Functional Styles. Афанасьева Н.Р - 25 стр.

ism at Howard University, has lectured on race relations and public                8. One-fifth of the survey participants are in law, 9 percent in
education, and has been a television commentator in Washington, DC.         medicine, another 9 percent in financial services and 6 percent each in
                                                                            government and electronics or computer technology.
         GOOD ADVICE FOR THE COLLEGE-BOUND                                         9. But more important than the revelation that undergraduate
                                                                            majors have essentially no bearing on ultimate careers is the advice
        1. High school counselors need to get their hands on a little       these successful men and women offer those who would follow them
pamphlet just published by the University of Virginia. Its 22 pages         that they (and their parents) should stop thinking of college as an as-
contain more useful advice, guidance and perspective than all the high      sembly line that automatically deposits them, after four years, into
school baccalaureate addresses I've heard in 35 years – including those     lucrative professions. Most experienced uncertainty, confusion and
I've made.                                                                  discouragement immediately after graduation, and only 16 percent
       2. The booklet, "Life after Liberal Arts," is based on a survey of   were happy with their first jobs.
2,000 alumni of the university's College of Arts and Sciences. And,                10. College, they believe, should provide a solid general educa-
assuming Virginia graduates are reasonably typical, it should lay to        tion. Far more important to career success, they say, is experiential
rest the myth that a liberal arts education "doesn't prepare you for any-   learning – extracurricular activities, internships and summer jobs—
thing."                                                                     writing and thinking skills and the students' own initiative.
       3. Ninety-one percent of the survey respondents, representing an            11. And yet the trend is toward locking into career tracks as
array of professions, not only believe that liberal arts prepared them      early as the sophomore year. "It seems that college students have a
for fulfilling careers but would recommend liberal arts majors to stu-      sense that their future might be more happy if they were getting an
dents considering those same careers.                                       undergraduate professional degree as opposed to an undergraduate
       4. At a time when too many parents and counselors are looking        liberal arts degree," said Susan Tyler Hitchcock, an assistant professor
at college as a sort of trade school, pressing students into such "hot"     of humanities at the University of Virginia who, with Richard S.
majors as engineering and computer science, these undergraduate gen-        Benner of the university's Office of Career Planning and Placement,
eralists offer a different view of what college should do.                  co-authored the booklet. "They'll seem more ready-made for a job,
       5. A 1971 biology major, who later earned a master of business       whereas they'll have to sell themselves more with liberal arts."
administration degree and is now a bank vice president, said the un-               12. But the unsurprising fact is that most students cannot know
dergraduate years "provided me with an overall understanding of peo-        at age 19 or 20 what they will want to be doing at age 39 or 40. Instead
ple, politics and society, which are most important to the understand-      of a too-early commitment to a specific career, the survey consensus
ing of marketing."                                                          recommends this "winning combination": a liberal arts foundation,
       6. A $60,000-a-year executive, a 1973 psychology major, said         complemented with career-related experience and personal initiative.
"liberal arts helped me with the ability to think and write."                      13. It is, to this liberal arts graduate and father of a college-
       7. A preponderance of the respondents, all of whom graduated         bound daughter, splendid advice.
between 1971 and 1981, are working in careers that have no obvious
connection with their undergraduate majors or even their first full-time
jobs.

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