Page 133 - Crisis in Higher Education

104 • Crisis in Higher Education

engineering, education, law, and medicine, there are circumstances where
the process must be modified.

1. Licensure: Some jobs like certified public accountant, mechanical
engineer, high school teacher, and many others require licensure
and/or profession examinations. The requirements for these certi-
fications, which should be consistent with the needs of employers,
must be considered when designing degree programs.
2. Graduate school: Many professions, such as physician, lawyer, and
university professor, require advanced degrees, so the undergradu-
ate degree programs must build a foundation so interested students
can apply and enroll in graduate degree programs. In most cases,
this requires performing well on standardized tests such as the
Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), Law School Admission
Test (LSAT), or the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
3. Entrepreneurship: Some graduates may wish to start their own busi-
ness, so students who identify with entrepreneurship should be pre-
pared for the job market with appropriate classroom instruction,
hands-on work experience, and qualified, practicing mentors.
4. Nonprofessional degree programs: For some four-year degree programs,
such as art, foreign language, history, or philosophy, the path to a job is
not as well defined as it is in professional degree programs. Graduates
from these fields may have the knowledge base to teach a foreign lan-
guage, art, or history in high school, but in most cases they cannot
do so without a teaching certificate, which requires additional study.
Programs like philosophy are rigorous and demanding, but the path
to a job is not well defined, so students working with faculty mentors
must spend time planning their future. Examinations of commence-
ment programs at public universities are likely to show that graduates
from professional degree programs outnumber graduates from non-
professional degree programs by three or four or more to one.

There are other parts of the U.S. economy that operate as mediators or
brokers such as real estate, where agents negotiate relationships between
buyers and sellers, and finance, where experts guide mergers and acquisi-
tions among two or more companies. In fact, Internet websites that sell
goods and services, such as eBay or Orbitz, also provide this type of medi-
ating relationship. However, the mediation task faced by universities is
more complex because they are also professional service organizations.