Earlier this week, I had the privilege of speaking with about 60 students admitted to our college who were attending, with their parents, an event hosted by Toni Munguia’s team. Many of these students are in the process of deciding if they want to enroll at Purdue or attend college elsewhere. Last time I checked, there were over 3,000 universities offering bachelor’s degrees in the United States, so competition is fierce.
These students and parents are making one of the most important decisions they will ever make. It is expensive to attend college — though I am proud to say Purdue is doing better than any university in the nation in holding costs down. Making mistakes regarding which college to attend or which major to choose can be very expensive.
Depending on a number of factors, including some which students can’t control, earning a degree may or may not pay off. Picking the right major is a good start, but that has risks if the economy begins to tank the year students are set to graduate. Even that pales in comparison with not having certain knowledge of what the future holds, especially given the convergence of key developing technologies and the acceleration of their convergence. As we should know better than anyone else, those technologies can blow right past what students learned in classes just a few years before.
This is why we must stay diligent as educators in the 21st century. If we are to prepare graduates for the future workplace, we must be as nimble and innovative as the industries we serve. Although we cannot predict the future, we do have the ability to avoid complacency and to be constantly on the alert. We have the ability to stay at the forefront of our fields and to ensure the Purdue Polytechnic Institute delivers leading-edge education to our students, too.
We ask students to adapt to this new world order. Have you done the same?
