Even in a good economy, the transition from college to the workplace can be tricky. Some people sail through academia to work without a hitch. Others have a harder time finding the right fit; they’ll need to adjust their expectations and/or improve their skills before they begin their careers.
So where’s the disconnect? Why isn’t everyone coming out of college career- and future-ready?
For many students, it may be because they had to spend time getting up to speed on college-level work. That leaves them less time to reap the benefits of higher education and grow into the kinds of young professionals employers expect to hire.
As colleges prepare for final exams this month, millions of first-year students will get concrete data on how well they’ve been prepared for higher education. More than two-thirds of high-school students in Deloitte’s 2010 Education Survey told us they felt well-prepared for college, while more than two-thirds of high school teachers fear their students are not prepared to handle college course work.
Which view is correct? The sad truth of the matter is no one really knows.
Graduation rates tell high schools how well they’re doing in moving their “products”—students—along the line and out the door. But we don’t routinely gather data on how well those students perform once they’re out in the world. I can’t imagine any successful business operating this way. Why do our schools?
If we’re really serious about improving college enrollment and graduation rates—and preparing our young people to enter the job market—we need to gather information on college performance and channel it back to our high school teachers, principals and administrators. Teachers we surveyed were nearly unanimous in agreeing that without data on students’ academic performance in college, they cannot properly evaluate the effectiveness of their curriculum and teaching methods. Yet, only 13% of the teachers in our survey receive such reports; whatever other feedback they receive is anecdotal, from alumni or parents.
The information is out there. All we need to do is collect it and make sure it gets to where it will do the most good: our nation’s high schools and teachers. That way, we can maximize the effectiveness of the education our children receive and the competitiveness of our nation’s business sector. Everybody wins.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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