Embarking on the next adventure...
(Originally published on LinkedIn, December 16, 2021)
Here in Melbourne our Year 12 students have now completed a rather gruelling final two years of school, having spent a significant proportion of both 2020 and 2021 under various stages of lockdown. Not only has this meant ongoing pivots between on-campus and remote learning, it has interfered with important rites of passage such as 18th birthday parties and sitting for one’s driver’s license. With retail and hospitality among the industry sectors most heavily impacted by COVID restrictions, and then in some cases vaccine mandates, the working lives of young people in customer-facing, entry-level, casualised roles have been significantly impacted, too. Opportunities to gather with friends, whether informal or through more structured communities such as sporting clubs or youth groups, have been hampered, just when they’ve needed each other more than ever.
To say their emergence into legal adulthood has been challenging is an understatement: it has been damn hard, not just for them but for the parents and carers and friends who have endeavoured to support them the best ways they know how.
Where I work, a good proportion of our current year 12 cohort already have plans in place for work or study in 2022, with more than a third of our students choosing to complete an applied learning pathway (VCAL) in preparation for an apprenticeship, work or VET sector study (e.g. TAFE). The rest of our students have been awaiting their precious ATAR scores which are released today at 7am.
There are many professions that still require degree-level qualifications in order to practice, such as law, teaching, physiotherapy, engineering and architecture - just to name a few. And there are many cases in which more general degrees open up an array of doors to interesting professions, as well as further study (think Business/Commerce, Biomedical Sciences, Arts). It remains the case that direct entry from school into a relevant degree is often the most time-efficient way to execute a career plan. And the ATAR is still very much relied upon by most universities to determine the allocation of limited course places. Yet decisions by the likes of PWC to offer Higher Apprenticeships to school leavers - in stark contrast to the very well-established degree pathway into an elite post-grad internship program - presents a reasonably clear signal that things are changing.
Meanwhile, COVID has catalysed further developments in the whole area of early entry schemes, whereby students use other criteria to secure a conditional university offer well before receiving their ATAR. Some programs recognise the value of extra-curricular activities such as leadership and community service, while others rely on Year 11 results or a written endorsement from the student’s school. Meanwhile in Canberra, the Australian National University no longer admits domestic students on the basis of academic merit alone: applicants are required to meet co-curricular and service requirements (CCS) to be eligible for entry, along with meeting ATAR requirements. Suitable CCS activities include sport, paid work or involvement in a student exchange program. This subtle but important shift suggests a growing awareness that deep involvement in life itself - not just success in the classroom and exam hall - makes for well-rounded, capable students.
As articulated so well in Victoria University’s publication Crunching the Number: the use and usefulness of the ATAR, the emerging reality is that undergraduate admissions are based solely on ATAR in only one of out every four cases. VET pathways, other Higher Education Courses, even Secondary education without an ATAR, now sit alongside ‘Mature age entry’ in providing other options for aspiring university students.
Careers Practitioners now find themselves in the rather interesting position of needing to encourage students to do their very best academically, while equally emphasising the importance of involvement in work and extracurricular activities, all the while offering gentle reassurance that there are, nearly always, pathways beyond or around the ATAR, should they be needed.
And despite the education system’s ongoing preoccupation with the ATAR, the reality is that beyond the single act of ‘getting into uni' it is attitude that will trump the ATAR nearly every time (just ask an employer you know)!
I can think of many examples of people within my own circles who found successful ‘workarounds’ to get where they needed to go in their career. While they may not necessarily yet represent the norm, the stories are increasingly common if you have sufficient curiosity to start asking around. Key to these stories is the need for persistence, determination and effort - things that are too often overlooked in the general rush to identify and reward natural intelligence and ability (a concerning trend highlighted brilliantly in Jessica Lahey’s excellent book The Gift of Failure).
And after all the effort put into getting that sought after uni offer, stats thrown around in some career practitioner circles suggest that, on average, one third of university students then drop out and another third undertake a significant course change. Despite this being an exaggeration, it does reflect the reality of concerningly high ‘churn rates’ in Higher Education. The figures vary significantly between universities, however given the significant emphasis placed on choosing the right studies going into senior secondary, and then selecting the right course at the right institution, it would seem that there is more that needs to be done to assist students at these crucial decision-points (or, more realistically, a whole lot earlier)! Perhaps the deeper reality is that in many cases we’re expecting students to make big career calls well before they’re really ready?
There is merit, for some, in taking a gap year to make sure they’re on the right track, especially if time invested in travel and work prove to be deeply formative and illuminating.
Stepping back to look at the even bigger picture, it is no wonder that many students find themselves dazed and confused. Some students are still pushed, maybe by ambitious family members, toward careers that are deemed to be particularly prestigious or lucrative, while others are encouraged to mine labour market information to hone in on sectors predicting significant job growth and therefore a higher degree of job security (real, or sometimes merely perceived, as the pandemic has taught us). Yet there is, in stark contrast, a subtle but significant cultural shift away from the well established cultural end goals of profit and prestige toward purpose and passion.
Emily Esfahani Smith articulates part of this shift so well in her book The Power of Meaning and her associated TedX talk (There's more to life than being happy), highlighting that what humans actually crave more deeply than a happy life is a meaningful existence. The four pillars of community, transcendence, redemptive narrative and purposeful service are shifting into clearer focus as we take time to re-examine what really matters to us as individuals and collectives. And as David Speers articulates well in this recent ABC article exploring what has been called the 'Great Resignation', workers in a COVID-normal world are demanding more from their jobs, including greater working flexibility. With predictions that Australia might face its own Great Resignation, following the mass pandemic-induced workforce exodus in the USA, “the power imbalance between the boss and the worker may still exist, but the dial is shifting some”.
This emerging focus on purpose over profit is increasingly mirrored in the corporate sector, with the emergence of B Corporations. Admittedly, in the past decade I’ve very intentionally chosen a banks, utility companies, a super fund and a toilet paper supplier that are committed to being ‘ethical’ leaders, so it’s unsurprising that I receive regular updates about their social and environmental impact. However now large brands such as Kathmanudu are among this growing trend. Similarly, Swinburne University is now upholding a 2025 vision of “People and technology working together to build a better world”. It’s no longer sufficient to aspire that graduates get stable jobs in secure industries - instead their stated aim is that future employment will lead to meaningful careers not only for the graduates themselves but “to the communities in which they work”.
In the UK there is growing cynicism among young adults that the capitalist system has failed them, particularly when viewed through the lens of housing unaffordability. In China a phenomenon called ‘Lying Flat’ is taking gaining popularity, whereby workers downshift in favour of a lifestyle characterised by peaceful simplicity over the prevailing cultural norm of overwork, stress and anxiety. The government, committed to maintaining a highly productive workforce, has unsurprisingly named the trend as representing a shameful threat to their stability as a nation. While these examples might be the more extreme ones, the pandemic experience has certainly created an environment in which more and more people are finding a willingness to ask the bigger questions about why they work and what ‘the good life’ even looks like. Yet the mere opportunity to ask these questions and pursue alternate paths is also a reflection of our relative liberty and material privilege: while great efforts are being made to reduce the numbers of people living in extreme poverty, the reality is that 85% of the world’s population still live on less than $30 per day. Enquiring as to whether their work has sufficient meaning is generally a luxury they can't really afford.
In developed economies, these changing personal preferences sit alongside constantly emerging opportunities within our dynamic labour market, yet there is a growing awakening to the reality that “the economy has become overheated and unsustainable both in an environmental sense and in a mental sense” (as highlighted in this recent Bloomberg article about workers 'opting out’). Climate change and the pandemic have collided in our times to provide a perfect storm of overwhelming existential threats.
Yet, as much as we live in strange - and at times terrifying - days, we now have before us an opportunity to re-examine the individualism and materialism that have been foundational to our idea of progress and success.
Most of us in the second halves of our lives have participated in this neo-liberal economic experiment for decades, and yet increasing numbers of people - young and old alike - are feeling more free to question whether it has really served us particularly well. Are the deliverables it promised (e.g. higher net wealth, increased GDP) even what we most long for, when all is said and done?
Life in lockdown has permitted (if not demanded) a serious reality-check, and the often under-acknowledged reality of our ‘sustainability’ crisis is that our current way of life can’t be sustained. We either choose change, or have it forced upon us.
Another under-acknowledged reality is that we humans are social creatures, more than we are ever productive economic units. A strong sense of relational belonging is central, and accordingly we constantly take cues from those around us about what really matters and what we ought to pursue in our lives as a priority. We belong in tribes, and we deeply crave acceptance. It’s no wonder that some young folk are finding the cacophony of often-contradictory messages around career choice to be more confusing than clarifying: who even am I, and where do I belong?
The quiet, slow pursuit of wisdom has become an undervalued skill in our noisy, fast-paced, touch-of-a-button kind of world, yet it’s what we really need as our guide as we move forward in uncertain times.
Fortunately, there is little in our lives that is truly wasted, if we view our experiences as opportunities for learning and growth (yes, even - or perhaps particularly - the ‘bad’ times). This action-reflection model, i.e. learning from our ‘mistakes’, provides opportunity to grow in wisdom and understanding, and hopefully personal maturity. That said, as a new generation emerges from their secondary education to embark on the journey of adulthood, it’s worth stopping for a moment to remember these wise words attributed to leadership guru Steven Covey:
“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
Perhaps this coming summer provides a good opportunity for all of us to look up, bravely, in order to check which wall our own ladders are leaning against? I’m taking a seven month sabbatical, to do just that…