Editorial: CCD must address more student interests

By Thresher Staff     9/20/17 2:26pm

With another Career Expo come and gone, the question of post-graduation employment looms ever larger. For some, the Expo no doubt provides an avenue toward jobs. For others, however, most often humanities and social sciences majors, it doesn’t offer much of a way forward.

Each Career Expo put on by the Center for Career Development has come with its fair share of student complaints. Those not interested in particular industries — i.e. consulting, oil and gas, banking, tech — are hard-pressed to find a compelling company.

This is not necessarily the fault of the CCD, as major companies in those sectors have the resources to travel to Rice and opportunities to recruit in large numbers. However, there are still ways to improve the post-grad resources currently available to students in less heavily recruited majors.

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For instance, the CCD could reach out to academic departments and work with them to find desirable companies for students. The sports management department does a great job on their own, and perhaps the CCD can learn by example. They could also reach out to clubs for targeted events. Rice Women in Business plans lunches with different consulting firms for their club members. Future involvement from the CCD could be beneficial on both ends.

As students, we can’t expect the CCD to somehow work magic and summon every company we want nor can we expect the CCD to drop opportunities in our laps. But we can’t expect better if we accept that the current state of affairs is how it has to be. Rice students are always told to strive to be better, and if we work to make ourselves better for better post-grad careers, those careers should be visible to us.

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