CAREERS FOR SALE

Among the many problems which face the college student, none is more important, or is attended with more perplexities than that of choosing a life work. The University recognized the importance and difficulty of this problem when it established the office of Consultant on Careers. The present Consultant, Mr. A. L. Putnam, has assumed a sympathetic, interested attitude, and has acquitted himself well enough of his particular job, but the very serious objection has been advanced that the type of service which he offers covers but half the problem of choosing a career, and that by far the less important half.

The procedure thus far followed by the office is to invite students to come and discuss their problems. The Consultant may tender some statistics on salaries, or the demands of each type of work. Helpful as these may be, they do not satisfy the most vital need of the student. That need is not so much a knowledge of the conditions in the professions, or in civil engineering, or in salesmanship, for in a general way everyone knows what abilities are demanded. The important question which haunts the minds of hundreds of students is, "Do I possess these abilities."

It is emphatically the duty of a vocational guidance service to help the student answer this question, and no Consultant on Careers can rightfully lay claim to the alliterative title unless he offers this vital service. Only one trained in the science of vocational guidance-can do such work. It is a profession by itself, and no person shifted afternoons from Lehman Hall can really fulfill this specialized function. If the University wishes to make anything more than a half-hearted stab at a problem which it has confessed to be important, then it ought to secure the part time services of an expert in this field. A University can render hardly any greater service than the prevention of misfits; and the helpful guidance of men into the most genial careers.