Career Assessment Matches Students to a College's Majors with New Career Key for Higher Education Tool

Holland career assessment leader Career Key announces a new "My College's Majors" tool that enables admissions, first year experience (FYE) and student success programs to match students to the programs and majors their school offers.

Career Key Discovery for Higher Education, "Leveling Up," includes this new tool. My College's Majors encourages greater student engagement and leads to more long-term benefits because students choose from and make their personality-major match to the most relevant education options to them - the ones offered by their institution.

Studies show students who make this close Holland personality-major match are more likely to:

1. Get higher grades,
2. Stick with their major, and
3. Graduate on time.

More details about personality-major match research and how students can benefit are available on the Career Key website and in two popular, free eBooks:

• Match Your Personality to College Majors: what does the research say? (For students and parents)
• Personality Major Match and Student Success: Professionals' Guide (For counselors and educators)

New Fanshawe College Pathfinder Uses Career Key's Career and College Major Test

We're proud to announce that Fanshawe College, one of the largest colleges of applied art and technology in Ontario, is now using The Career Key's valid career and college major test to match prospective students to Fanshawe's programs of study.  The online Fanshawe Pathfinder is the first college recruitment and admissions tool in Canada and the U.S. to use Personality-Major MatchTM. The Pathfinder gives students valuable information in choosing a program that fits them best and how to make a successful education decision.

Large published research studies show a close personality-major match predicts higher grades, greater persistence in a major, and higher rates of on time graduation. The benefits of this match are described in a free Career Key eBook, Choose a College Major Based on Your Personality.

Fanshawe licensed The Career Key to create the Pathfinder for their admissions and recruitment efforts. The Pathfinder will also be used in academic advising for current students and featured in public open houses and career fairs.

About Fanshawe

Fanshawe’s main campus is located in London, Ontario, about two and half hours outside Toronto. Approximately 17,000 full-time and 26,000 part-time students attend Fanshawe at five campuses. Fanshawe has a demonstrated commitment to student success. Results of the Government of Ontario’s 2013 Key Performance Indicators (KPI) survey show that Fanshawe College is above the provincial average in student satisfaction, graduate satisfaction, and graduate employment (86% of graduates find jobs shortly after graduation). To learn more about Fanshawe, visit Discover Fanshawe.

Is College Worth It? 6 Ways to Increase Chances of Success in College

More students and parents are asking themselves, is college is worth it? A recent Pew study visualized in TIME magazine finds more people questioning college's value, and yet statistics are clear that it is. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's 2014 report, "Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs?" shows compelling reasons to go to college. But the report raises valid concerns about underemployment after graduation and the differing value of certain college majors and skills in the labor market.

Like anything else, research and planning ahead give a big payoff in these types of life decisions.  In Career Key's new website article"Is College Worth It?", counseling psychologist Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC looks at whether people are getting good jobs after graduation based on the latest statistics. Then he recommends how people can increase their chances of success after college graduation.

These recommendations include:

1. Choose a major that matches your personality and interests.
2. Consider choosing a major in high school before you choose a college.
3. Be open to choosing a good job that does not require a 4 year degree.
4. Have realistic employment expectations; Underemployment is a reality you may have to face.
5. Be smart and make good decisions about your education plans using an effective decision making process.
6. Be aware of how the nature of work is changing and plan ways you can respond and adapt.

For more about why college is worth it and what's behind these recommendations, visit Career Key's Choose a College Major section and "Is College Worth It?"

Help Choosing a Major Needed More Than Ever

Statistics show that students need help choosing a major now more than ever.  The November 2013 ACT College Choice Report found that only about one-third (36%) of college bound students taking the ACT are choosing majors that fit their interests or Holland personality. And we know from personality-major match research, this will very likely negatively impact these students' success.

Research shows that students who do choose a major that fits their personality and interests, what we call a close “personality-major match,” are more likely to succeed in college with:

(1) higher grades;

(2) greater persistence in a major; and

(3) higher on-time graduation rates.

College completion rates continue to be low. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 38 percent of students entering a 4 year college graduate in 4 years, 59 percent in six. About 40 percent drop out. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).

And there is a steep financial penalty to those who switch majors and delay graduation.  One study showed that those working toward a bachelor’s degree lose in earnings, on average, $50,000 (adjusted for inflation) for each additional year it takes to finish their degree.  In addition, many studies support increased salary and job satisfaction for people who choose a career that matches their personality.

So how can students make better decisions about majors? Career Key has several affordable resources students can use to make good education decisions:

Match Up! EBook, available in the Career Key Store

1. Free eBook downloads: “Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: What does the research say?” We also have a special Professionals’ Guide to Personality College Major Match and Student Success for counselors, career development professionals, and educators.
2. Career Key's unique eBook, Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors and Training Programs 2014. Used with results of the Career Key career test, it offers the only complete list of U.S. and Canadian majors and programs of study scientifically classified by Holland personality type – enabling a close personality-major match.
3. Self-help articles like What is a College Major, Personality Major Match, Holland College Major Environments, and What are Liberal Arts Majors.

New Grand Rapids Community College Majors Resource

Welcome to the newest Career Key College Major Match participant, Grand Rapids Community College! We've created a new college majors resource for GRCC's current and prospective students that lists all GRCC college majors and programs by Holland personality type and Career Key work group.

If you take the Career Key test you can use your scores to find matching GRCC programs at GRCC's new Career Key Match Up web page. If you are a current GRCC student, follow the instructions for taking the test on the page.

What are the advantages to choosing a college major that matches your strongest Holland personality types? Read "Personality-College Major Match - Why It Is Important" or download our free e-book, "Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality; what does the research say?"

To see if your college or university has a College Major Match page, visit the Career Key website's Colleges that Match Up and/or Choose a College Major.

College and Career Success: Is Your State a Leader or Laggard?

Promising careers require some post-high school training and education; students and parents need to be educated consumers. While there is a lot of criticism about graduation rates and unsavory recruitment practices at for-profit colleges, there is plenty of criticism to go around for public colleges' performance.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) just released its "Leaders and Laggards" State-by-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education.  Be sure to click on your state's individual report card and overall recommendations.

You can see a summary of findings on the Career Tech Blog - these are the three that stuck out the most to me:

"Four-Year Completion Rates
In most states, only half of students at four-year public colleges complete a degree, in 17 states, less than half of all first-time bachelors-seeking students complete a degree within six years";

"Two-Year Completion Rates
...more than half of states have a two-year completion rate at or below 25 percent"..: and

"Linking Postsecondary Data to Labor Market
Only 22 states have systems in place to track the success of graduates once they enter the labor force and to make those data public..."


While others focus on big-picture, long-term, bureaucratic change (good luck!), I'm more focused on how we can help individual students, parents, and counselors improve their chances of success now. The best practical takeaway from this report is for students and parents to learn their state's strengths and weaknesses in providing education. If nothing else, you'll know what to look for and avoid, and what to expect as far as your state's performance. And when you go through the process of choosing a school or program, you'll know to ask for more information about graduation rates and support for students looking for a job post-graduation.

I don't know that I've given up on government for problem-solving (or trust the for-profit sector to do it either) - but it's clear to me that if you are or have a child in secondary school or college right now, it's up to you to help yourself choose a career or college major you won't regret. Gathering the best quality information you can is part of making good decisions.

Personality-College Major Match Research in NCDA's February Career Convergence

The National Career Development Association (NCDA) looks at "personality-college major match" in the February issue of its web magazine Career Convergence, in the feature article, "Research Reveals that Personality-Major Match Strengthens Students' College Success."  In it, Career Key author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC describes the impact that personality and Holland's college major environments have on college performance.

The article also refers to two important, free white papers in an e-book format that explain the research and how to apply it to career and education decisions:

• "Personality-College Major Match and Student Success"(2011), (cover at left), a 28-page guide for professionals, and
• "Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: What does the research say?" (2010), a 29-page guide for students, adults returning to school, and parents.  

How to Choose an Encouraging College Major Environment that Leads to Success

When you choose a college major, you are also choosing an environment- with surroundings and conditions that an encourage and discourage you.

For you to be successful, research shows that you should choose a college major environment compatible with your Holland personality.

To learn about how professors create this environment, and how to learn more about whether it's the right personality fit for you, visit Career Key's new 3 part series of self-help articles:

1. Personality-College Major Match, Why it is Important - recommendations on matching your Holland personality to majors;
2. The Holland College Major Environments - how they are created and a description of what the six Holland environments are; and
3. Learn More about College Major Environments - practical, concrete steps you can take to investigate the environments that interest you.

Be sure to explore Career Key's other articles on college major advice, like:

Choosing a College Major

Liberal Arts, Humanities, and General Studies Majors

Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway

and our related free PDF e-books:

Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality; What does the research say?

Personality-College Major Match and Student Success: Professionals Guide

Career Key Offers New College Match Up! Service: New Participant, Community College of Rhode Island

We're pleased to announce our new service, College Match Up! for U.S. and Canadian college/university career services, academic advising, offices of retention and admissions. 

For each college or university participating in this new service, we create on The Career Key website a Match Up! page that will:

• Publicly display online that college's majors by Holland personality type and Career Key work group, helping students scientifically match their personality to majors,
• Provide information about each major,
• Link visitors to important departments like Advising, Career Services, and
• Give sound advice based on best practices and research in the field.

As usual, our websites have no ads, no registration requirement, or marketing to students.

Community College of Rhode Island, the largest community college in the Northeast, is the first to take advantage of the service. This is their new Match Up! page:

"Choose a Community College of Rhode Island Major and Related Career That Matches Your Personality"

To see a short YouTube video overview of the new service...

It's easy to participate and affordable. If you'd like to learn more, please contact me!

Make Career and College Major Decisions Based on Research: What we might learn from Bill Gates

Given our obsession with using research to help students make better career and college major decisions – this particular quote stuck out to me from Bill Gates’ Wall Street Journal interview last weekend, “Was the $5 BillionWorth It?”:

"I bring a bias to this," says Mr. Gates. "I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts." Compared with R&D spending in the pharmaceutical or information-technology sectors, he says, next to nothing is spent on education research. "That's partly because of the problem of who would do it. Who thinks of it as their business? The 50 states don't think of it that way, and schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research."

Fortunately for people making career and education decisions, a huge amount of peer-reviewed research has already been done.

Research shows what leads to job and career satisfaction – using Holland’s Theory to match your personality to careers and college majors. And for you to see the benefits, you have to use a scientifically valid assessment of Holland's 6 personality types. To learn more:

• Holland’s Theory of Career Choice 
• Choosing a College Major 
• Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway
• Choosing a College Based on Your Personality; What does the research say? (PDF for students, parents, counselors and career development professionals)
• Key Piece in College Completion Missing: Personality Major Match (PDF for educators, counselors, and policy-makers)
• The Career Key Manual (more about our scientifically valid Holland assessment and our personality match to careers, college majors, and career clusters)

Excellent Review for Career Key E-Book "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors"

Choosing a college major? "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors"(Canadian link), a popular Career Key® and Career Key Canada e-book, will help you make smart career and college major choices. Thanks to an excellent review from National Career Development Association President, Dr. Debra Osborn, you can be confident of our e-book's quality and helpfulness. 

The American Counseling Association just published Dr. Osborn's review in its July 2011 issue of Counseling Today.  Click on this link to see her Match Up! review at our website.

According to Dr. Osborn, 

“Match Up! will be of great use to students and counselors who quickly need a list of options related to personality.” 

She also found “the e-book makes reading not only easy and enjoyable but reader-centered.” She continues...

"The authors state that their goal is to “help young people and adults make the best career and educational decisions possible.” Jones and Jones have created an interactive book that provides a strong framework for accomplishing this goal. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for busy school counselors, and others who work with adolescents and young adults and have that same goal. It is a great resource that provides solid information necessary for making effective career decisions."

 In “Match Up!” readers see:

• Which majors fit their personality, 
• A description of each major,
• Related occupations, and
• How to find colleges that offer those majors.

 “Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors” contains over 1,400 college majors in the U.S. and Canada. It is available for sale in the Career Key eBookstore: Adobe® PDF, 343 pages, US $14.95, 2011. There is a special discount when you purchase both The Career Key test and the "Match Up!" e-book together.  For information on group discounts, please contact me.

More information...

“Match Up!”, by Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC and Juliet Wehr Jones, J.D., GCDF, is the first publication to show students and adults returning to school all college majors matching their Holland personality types.  All of the majors (1400+) currently used by the U.S. Department of Education (and Canada) were scientifically analyzed and organized according to the Holland personality types.  Studies show that the closer the personality-major match, the more likely students will earn good grades, persist, and graduate on time.

Practical Tips For Using the “What’s It Worth?” College Majors Report in Choosing a College Major

What might you earn if you choose a college major in _____? Try the new, free “What it Worth?” college majors list and earnings report from Georgetown University.  I have a couple of tips below to quickly gather the information you need for your college major decision making. After matching your personality to majors, learning as much as you can about your options is part of smart career and education decision making.

The most practical value comes from “What’s It Worth’s” free, short PDF downloads about groups of majors - and specific information about each major.  I don’t think the “big picture” graphs are as helpful. Everyone knows engineering majors make more money than social work majors. What’s more interesting is to learn about specific majors, comparing them to one another in the same group, and the variety of occupations and majors within industries.

Tips for Using the “What’s It Worth?” Economic Value of College Majors Report:

1.  Go to their “Interactive” webpage, click on “Where is my major?” to download their PDF college majors list. Print it (2 pages) or read it online and highlight the majors that you’re considering - and the “major group” that contains them.

The report's "major groups" do not necessarily line up with the Holland personality types. Most, like Agriculture and Natural Resources, contain majors for multiple personality types like Agricultural Economics (Investigative Majors) and General Agriculture (Realistic Majors).  These groups aren’t helpful for a personality-major match, but do help you explore and learn more about a whole industry or study area. 

2.  From the main report page, click on each group of majors you want to explore to download the PDF for that group. I clicked on the green tab and downloaded “Agriculture & Natural Resources”.

You learn about a particular major’s:

• Popularity
• Median earnings of graduates (not including anyone with graduate degrees)
• Earnings’ boost from a graduate degree
• Destination industries (where graduates end up working)
• Gender and racial composition, earnings comparisons

The full report is called, “What’s It Worth? - The Economic Value of Majors” from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University.  It’s based on newly released Census (2009) data.  You can compare the median earnings between groups of majors. But there are limitations to the data, so check out what others are saying (including critiques)...

The New York Times “The Choice” Blog on "What It Worth?"
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Earnings Graphic)
(The comments on both are helpful - read them if you have time)

Missing Piece in College Retention Improvement Efforts

Significantly improving college retention is only possible when state and national policymakers consider increasing the number of students who choose a college major that fits their personality. Unfortunately, states and the federal government are making this personality-major match more difficult to achieve. Learn more by visiting our new "College Retention, Completion, and Graduation" article at The Career Key website.

UPDATE: our PRWEB college completion press release went out today (March 9, 2011).

Click here to download the new PDF report, "Key Piece in College Completion Missing: Personality Major Match," by Career Key author, Lawrence K. Jones, Ph.D., NCC.

For a long time, Dr. Jones has been active in the professional career development community, advocating for the use of scientifically valid assessments in career guidance. To download reprints of his articles on this issue published by the National Career Development Association and the American School Counselor Association, please visit our Press Room and click on the "Articles" section.

New College Majors E-Book: "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors 2011"

Our new "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors" e-book launched today is the first to show students and adults in a career change all college majors in the U.S. and Canada matching their Holland personality types. Career Key author Lawrence K. Jones, Ph.D., NCC and I coauthored the book.

Choose a college major based on your personality and interests.

That's what the research indicates. Major studies over the past ten years show that with a good match you are likely to,

• Earn higher grades,
• Stick with your choice of major through graduation,
• Graduate on time, and
• Be more satisfied and successful in your career.
  

Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors is the first and only book to take advantage of this research. It helps students and adults returning to school. It,

• Shows you college majors (and occupations) that fit your personality;
• Lists and describes all 1,400+ college majors and programs of study found in colleges and community colleges in the U.S. and Canada (with related jobs);
• Organizes them by Holland personality type, and
• Links you to the colleges that offer them.

Visit The Career Key and The Career Key Canada websites, and today's press release for more information.

SPECIAL LAUNCH PROMOTION: the first 20 people to "Like" The Career Key on Facebook* (or already Like us) and purchase (or have purchased in the past) The Career Key test, will receive the Match Up! e-book free of charge (a $14.95 value when purchased by itself).  Just send me an email with your test order # (U__) and I'll email you the book! My email is julietjones at careerkey.org.
*If you don't have a Facebook account (and don't want one), sign up instead as a Feedblitz email subscriber at the top of this blog.

We think once you've seen Match Up, you'll want to recommend and tell others about it. In addition to our reliance on real science and best-practices, remember that we are ad-free and have a 10% sales donation policy - so you can feel good about referring others to us.

New College Major-Personality List Promises Better Grades & College Retention

Career Key is the first to classify all current college majors in the U.S. and Canada according to Holland's six personality types. Because research (PDF) shows that choosing a college major matching your personality predicts grades earned, persistence, and graduation rate, creation of this list of college majors is an important advance for students and college retention in general.

To learn more, please read the latest Press Release at PRWeb.