Choosing College: How to Make Better Learning Decisions Throughout Your Life

by Michael B. Horn, Bob Moesta

Overview

Cut through the noise and make better college and career choices

This book is about addressing the college-choosing problem. The rankings, metrics, analytics, college visits, and advice that we use today to help us make these decisions are out of step with the progress individual students are trying to make. They don't give students and families the information and context they need to make such a high-stakes decision about whether and where to get an education.

Choosing College strips away the noise to help you understand why you’re going to school. What's driving you? What are you trying to accomplish? Once you know why, the book will help you make better choices.

The research in this book illustrates that choosing a school is complicated. By constructing more than 200 mini-documentaries of how students chose different postsecondary educational experiences, the authors explore the motivations for how and why people make the decisions that they do at a much deeper, causal level. By the end, you’ll know why you’re going and what you’re really chasing.

The book:

• Identifies the five different Jobs for which students hire postsecondary education
• Allows you to see your true options for what’s next
• Offers guidance for how to successfully choose your pathway
• Illuminates how colleges and entrepreneurs can build better experiences for each Job

The authors help readers understand not what job students want out of college, but what "Job" students are hiring college to do for them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781119570110
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/11/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	648,422
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL B. HORN is the author and coauthor of multiple books, white papers, and articles on education. He is the head of strategy for the Entangled Group and a senior partner for Entangled Solutions, which offers innovation services to education institutions. He is also the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

BOB MOESTA is an innovator, entrepreneur, and co-creator of the Jobs to Be Done Theory. The co-founder and president of the ReWired Group, Moesta is also a fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. He is a guest lecturer at The Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Entrepreneurship, and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Helping You Make Progress xvii

Part I Introduction 1

1 Is This Book for Me? 3

Ask the Right Question 3

You Could Be Struggling Because… 4

Why This Book Can Help 5

Helping You as a Student 8

Helping You as a Parent 10

Helping You as a School Professional 11

2 College Choosers Face a New, High-Stakes World 13

The College-Choosing Problem 13

A Higher Percentage of People are Going to College Than Ever Before 14

More People Apply to More Places 14

Many Don’t Know Whether to Go to College at All 16

Want a Job? Go to College! 16

Stop Stressing About Whether You’ll Get In 18

College Doesn’t Work for Many People 19

College Doesn’t Pay Off for Many People 20

Even If You Complete, It Might Not Be a Good Investment 22

There are Other Good Pathways 23

That Adds Up to a Lot of Dissatisfied People 23

It’s Not Just 18-Year-Old High School Graduates 24

The Rankings and Advice Out There Won’t Necessarily Help You 27

Don’t Leave Your Choice to Luck 28

Part II Helping Learners Make Better Choices 31

3 Help Me Get into My Best School 33

Getting In 34

Devin’s Story 36

Talikha’s Story 37

Ujana’s Story 38

Understanding the Help Me Get into My Best School Job 40

How to Be Successful When You Have This Job Arise in Your Life 44

What to Do If You are a Parent of a Child with This Job 57

What Not to Do 61

What to Do 62

4 Help Me Do What’s Expected of Me 63

Going for Others 63

Maddy’s Story 65

Trisha’s Story 67

Greg’s Story 68

Understanding the Help Me Do What’s Expected of Me Job 70

How to Be Successful When You Have This Job Arise in Your Life 73

What to Do If You are a Parent of Someone with This Job 82

What Not to Do 84

What to Do 85

5 Help Me Get Away 87

Your Escape Room 88

Naomi’s Story 88

Kyle’s Story 90

Understanding the Help Me Get Away Job 91

How to Be Successful When You Have This Job Arise in Your Life 94

What to Do If You are a Parent of a Child with This Job 102

What Not to Do 104

What to Do 106

6 Help Me Step it Up 109

Pick it Up 110

Naomi’s Story 110

Neil’s Story 111

Olivia’s Story 112

Understanding the Help Me Step it Up Job 113

How to Be Successful When You Have This Job Arise in Your Life 119

What to Do If You are a Parent of a Child with This Job 128

What Not to Do 130

What to Do 132

7 Help Me Extend Myself 135

Learning for Learning’s Sake 136

Naveena’s Story 136

Trisha’s Story 138

Karen’s Story 139

Understanding the Help Me Extend Myself Job 140

How to Be Successful When You Have This Job Arise in Your Life 144

What to Do If You are a Parent of Someone with This Job 147

What Not to Do 149

What to Do 150

8 Living Life Through the Jobs 151

Bob’s Story 151

Five Principles for Your Learning Journey 154

Part III Helping Educators Design Better Choices 161

9 Why Understanding the Job Changes What You Offer 163

Applying the Jobs to Your Job 164

Why Needs, Demographics, Categories, and Listening to Users Misleads 165

Moving from Correlation to Causation: What Job Does a Milkshake Do? 170

How Understanding the Job Changes What You Offer 173

Organizing Around a Job 176

10 How Institutions and Entrepreneurs Can Design Better Experiences 181

Wayfinding Academy’s Story 181

Comparing the Five Jobs 184

Go Beyond the Averages and Surveys 186

Help Me Get into My Best School 187

Help Me Do What’s Expected of Me 190

Help Me Get Away 192

Help Me Step it Up 196

Help Me Extend Myself 200

Why Most Colleges Must Focus 204

Part IV Conclusion 207

11 Parting Advice for Learners and Educators 209

Recommendations, Not Blueprints 209

For Students 210

For Schools and Learning Programs, Both Established and Yet to Be Created 214

Forging an Educational Marriage 223

Appendix: How to Unearth a Job 225

The Forces and Timeline That Comprise a Job to Be Done 225

How to “Watch” What People Do and “See” the Job to Be Done 230

Identify the Energy in Someone’s Decision 232

Who We Interviewed 234

How We Chose the Students We Interviewed 237

Interview, Code, and Cluster 238

Acknowledgments 243

About the Authors 251

Notes 253

Index 271

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"By focusing on the different reasons why students choose to go to college, Michael Horn and Bob Moesta offer an entirely fresh approach to coping with the admissions process. Learners contemplating further education at every stage of life will gain important insights from this book. So will educators who wish to serve their students better."
—Richard Levin, President Emeritus, Yale University

"Choosing College is a great guide for families and students to navigate the very complicated river of life at the college selection stage. Like a seasoned set of river pilots, Horn and Moesta guide you through the twists and turns and help keep you off the sand bars of stress. This book helps you to find your way as there is no the way. It is a great personal guide to a very complex process."
—Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State University

"Choosing College resonates with me as a parent of three college-aged daughters, an education executive, a former college instructor, and a public policy wonk. Horn and Moesta bring a new and timely framework to this vital decision-making process and families, like mine, as well as education leaders across many disciplines and sectors will find their insights applicable to the critically important life-long learning sector."
—Jane Swift, Former Governor of Massachusetts

"This book is not a guide to college selection. It's a thoughtful and clear pathway for all learners to make the best decisions about who they are, what they want to do and what schools, colleges and universities should provide to help them get there."
—Bev Perdue, Former Governor of North Carolina

"Choosing College tackles one of the most complex and foundational decisions facing society today. Michael Horn and Bob Moesta go beyond dissecting the decision and formulating a return-on-investment. They frame a systemic approach to assist the reader in making a customized decision that is best for every individual. The break-through approach is the application of the popular Jobs to Be Done innovation methodology as a means of providing the reader with a pragmatic step-by-step model to make the most informed choices for their unique situation."
—Brad D. Smith, Executive Chairman of the Board, Intuit, Inc.

Editorial Reviews

2019-09-10
A guide for making decisions about post-high school educational options.

Addressing prospective college students, parents, and educators, the ambitious reach of this title works against depth of analysis. After discussing how the book's "Jobs to Be Done" framework assesses students' motivations, college selection is presented as a three-step process: "Know Thyself," "Identify Matches," and "Check and Choose." Specific needs based on personal characteristics such as race or socio-economic class are overlooked; due to some tone-deaf language and gaps in information, the work fails to address the needs of many young people from marginalized backgrounds. Leaning on data about lifetime income potential, the authors emphasize where/when rather than whether to choose college, so this may be of limited use to those pursuing vocational trades. While suspending concern over cost to find ideal matches seems out of touch, the authors balance this message with visioning around individual priorities, clarifying throughout how rankings and perceived status may not equate with fit. Theoretical in tone, this work may be more useful to those planning a gap year or coming to higher education after an absence than to current high school students. The authors conflate the roles of educators and entrepreneurs, colleges and training platforms, presenting examples of milkshake sales and IKEA's "profitable magic." The "jobs" language frames learners as customers hiring a college, resulting in a transactional perspective that may not resonate with college leaders.

Diluted usefulness resulting from a broad scope. (appendix, about the authors, notes, index) (Nonfiction. 16-adult)

Kirkus Reviews