Are College Graduates ready for the working world?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/218475/20110922/are-college-graduates-ready-for-the-working-world.htm

By Bob Borson | September 22, 2011 3:23 PM EDT

People go to college to learn how to learn and to train their brain to assess problems and determine what possible steps could or should be taken. You go to a technical college to learn how to do a thing or perform a specific job. You want to learn how to work on HVAC equipment there’s a school for that – they’re important – but it’s not the same set of criteria used to measure the success of college graduate from a typical four or five year program.

What I am really talking about is critical thinking – a skill that requires good logic skills but demands that the thinker employ accuracy, relevance, clarity and significance.

Regardless of what I design – however small or insignificant – there are reasons for the moves I make. It’s not too often that my motivation is solely based on thinking something would simply look good. There is an ebb and flow to design, a push here requires a pull there – a never-ending series of compromises that get made to achieve a finished product. Sometimes those compromises aren’t made by me and are completely out of my control. That’s why doing what I do as an architect requires critical thinking. For that reason, I don’t expect the graduates that come to me looking for a job to be completely ready to enter the working world. The most valuable piece of information I want I can’t get off someone’s resume. Sure, I can look at a resume and infer from it if they are intelligent and that might get their foot in the door. What I am most interested in are finding smart and articulate communicators who have a passion for something. If you’re smart you’ll figure the rest out while learning how to make it your own. That last bit is the most important part because it implies ownership in the work – which I can then infer that you will have pride in the final product. You’ll want it to be good for yourself rather than simply being able to check the done box on the to-do list.

[LiberalEsto]

1. The working world isn't there for them

Our corporate masters have created a "working world" that offers few, if any, opportunities for college graduates. Or anybody else, for that matter. It's not the fault of the students or the colleges.

It's the failure of our government to keep good jobs from going overseas by limiting the harm corporations can do to us.

[dmallind]

6. unemployment amongst graduates is less than 5% - it's there for most. nt.

[mmonk]

2. A working world?

My son is staying in college longer. No reason to graduate yet.

[NYC_SKP]

3. no. but then it doesn't help that most high school graduates aren't ready for college when they get

there, or for the working world.

People I meet in industry and in post-secondary education all say young people are coming to them woefully unprepared.

Walk up to 100 high school seniors or college graduates (without real world working experience) and ask them how many sixteenths of an inch are in an inch.

Fewer than half will have the correct answer.

:patriot:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. They never have...

Today's graduates are somewhat more misaligned with what the working world expects that prior ones, but that may well be cyclic.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Most college graduates I knew during my life worked their way through college

Watched a co-worker of mine work 6 and 7 days a week working right along side of me while he was raising a family and putting himself through law school. Took him a little longer than if he had not been working full time. But he did it.

When he got his law degree he didn't have any school debt to worry about.

I don't think that is done too much any more.

Don

[Chan790]

7. Most colleges now forbid F/T employment while enrolled as an undergraduate.

Graduate and Law programs split between those that allow (and often encourage) it and those that forbid it except for approved paid-internships, work-studies, and work-education.

From my college handbook (though it's 9 years old), quoting the section on page 4 where it says:

Full-time undergraduate students are not allowed to hold F/T employment (or P/T employment(s) accumulating to more than 25/hrs. weekly). Violations will result in forced withdrawal from coursework and penalties may include removal from the university or credit-revocation.

Yes, that says "If you get caught holding a F/T job while going to school, we can revoke your credits-earned or throw you out of school." Absurd, right? That's widely the rule, not the exception unfortunately.

[NNN0LHI]

10. There weren't enough hours in the day for him to go to school full-time

That is why it took him a little longer.

Then after he got his degree our employer hired him to work for staff and transferred him to world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.

Don

[Chan790]

8. No.

We have a substantial educational crisis; most college students can't write well enough to belong there in the first place and lack the skills coming out the other end to do the jobs they've been "prepared" for.

I've seen civil engineering graduates that can't do math...I don't want to drive on that guy's bridge. I've seen political science students that cannot construct a sentence or tell you how many senators there are from each state bemoan how unfair the world is that they can't get a PR job working on Capitol Hill. I've seen semi-literates graduate with degrees in education. The problem isn't fluff majors, it's fraudulent attainment.

Logically, these people should be failing courses at the HS and college level, but we have this false notion just because everybody deserves an education, that everybody deserves to graduate if they put in the years and want to graduate. It's easy to blame the students though, we should be blaming the colleges from producing fraudulent college graduates. They don't push the students and there are far too many "legitimate" schools that are no better than tenure-education degree-mills. (Give us four drunken debauched years of your life and we'll give you a degree!)

Many fields would be better served by apprenticeship these days than college if preparation for the working world is the goal.

[blueamy66]

9. Our kid is working at a grocery store while majoring

in mathematics.

I think he'll be just fine in the working world. I can't even spell some of the classes that he is taking. :-)