Since we’re close to graduation again, I thought I’d write down a few thoughts about what faculty advising can and should do, and what it cannot do.
Faculty advising should. . .
- Listen to the student’s own long and short term goals, and/or ask leading questions to help the student figure them out.
- Recommend a variety of paths to the student to reach those goals.
- Be honest, informed, and realistic about these different paths.
- For example, right now, Ph.D. study in the humanities and law school are difficult paths. There are far too many graduates for jobs that require these degrees. There are caveats, of course: some institutions have high job placement rates, and if you can get through with low or no debt the risk is low, etc.
- Provide materials to the student to help the student make better informed decisions.
- Engage in advising with the student’s best interests in mind.
Faculty advising is not
- Obligated to validate all of the student’s goals or ideas. If a student is really committed to Ph.D. study or law school, for example, the advisor should still inform the student of the realities of these programs of study, not tell the student what he or she wants to hear. Being honest about the realities of a path may be discouraging to the student, but the student still needs that information to make an informed decision.
- Obligated to lie to the student about their demonstrated abilities so far in their educational careers.
- Anything other than advising: it gives the students facts about the field, the market, and educational options, but it doesn’t make students’ decisions for them.
- Intended to benefit the student’s educational institution above the student. Every B.A. program would love to say 90% of their graduates were accepted for Ph.D. study, but that doesn’t mean that 90% of their graduates should be pursuing Ph.D. study.
- Anything other than a supplement to the student’s own decision-making process. It is not supposed to, or is able to, take the place of the student’s own decision making.
If you’re a student, you should know that your decisions are ultimately your own. You make them and then you live with the consequences. Because these are ultimately your decisions, you should be aggressive in pursuing information that will help you make the most informed decisions possible. Get everything that you can from your advisor and then seek out other information as well. Listen to your advisors, even if you disagree with them, rather than demand to be told certain things.
You should also think generally about what you most want. Do you mainly want to make a living? Or do you mainly want to perform fulfilling work? Are you willing to make a bit less money to be more fulfilled in the kind of work that you do?
There are no right answers to these questions. Some people pursue work in high-paying fields and then burn out and make expensive mid-career shifts to more fulfilling fields. Some people pursue fulfillment but have a hard time making a decent living. Ideally, of course, we would all work in fulfilling jobs that pay well, whether we work as employees, own our own businesses, or do creative, freelance work.
We all also need to understand that the ability to do work that is both fulfilling and very profitable is dependent upon many arbitrary factors. At the least, it is dependent upon the random intersections of what this society chooses to reward financially, your own abilities, and your own interests. Just don’t mistake profitability for inherent value: scientific or engineering work generates patents and/or high end products (like bridges, tanks, and computers), so produces a lot of money, and there aren’t enough people around with math skills at that high a level, so the employee pool is small.
Someone who produces something that can be packaged and sold at high volume can also make a lot of money: one hit single can pay a lot. But while small employee pools, high end products, and mass produced products drive up the profitability of a line of work, an engineer or singer is not inherently more valuable, socially, than a middle school math or music teacher. You can’t have engineers and singers without math and music teachers. If we lost every pro basketball player in the world, the world wouldn’t be that bad off–maybe it’d even be better off in some ways. But if we lost all of our music and math teachers, that would be a long term disaster for the human race.
What might that ideal spot of wage earning and job fulfillment look like for you? No advisor can answer that question. No one can tell you what you want. Advising can only point you in a direction that leads you to your goals, so no advising will be better than your own knowledge of your own goals. Think about them.
