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What are the demographics and firmographics of Academic Advisers and Career Counselors in college/university settings, and are there any differences between the the Adviser and Counselor segments?
Hello, and thank you for your request for insights on the demographics and firmographics of academic advisers and career counselors in college/university settings, as well as the differences between the two segments. The short answer is that after extensive research, my colleagues and I were unable to uncover extensive demographics or firmographics on academic advising and career counseling. We believe this information cannot be obtained because academic advising and career counseling are one aspect of the overall "job training and career counseling" field in the United States, which is much more general information than you requested. However, we have calculated that there are approximately 90,222 career counselors in the United States, the vast majority possessing a graduate degree or higher and having less than 15 years of experience in the field. The most recent estimate of market size in this field is $14 billion, with annual growth projected to be 0.6%. There appears to be an increased demand in this field for the use of technology, potentially in the form of career interest inventories and tests that you publish. The most significant difference between academic advisers and career counselors is that academic advising is not considered an actual profession, while other differences include the type of employment (part-time advising versus full-time career counseling) in each field and the core responsibilities. Below is a deep dive of our findings.
METHODOLOGY
In order to gain a better understanding of the fields of academic advising and career counseling in academic settings, my colleagues and I searched academic databases, corporate websites, industry reports, regulatory filings, and trusted media sites. Unfortunately, our research revealed that academic advising and career counseling are typically categorized in the very general field of "job training and career counseling," and hard data on these specific jobs in the college and university settings was limited. However, we were able to locate insights on revenue, market size, advising loads, number of jobs in the field, and other relevant demographics and firmographics of interest. Finally, we researched the differences between the academic advising and career counseling and summarized our findings below.
DEMOGRAPHICS OF ACADEMIC ADVISERS AND CAREER COUNSELORS
Despite extensive research on this topic, we found very little information about the demographics of academic advisers and career counselors. We believe this information is difficult to determine for a couple of reasons. First, academic advising and career counseling is often characterized in the very broad field of "job training and career counseling," which does not provide the information you requested on advising and counseling services in college/university settings, specifically. Second, our research revealed that many academic advisers are also college professors, and so demographics about their employment information is captured with respect to that profession, not academic advising. Third, our research revealed that academic advising is not considered a profession, limiting the collection of data about this field.
However, we determined that out of the 273,400 jobs in the overall school and career counseling market in 2014, 33% of those jobs were filled by career counselors in junior colleges, colleges, universities, and professional schools at the state, local, and private level. We calculated that there are 90,222 career counselors at colleges and universities in the United States.
Academic advisers and career counselors share some similarities in demographics. Approximately 98% of advisers and counselors have a bachelor degree or higher, with 70% possessing a graduate or doctorate degree. The experience level of academic advisers and career counselors is relatively limited. Approximately 56% have less than six years of advising experience, while 85% have been working in the field for less than 15 years. Nearly 85% of advisers and counselors surveyed are employed as full-time workers, and only 20% of academic advisers and career counselors consider a traditional "9-to-5" schedule to be a necessary feature of their employment.
FIRMOGRAPHICS OF ACADEMIC ADVISERS AND CAREER COUNSELORS
You indicated that you publish and sell career interest inventories and tests in the college/university setting, making academic advisers a potential new customer segment for your company.
We researched firmographics of academic advisers and career counselors to provide helpful marketing data. Unfortunately, we found very little information on firmographics of this field, and some of the data was not as recent as we prefer to provide to clients. We believe the lack of publicly available information is due to academic advising and career counseling services in the college/university setting being grouped into the very broad and general "job training and career counseling" market. However, we did locate some insights that may be useful.
We determined that revenues in the job training and career counseling market in the United States have increased annually since 2008, as follows:
2008: $12.93 billion
2009: $13.14 billion
2010: $13.35 billion
2011: $13.56 billion
2012: $13.78 billion
In 2014, the market boasted an annual revenue of approximately $14 billion. Annual growth from the period of 2012 to 2017 was projected to be 0.6%. There are nearly 350,000 employees dispersed among 21,271 businesses in this market, although we were unable to further break down these statistics into academic advisors and/or college counselors.
In 2013, the average ratio of students to full-time professional academic adviser was 296 : 1. According to the National Academic Advising Association, the approximate ratio of students to academic advisers in 2014 was 375 : 1 in the United States. In 2015, it was recommended that career counselors have a caseload no greater than 250 : 1. However, calculating student advising load is an extremely complex task, varying between colleges and universities based on a variety of factors. For example, adviser loads vary between the size of the institution; at small, medium, and large universities, a typical adviser is responsible for 233, 333, and 600 students, respectively. Additionally, the type of institution further complicates the picture of adviser loads. An adviser at a two-year college may work with 441 students, while advisers at "proprietary institutions" may provide advising services to only 225 students. At a four-year college or university, the ratio of students to adviser at a public institution is 260 : 1, while at a private college, the ratio is only 100 : 1. Furthermore, the concept of "academic advising" is uniquely defined at each college and university, rendering comparisons between institutions very difficult.
Our research provided some insights regarding the role of career interest inventories and other tests in this market. The mode of delivery of advising and counseling significantly impacts the perceived difficulty of an advising load. Technology is the most substantial trend to consider in the field of academic advising and career counseling in this respect, as it has been judged to have the greatest impact. In addition to student and faculty portals for web-based content delivery for classes, academic advisers and career counselors now find that advising and counseling services can be communicated to students remotely through podcasts, webinars, degree audit systems, career guidance programs, testing, and other programs. In this emerging field, even a seemingly large caseload of student-advisees can become more manageable. It is speculated that as the "e-advising field" evolves and is increasingly implemented at colleges and universities, caseload counts nationally will not reflect the actual resources required for academic advisers and career counselors to provide services to students. There is increasing demand for the development of state-of-the-art web-based portals for the use of career counselors and students.
As a result of these findings, if there is a particular type of educational institution of interest to you, this topic may be researched in more detail in another request. Additionally, if you can identify a specific target segment who may benefit from your products, such as advisers at public four-year institutions with large caseloads and limited technological options, more detailed research on those topics could be explored.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACADEMIC ADVISERS AND CAREER COUNSELORS
You noted in your request that you have already learned through a focus group with career counselors that academic advisers are assuming responsibility for tasks previously associated with career counselors, such as administering career interest inventories and tests to students. This flexibility in the responsibilities of academic advisers may be attributed to our first and most significant finding of differences between academic advisers and career counselors: academic advising, unlike career counseling, is not considered an actual profession. The concept of "profession" requires fulfillment of four prerequisites: there is a technical basis for the occupation, the occupation asserts exclusive jurisdiction, skills and jurisdiction are linked to training standards, and the occupation requires the performance of expert services. Research has indicated that academic advising, as a field, fails to meet these prerequisites. Exploration of this topic would require focused attention, in and of itself. While it cannot be exhaustively addressed in the scope of this brief, this topic may be an area of interest you wish to have addressed in more detail in an additional request.
A second significant difference between academic advising and career counseling is that academic advising in the college/university setting is often (but not exclusively) viewed as one of the many responsibilities of college professors. In fact, approximately 18% of colleges and universities in the United States only use college professors as academic advisers. During the course of one study of attitudes towards advising by practitioners, the majority of respondents indicated that advisers should have obtained a lengthy education before providing advising services, and at least 70% of advisers had a graduate-level education or above, rendering college professors well-suited for the task of academic advising. Additionally, professors have performed traditional academic advising services, including assisting students with course selection, approving changes to students' schedules and withdrawal from courses, and degree planning. On the other hand, career counseling responsibilities in the college setting include improving student skills such as time management and test-taking, career planning and exploration, and managing academic probation and suspension issues.
Third, and linked to the finding that academic advising is one of many tasks assigned to college professors in colleges and universities, academic advising is considered a part-time task. In one student, at least 15% of practitioners providing academic advising services noted they spent less than 30 hours per week on advising. Academic advisers are available for consultation on a walk-in basis, further highlighting the part-time nature of these services. College counselors, on the other hand, maintain a regular work schedule and meet with students by appointment only, with appointments lasting significantly longer than a comparable meeting between a student and a professor/adviser. While college professors who provide academic advising to their students typically have advanced degrees, it is not expected that those degrees are unique to the field of academic counseling. On the other hand, career counselors in academic settings usually possess at least a graduate degree with tailored training in the areas of personal, academic, and professional counseling.
Fourth, there are functional differences between the core responsibilities assigned to academic advisers and career counselors. Academic advisers may assist with college admissions,
transferring course credits, reviewing financial aid requirements, ensuring requirements for graduation are met, selection or changing of the student's major, understanding academic policies, and making plans for post-graduation activities. Despite the trend you observed towards academic advisers administering career interest inventories and other tests, this role is traditionally allotted to career counselors, who use aptitude and achievement assessments for evaluation purposes. Career counselors have a more skill-based and career-oriented focus, and they often assist students in setting realistic goals. Typical tasks for a career counselor include job assistance, career development, assisting with job interviews and resumes, locating an internship, learning workplace etiquette, and assisting the student in finding references.
Finally, as college graduation rates are increasingly linked to state and national performance measures, many universities have recognized that responsibility for academic advising may be more appropriately transferred away from professors and into the hands of professional career counselors. The role of advising has shifted from a passive approach in which college professors are consulted on an as-needed basis by students, to a model in which advising is more "intrusive." For example, at Temple University, a frenzied emphasis on improving graduation rates has resulted in the hiring of 60 full-time college counselors, who are viewed by students as more readily-accessible and less intimidating than professor/advisers. Whereas a college professor may advise a student on which classes to complete in the next semester, a college counselor reviews the student's transcript as a whole, evaluating strengths and weaknesses that inform immediate course selection decisions, while reviewing course sequencing over multiple semesters to ensure timely graduation.
CONCLUSION
In summary, we determined that out of the 273,400 jobs in the overall job training and career counseling market, 33% of those jobs were filled by career counselors in junior colleges, colleges, universities, and professional schools at the state, local, and private level. We calculated that there are 90,222 career counselors at colleges and universities in the United States. The majority of academic advisers and career counselors possess a graduate degree or higher, and have less than 15 years of experience in the field. The most significant difference between academic advisers and career counselors is that academic advising is not considered an actual profession, but other differences include the types of tasks performed, the type of employment required (full-time versus part-time), and the focus of services provided by each.
Thank you for your request. If you have any additional questions, or if you would like for us to explore any aspect of this topic in more detail, please do not hesitate to ask Wonder.