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

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. 

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.