The post reflects on the importance of reimagining general education as a way to foster vocational discernment in an increasingly job-focused educational environment, advocating for its transformative potential throughout students’ academic journeys. The author shares insights into a new first-year seminar that connects a more common focus on vocational exploration to more specialized content.
For almost two decades, I taught a course called Created and Called for Community (CCC for short), a common learning course at Messiah University designed for first-year students to explore identity, community, and calling. Despite my ardent enthusiasm for it, I entered my first day of class each spring with trepidation as I anticipated student resistance. “Why do I have to take this course?” they often asked, expressing anything from curiosity to confusion to adamant frustration—as in, “I should not have to take this course.”
On many levels, I understood their resistance. Students experience ever increasing pressure from all directions—parents, peers, and culture—to focus their educational energies narrowly on preparation for lucrative employment. “Return on investment” is such a dominant evaluative frame for a college education’s value that general education courses are often considered something to “get out of the way,” something in which students see no reason to invest their intellectual or financial resources.
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