I spent some time this evening on a new site known as YOUniveristy. According to eSchool News, YOUniversity, a “Boynton Beach, Fla., startup YOUniversity LLC is hoping to draw users to its sites by offering prospective college students an unbiased, third-party source of information about hundreds of schools in an interactive, social environment”.
The Career Videos page has some very interesting, and seemingly well done, videos about different careers. So far there is only one Computer career listed – Computer Systems analyst – but I anticipate them adding more soon since they haven’t been up and running that long yet. I think this would be a fantastic resource for teachers because the videos and write-ups contain current data – they are citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) which is a fantastic resource for all things job-related, specifically:
I’ve used it myself many times over the years but I think that this site will be more appealing to students. Why? Honestly, because it’s splashy and looks more fun than the OOH page. But if you want your students to get more in-depth information than what this site provides, I’d steer them back to the more complete OOH site. There are still a lot more careers posted on the government’s site, but there aren’t videos for any of them.
The College Videos page, the main purpose of the site, provides virtual tours of college campuses across the country. Of course, I stopped by the Delaware page first, and found that Delaware State University and the University of Delaware were the only two listed. Hey YOUniveristy: what about Goldey-Beacom College and Wilmington University?
I did some searching around the site, but I couldn’t find out how these videos are actually made. YOUniversity states that they are an “unbiased, third-party source of information” but who makes these videos? Are these done by students attending the colleges and universities? I’m curious about this.
I think that students should take a visit to their potential college before signing on the dotted line if at all possible. However, if they are still in the process of narrowing things down, and/or want to learn more about different careers and majors, then this is a good site to check out.
