Recent developments in the knowledge-driven, postindustrial economy have radically affected college students' prospects for entering and completing successful careers. In this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, fewer organizations find profitability in hiring, training, and retaining workers. Over the last 20 years,…

We began this series by addressing the challenges of career advising in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. In this article, we define human capital and suggest that advisors encourage students to utilize the principle of maximizing human capital when making decisions. We describe the personal traits and attitudes needed to…

Emotional labor, the sociological term for the vocational use and suppression of emotion, represents valuable human capital in most occupations in the new economy. However, Millennials often fail to recognize emotional labor as a transferable skill necessary for acquiring and succeeding in future careers. We explain the concept of emotional labor,…

"Scanners" has become a common term for a recently identified category of people who find choosing just one interest or career path difficult (Sher, 2006). Academic and career advisors who work with scanners will likely find that these students have difficulty selecting an academic major or career path and that they seem to suffer anxiety and a…

Foreclosure students have prematurely committed themselves to academic majors and future careers, but present themselves to academic advisors as very decided. From a developmental theory perspective, foreclosures represent an immature identity status and include students whose failure to explore their personal and vocational identities and achieve…

In the last year, three respected leaders in academic advising, Wes Habley, Terry Kuhn, and Gary Padak, published articles suggesting that academic advising has not met the standards of scholarship to be considered a field of inquiry, an academic discipline, or a profession. In this article, we examine academic advising history from the…

Examines the growing demand for multicultural competence in college graduates, describes the course content and academic-advising activities recommended to develop it, and comments on the limits and inherent dangers of providing multicultural exposure universally. Academic advisors are urged to help students maximize their human capital by adding…

Presents an approach to calculating the costs of college education to maximize students' human capital. When considering college expenses, students often overlook the opportunity costs of income foregone while pursuing degrees. A true-cost calculation worksheet and a strategy for making true costs salient to students (projecting the number of…

Describes an approach to academic advising based on the concept that the advisor's role is to increase the student's human capital. Outlines five categories of personal characteristics that add to a worker's human capital (formal education, adult education, on-the-job training, health, geographic mobility), noting issues in each category that…