Among the diverse majors that undergraduates study, the variety of passions they develop while on the Farm, one thing will eventually affect all of them: Everyone needs a job. Sure, many undergraduates postpone “the real world” by co-terming, heading off to graduate school or even traveling for a while, but this only delays the inevitable.

The University needs to recognize this fact and provide more resources at the Career Development Center — the best vehicle for students to find out what jobs are open, which employers are hiring and where to go for summer internships.

The CDC caters well to students interested in certain paths, especially those who chose majors based on career prospects. But seniors who opted to follow a fuzzier passion — especially within the humanities — are often left casting about, while friends who majored in engineering or economics with an eye toward the job market may already have their first jobs.

This is not at all the fault of the CDC. It cannot single-handedly alter corporate recruiting practices or cater to all liberal arts undergraduates. But the CDC can and should publicize its services more broadly to clue in the rest of campus (freshmen, sophomores and juniors, history and communication majors, for example) to the materials and opportunities that are already there. Students should not be making their first contact with the CDC during fall quarter of their senior years.

The CDC offers career counseling, resume reviews and mock interviews. It even makes time for same-day appointments. It hires students to do peer advising and publishes print and online guides to hundreds of careers — not only consulting and investment banking.

These resources are underutilized and probably always will be. Stanford is an academic institution run by professors, so even though the president and most board members have industry experience, the world outside academia tends to go overlooked in day-to-day interactions on campus. The University implicitly encourages students to attend graduate school and pursue academic careers.

The reality of the situation, however, is that most students will not end up in academia. Most will attend graduate school — whether immediately or after spending time in the workforce — but Stanford graduates ultimately find themselves in a wide variety of careers ranging from public service to teaching to government to health care to publishing to marketing to, of course, consulting and banking. Because virtually everyone eventually gets some sort of job, students should start thinking about what they want to do as early as possible — and the CDC should have the resources to help them, no matter what their interests.

We have some concrete suggestions for improving outreach. The CDC should be given funds specifically to upgrade its Web site. Although the design is better now than it was at the beginning of the year, students can only find what they need by examining every option. Great resources like the Stanford Career Network — thousands of alumni who have volunteered to be contacted — get lost among many other similarly named resources.

The CDC should also allow students to see where they fit in among their peers by placing more statistics on its site. While students can currently find out that 40 percent of graduates get jobs through networking, it is not clear which industries rely more heavily on networking, where all the other jobs come from or even how many students enter the job market immediately. Salary statistics are also woefully inadequate. Only some engineering fields are represented, forcing students faced with two weeks to decide on job offers to rely on anecdotes and close friends for guidance.

Cardinal Recruiting should be revamped to make it more user-friendly for both students and employers. Earlier this year, dozens of master’s students were banned from the program — the main resource for on-campus interviews — after they claimed to be undergraduate students (“Career Center bans master’s students,” Oct. 27). While they should not have misrepresented themselves, the system should allow students more flexibility in presenting themselves to employers. Biology majors who spend summers programming Java should be able to at least have their resumes considered alongside computer science majors, and graduate students who desire entry-level jobs should get the same chance as undergraduates.

Beyond the Web site, the CDC should reach out to students through dorm programming, greater contact with advisers and more career panels. It already offers resume workshops and some sessions tailored toward academic job searches or preparation for career fairs. But much more could be done. It should team up with academic departments to bring in alumni who entered the private sector or government after getting a degree in English, philosophy or chemistry. In the end, the CDC should be granted enough resources to reach every student, as its goals affect almost everyone on campus.

The prominence of software engineering, consulting and investment banking firms on campus is a boon for the CDC — students can connect with employers more easily. But it also presents a huge challenge. The University should devote more resources to the majority of students who choose not to enter these industries immediately following graduation. A Stanford degree is not designed to place students in certain careers, and most degrees do not provide specific training, but the University should see the reality that most students get non-academic jobs and devote more resources to helping students regardless of their destinations.