When undergraduate students connect their life purpose with their career aspirations, they are more engaged in their academic studies. They are also less likely to undervalue their schoolwork, suffer imposter syndrome and dropout.

This transformational nugget of knowledge was from an article I read this weekend on “The Conversation” by Professor Mariya Yukhymenko, a researcher at California State University.

Professor Yukhymenko created a class titled “Fostering Sense of Purpose” with the primary goal of increasing graduation rates. She found that students who took the course reported a deepened sense of what they want to do with their lives, clarifying their educational and career goals, and ultimately strengthening their ability to persevere.

By recognizing the role purpose plays in student success, those of us in higher ed can incorporate the connection between purpose and career aspiration into our student engagement work upfront and prepare more focused, driven and ultimately successful graduates.

Information like this can transform how and why we work. It can change the way the way we engage, retain and prepare not only our students but our workforce, so that we all become difference makers.

Source :: The Conversation

Articles on the Conversation are written by university scholars and researchers with deep expertise in their subjects, sharing their knowledge in their own words.