self-driven employment by the balls -- you need to not already be tired, scared, in shelter-mode. (Emphasis mine.)

Are we necessarily narrowing our students' field of vision about what today's economy really is?