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We recently took part in Career Leadership Collective's online accelerator session, Deeper Connections between Academic Advising and Career Services, which explored why and how schools are attempting to bridge the important gap between, you guessed it, academic advising and career services departments. For those interested in the topic but unable to attend the accelerator, we've summed up our takeaways below:  

Late last week, we had the opportunity to attend the Career Leadership Collective's Boston Think Tank, a meeting-of-the-minds focused on 'intentionally scaling' career services. When Jeremy Podany, former Executive Director of Career and Corporate Services at Colorado State University, and also the Founder and CEO of the Collective asked us to take part, we immediately answered with a resounding 'Yes please!' For us, there's almost nothing better than spending the day with a tremendous group of thought leaders who work in Career Services - except maybe if it also includes lunch...

Our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with the internet. We use it at work, we use it at home, and, thanks to smart phones and tablets, we use it on the go. What’s left behind is a mound of unorganized information. It’s no surprise then that innovative companies everywhere have begun to organize this data and put it to good use. 

While becoming the #1 social network for professionals, LinkedIn has accumulated a treasure trove of data on its users. Finally we get to see what it has been doing with this data, and the implications are huge for career services professionals. A couple of days ago the company rolled out a new feature that uses this data to allow students, prospective students, alumni, schools, and employers to better navigate higher education through outcome-based rankings and other career exploration tools. These tools are useful for career services professionals for three main reasons:

Most people by now have acknowledged the crisis in our higher education system in the United States. The rising cost of education, declining graduation rates relative to other industrialized nations, a massive amount of student debt, and perhaps worst of all: the perception that a college education isn’t really worth what it used to be.

We regularly hear from stakeholders such as public officials, employers, and educators about what can and should be done to address these issues, but rarely are we exposed to a consolidated view from the students themselves. In 2013 McKinsey & Company published a report called Voice of the Graduate which does just that. The report highlights the concerns that many recent graduates share regarding their experience after graduation.

For the second straight year, Bentley Unviersity in Waltham, MA has been ranked within the Top 5 Career Centers nationwide by Princeton Review as part of their annual college guide, “The Best 379 Colleges.”Bentley was ranked #4 in the 2015 edition after holding the #3 designation in the 2014 ranking. The rankings are based on over 130,000 student surveys conducted by Princeton Review, in which students are asked 80 questions about their school, ranging from academics to the student body on campus.

The national recognition signifies Bentley’s differentiated approach to engage students in Career Exploration that focuses on a journey beginning when students enter as a freshman and continues even as they graduate and become alumni.