For years, most liberal-arts schools seemed to put career-services offices “somewhere just below parking” as a matter of administrative priority, in the words of Wake Forest’s president, Nathan Hatch. But increasingly, even elite, decidedly non-career-oriented schools are starting to promote their career services during the freshman year, in response to fears about the economy, an ongoing discussion about college accountability and, in no small part, the concerns of parents, many of whom want to ensure a return on their exorbitant investment.

The University of Chicago has extensive pre-professional programming and a career center that engaged with roughly 80 percent of its freshmen last year. Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., has a new career center prominently located on campus; its Web site urges freshmen to stop by and start their four-year plan. Michael S. Roth, the school’s president, says he wants the career program “to work with our students from the first year to think about how what they’re learning can be translated into other spheres.” Like Chan, Roth believes that the process can make for more thoughtful, meaningful careers choices; but he also told me that the demand from parents for better career services has pushed resources in that direction (for those schools that can afford it; many schools have been forced to cut back their career-center budgets). “My parents didn’t expect me to have an easy time when I graduated,” said Roth, who recalled finishing college in the challenging economy of the late ’70s. “I think families at these, dare I say, fantasy schools — they’re used to kids getting what they want, and they expect that to happen at graduation.”

No other school has marketed its career center quite as successfully as Wake Forest (which, at No. 27, falls between the University of Virginia and Tufts on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but has struggled with name recognition nationally). In 2009, the university hired Chan, who was running Stanford Business School’s career center and had led a Silicon Valley start-up. Chan has made a name for himself as an oft-quoted expert on getting young people employed. He has given a TEDx talk on the subject of reinventing career services and hosted, at Wake Forest, a symposium that was attended by representatives from some 75 schools. His theme: If universities want to preserve the liberal arts, they have a responsibility to help those humanities majors know how to translate their studies into the work world.

Chan, who can earn up to $350,000 a year, raised more than $10 million, mostly from parents, for a sunny, glass career center with video displays and healthful snacks for students (“It looks like Google,” Chan told me). He likes to say he has “supersized” the career-services office, creating an elaborate Web site and hiring enough staff members — close to 30 — to offer conciergelike services to students.

At orientation, Chan gave a rousing talk to parents, encouraging them to let their children follow their interests, knowing that his office was looking after their employability: 95 percent of Wake Forest’s graduates, he told them, were either fully employed or in graduate school within six months of graduating. (Eighty percent of the class of 2012 responded to the survey.) The room suddenly felt festive with affirmation. “Wow,” one parent said, loudly enough to be heard across the room. The parent might have been even more surprised to learn that for schools in the high end of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, that statistic is not unusual. The University of Chicago’s comparable number is 96 percent, and N.Y.U.’s class of 2012 was 93 percent. Dickinson College, a less competitive school in Carlisle, Pa., said that 92 percent of its graduates were either employed or had been in graduate school a year after graduation. Wake Forest didn’t keep those statistics before Chan arrived, so it’s hard to know whether employment has increased during his time there. The survey doesn’t reflect students’ satisfaction with their jobs, but tracking down the number was a high priority for Chan. And with good reason: citing it clearly reassures parents.