The Great Reset: College & Careers

Since my last blog post, the construction dust of the Great Reset has started to settle.  We did not ask for this Brave New World of lockdowns and social restrictions, but we grown-ups have gamely attempted to adjust to it. 

It is not easy to be so greatly jarred out of our comfort zone.  Should we expect things to go back to normal soon?  In a few years?  During our lifetimes?

Over the past few months, I have noticed a bellwether change.  Money and status -- elements of modern life that used to be of paramount importance -- have lost their luster.  If you are not driving a quarter-million-dollar sports car by the time you turn thirty, maybe it is because that goal has become meaningless.

New priorities are emerging.  People are assessing who they are, what they have, and where they want to be right now.  The five-year plan, once the hallmark of a business professional, is rarely brought up in an interview anymore.   How could applicants possibly know what they will be doing, let alone what the world will look like, a few years from now?

 

Social isolation has wreaked havoc with colleges and careers. 

 

Let’s look at the pandemic’s impact on higher education.  With many universities closed, classes have moved online.  This is not the way that most students envisioned pursuing their academic dreams.  When the dorms closed, the social atmosphere evaporated.  Where is the sense of camaraderie created by embarking on this big adventure with one’s classmates?  How will students build the priceless lifelong friendships that college inspires? 

Another joy of higher education is taking classes taught by that guy – the professor everyone loves, who cracks jokes while he compacts the rise and fall of the Roman Empire into ninety minutes.  Devoid of a lively on-campus environment, education breaks down into cold, mechanical steps: read the chapters, write the paper, take the test.  The computer screen is both a window and a barrier.  We can see and hear the teacher, but interaction is strained. 

Online classes, therefore, demand a higher level of self-motivation.  If attending college is far more about earning a piece of paper than enjoying the journey, students will have to decide if that goal is worth both the cost and the effort.  Before the pandemic, nearly half of college students dropped out before the end of their freshman year.  Will we see that statistic climb in 2020?

Let’s suppose that students – especially those who are close to graduation – chug through their remaining classes and earn their degrees.   Now they are applying for jobs…side by side with over thirty million people who lost their steady paychecks during the pandemic.  

The competition for good jobs is fiercer now than during the Great Recession. 

And that economic downturn was no cakewalk, as anyone who survived it can tell you.

About ten years ago, an interesting phenomenon emerged: after many jobs were eliminated and unemployment benefits ran out, millions of people disappeared.  Poof.  Gone.  No, not raptured to a better place.  They were still here in the Earthly realm.  But they stepped outside of The System.

During the Great Recession, the government expected laid off workers to either find another job or go back to school and train for a new career.  But when millions of former employees fell off the radar, data analysts coined the phrase, “discouraged workers” to explain their absence from labor reports.

Discouraged was an inaccurate label.  The truth is that these former employees reinvented themselves.  They discovered new ways to earn money.  They created small businesses.  They raised alpacas and created artisan goods.  They built tiny houses from reclaimed materials.  They started blogs and vlogs.  They sold their furniture, bought sailboats, and traveled the world. 

They had adventures.

Some eventually returned to the nine-to-five world, with the confident and fearless expectation of one day again setting out into the unknown.

Bloggers are armchair sociologists; we analyze trends and guestimate what will happen next, tasks infinitely more challenging in 2020 than ever before.  Once the economy improves, I predict that we will see a greater variety of jobs return (albeit with online interviewing, social distancing, and other modifications).  This will improve the odds for job seekers to find a position related to their education and work experience.

As the lockdowns and social restrictions continue, however, not only is society reinventing itself, but also many employees are examining their job duties, their working conditions, and their career goals.  Just as in the Great Recession, it is likely that we will continue to see working-age adults pursue options – temporarily or permanently -- outside of the traditional job market.