Questions to Ask College Students –

helping them BUILD the FUTURE

“College educated, undergraduate degree required/preferred”

If you have looked for a job within the past few years or so many will have something about a college education. But what does it mean? Why do companies place such emphasis on college education? As life long learners, we know that education, knowledge, and understanding are the foundation of our way of life. They are the foundation on which we build ourselves.

So what? We as a society have placed more value on the opportunity to go to college than we have spent teaching each other the benefits of education. It seems we take a check list approach to education…

• Middle School – check!
• High School – check!
• College – check!
• Masters – in progress!

Are we instilling in ourselves and those around us that education matters? That college sets us up to be able to start (or continue) our life long learning process? As I see it, the way American society currently views college education, it doesn’t matter, but if we change the conversation it can matter. The next time you speak with a college student try asking these questions instead of “what’s your major?”

What Classes inspire you?

When you ask ‘What classes inspire you?’ you are asking a college student to think outside the textbook so to speak. This allows college students, and really all people, to open their minds and their imaginations. When people are inspired they not only learn BETTER but that inspiration can turn to passion. With passion comes the ability to move mountains with knowledge.

How Has college changed you?

Every experience in life leaves us changed. You can’t unlearn something that you have learned. For example, when I was a young child there was a “traumatizing” episode of Sesame Street where when one of the characters left the water running, his fish friend started running out of water. At that point I learned that water is a limited resource, and I have to only use my “share”, so while brushing my teeth I HAD to make sure to turn the water off. That experience left me changed and that experience as I have gotten older has made me educate myself more on waste. College changes us too, and it is that constant change and education that allows for us to grow.

How do your studies affect us on a global level?

Okay, so maybe if you ask this question you might need to do some explaining, but it is actually quite interesting and loaded. We talked about how college changes us, but how do we take that and live it. This is the part that many people miss when they come out of college or even when they are still in college. How is it that you are going to use what you have learned to further the developing or even the developed world? How are you building a better future? A computer can take over any job that looks at data, or analyzes information. What a computer can’t do is allow that data to change its behavior. We need to not only be the life long learners of the world but we need to be the educators of the world too. We need to innovate and be the resources that you wish we could find. Inspire change in others, give all the knowledge that we can to those around us.

How do you change the world? How do you impact those around you? How do you inspire? Take your education and live it, expand on it.

Comment below with how you view a college education. And how you feel a college education fits in with today’s beliefs.