GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT

The report of the Student Council Committee on Vocational Guidance touches a problem which colleges have begun to appreciate and to solve only recently. The difficulties of the transition period that faces the great majority of students after graduation have long been realized but definite assumption on the part of the colleges of the responsibility for helping to reduce them has been tardy in appearing. At Harvard the situation has been met in the past rather haphazardly, and the report of the Student Council can be taken as evidence of a gratifying movement towards systematization.

As for the conditions revealed by the report, they are very much what might have been expected. Except for men planning to take graduate work and who are definitely settled upon some science or profession, only the vaguest sort of intentions are revealed. It is on this ground that the report urges the creation of the new office of Vocational Guidance to be distinct from both the Student Employment Bureau and the Alumni Appointments Office. But there is another possible interpretation of the vagueness shown by the Seniors in their replies. Rather than a need for advice, the figures more probably indicate that in the case of men whose abilities are so little specialized it would make but little difference in the long run into what field of business they entered. The history of many of the greatest figures in modern American industry shows that the field of their successes was chosen almost entirely by chance. Granted a modicum of brains and energy to start with, the indecision displayed by college students as to their intentions may be due to the simple fact that there is no one field in which alone they could look for success.

This does not remove the need for some sort of agency to whom the prospective job-hunters can turn for advice. Weary months are often wasted and many false starts made due to a misunderstanding on the part of the applicant as to the nature of the position he is to occupy. A clearing house of information of the precise requirements in the various branches of employment available would do much to remedy such lack of knowledge and at least give the advisee a clear conception of what will be expected of him. The possibilities of co-operation with the work of the Alumni Appointments Office in such work are obvious and would add greatly to the value of the results of the latter body.

In its solution for the problem the Committee emphasizes the necessity for a man of experience and ability to take charge of the new organization. The comprehensive powers they would require of such an executive appear rather incompatible with the "nominal salary" suggested, but the need for a capable man to fill the position is so essential that means could undoubtedly be found to eliminate the latter requirement. The need is a real one, for even if it is not found to be possible to discover an exact work for which the doubting Senior is fitted, some such arrangement as the report offers would be invaluable in giving him the materials for making his own decision as to his future career.