Experts

Media Appearances

College career offices boost job prospects, alumni gifts

The Wall Street Journal

December 13, 2016

The Gallup-Purdue Index Report 2016 found that one in six U.S. college graduates say career services at their institution were very helpful – the same number that said they were not helpful at all. Reporters at the Wall Street Journal, Inside Higher Ed and The Hechinger Report featured insights from Andy Chan, Wake Forest University’s Vice President for Innovation and Career Development because Wake Forest has been a national pace-setter for the college-to-career transition.

Planning to Thrive: Find a job; Make a difference

The New York Times

June 21, 2016

Andy Chan joined Jeffrey Selingo, author and professor of practice at Arizona State University, and New York Times national reporter Kate Zernike in a panel discussion at the New York Times Higher Ed Leaders Forum in June 2016. The topic: Planning to Thrive: Find a Job; Make a Difference.

Navigating the transition from school to the workplace

NPR

April 14, 2016

Freshly minted graduates will soon take their degrees and set out into the workplace. But the path from college to career is not as obvious as it once was. Over the last few decades, unemployment among young college graduates has gone up while wages have gone down. Today, nearly half are underemployed. Add the burden of student debt and life post-graduation can seem pretty scary. A longtime chronicler of higher education says it doesn’t need to be that way. In a new book, he lays out a blue print for navigating the transition. A panel of experts joins him – and us – to discuss life after college.

How to get a job with a philosophy degree

The New York Times Magazine

September 13, 2013

Rock music played as the students entered the school’s chapel, and then Andy Chan, vice president in charge of the Office of Personal and Career Development — the O.P.C.D., it is called — introduced his team with a video spoof of the television show “The Office.” The students played a game in which they could guess, by text, which majors had been chosen by various gainfully employed alumni of the school. (Human-capital analyst at Deloitte? And the answer is . . . German!) And a panel of students shared their own glamorous work experiences: a fellowship in Paris, an internship at a start-up.

Higher Ed friend or foe?

Inside Higher Ed

February 20, 2014

“I think that there is a tension on the surface that having programs like these may make colleges be perceived as not doing their full job. I think that’s fair — that tension does exist,” said Andy Chan, vice president for personal and career development at Wake Forest University, who has criticized the traditional model of career services. “But at the same time … for so many of these liberal arts schools, the professional development skills that these programs offer may not be offered at their particular schools, and I think that’s just sort of a reality.”