Employers say that students do not learn general skills in college



But the people who could help him did not respond to his emails, responded too slowly, failed to present themselves at the meetings or were not aware of the data.

For a week, Link led his son through this challenge.

“I taught him to be irritating inspiring,” said Link, Chro de Randstad North America, a main endowment business in Atlanta. “This means saying what you need convincingly, to the point of making people nuts. What I really taught him was working with other people – influence, negotiation and persuasion.”

The experience of his son, says Link, illustrates the lack of creative resolution of problems he sees in current students.

What is the importance of general skills?

What the link describes is what today's business world calls for “general skills”. And classic college studies of four years, emphasizing critical thinking, debate, visualization of problems from several angles and communication clearly, was designed to teach these skills.

However, nearly 3 in 4 employers say they find it difficult to find graduates with the general skills their companies need.

In a 2019 report, the Society for Human Resource Management revealed that 51% of its members who responded to an investigation said that Educational systems have done little or nothing to help respond to the shortage of skills. The best missing general skills, according to these members: problem solving, critical thinking, innovation and creativity; the ability to manage complexity and ambiguity; and communication.

Are university programs just different from those of past years? Are students different? Has dependence on technology stole young adults with general skills? Or are the companies of today – many of them are startups and depend on the constantly evolving technology – impatient and little willing to wait for what was formerly a predictable and in progress learning curve?

All these questions may contain the answers, say that managers, educators, students and experts in the workplace interviewed for this series.

In the immediate future, The most precious work skills will be those that machines cannot yet performLike general skills, according to a PEW Research Center survey of around 1,400 technology and education professionals. The survey suggested that young adults must “learn to learn” if they hope to adapt to a rapidly evolving work world.

Link likes to think further – at 2025, when many familiar works are carried out by machines. Machines will perform basic tasks that require capacities such as operational skills (operating such as elevator carriage operators, mounting chain workers), administrative skills (secretaries, storytellers) and computer skills (accounting).

General skills are precisely the skills that a traditional four -year university degree, in particular in liberal arts, is designed to teach, said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the association of American Colleges & Universities in Washington, DC

“I was a major in philosophy,” said Pasquerella. “We composed arguments on the questions, responded to the objections, developed an ability to imagine what it is to be in the place of a different person, to listen critically and to consider the points of view that could question your fundamental beliefs.”

Year after year, the annual survey of its organization on the skills that the managers of the company consider the most precious in college graduates and who prepare students in the workforce that general skills “are the best preparation for long-term career objectives”.

However, “these are areas where colleges clearly find it difficult to prepare students,” said Denise Leaser, SHRM-SCP, who is president of Greatbiztools, a company for human resources management and consulting services in St. Paul, Minnesota, and whose daughter is just a graduate of Biola University in California. “And the future seems to be worse.”

Chris Kirksey is president of McLean, Virginie, Direction.com, a digital marketing and web design company. He said he had interviewed “many brilliant people with university degrees”, some with several degrees. But he often finds them that are missing.

“It seems that the college graduates from many people” in Carter “without skills of real people or no real use of their knowledge skills,” said Kirksey. “What is so great in a diploma in something if you don't know that, and not how to teach it, use it or understand why people want or need it?”

What's going on in college?

Prescus by companies to produce graduates with up -to -date technical skills, colleges could soften their standards to demand liberal arts courses – the types of classes that research has shown have shown the general skills that companies also want.

“Many colleges still have study programs based on liberal arts,” said Martin Van der Werf, deputy director of editorial and post-secondary policy at the Center on Education from the University of Georgetown and the workforce. “But most could also be accused of having continued after what they think that most companies want … what is the next hot major. And the design of study programs to bring tobacco students on the technical skills they need for a diploma sometimes takes place at the expense of founding them in the liberal arts.”

For example, he said, a college diploma can now be divided into several sub-disciplines (such as a specialty in the management of the supply chain), each requiring its own specific expertise. “Thus, the emphasis is put on the test to (introduce) new classes, so that they shave one or two of the basic requirements of the liberal arts.”

In addition, he said, colleges are more consumer focused today. Because the public can follow from year to year what new university graduates earn, schools feel the pressure to demonstrate that the school fees of the college are worth the investment, in particular at a time when tuition fees are via the roof.

“For colleges, it was” hey, we are a place where students can come to meet, discover their passion and follow him “,” said Van der Werf. “While the price of the stickers of tuition fees increased, the lever effect went to consumers who say:” I invest thousands of people in my education. What guarantee can you give me that I will find a job when I am out, and how much will I win? “More and more, colleges listen and say:” OK, it may not be the wisest thing to demand political sciences for a major business. “”

Zachary Schallenberger is a senior upon the Montana State University in Bozeman, specialized in computer science. Like most IT students interviewed for this series, he admitted that the college had not really taught him basic interpersonal skills, which is important for students registered in science that can be introverted and socially awkward.

It was not at university but during a BMW internship where he first acquired these skills.

“One of the things I had to learn was to communicate in a professional environment,” he said. “It has never been taught to me. What is the official way of writing an email? Is email the most appropriate way to contact someone? How can I have conversations with my manager?”

Is scanning to blame?

Eric Frazer has another explanation for the shortage of university graduates with general skills – and that has nothing to do with university programs.

Students are more disengaged than students from the past decades of campus sports, Greek life, volunteering and other extracurricular activities that develop general skills.

“Students are not also involved in the opportunities that could develop these skills,” said Frazer, who teaches part -time at the Yale School of Medicine. “Before, we would join a brotherhood or a sorority, a leisure club, a sport, a theater, music – where there is a hierarchy, leaders, where you learn interpersonal skills and conflict resolution.

“Now, social connections (students) are online. Instead of joining a club, people join an application or online group. Instead of sitting with someone and sharing, they share photos and extracts from news on phones and tablets.”

Link agrees.

“I see that even in my own house,” he said. “I raise four students of generation Z.” Although they completely recognize that they must be convincing or manage conflicts, they are often perplexed about how to move these things. I think it is because they were “digitized” very early and learned to believe that the best way to solve a problem is to go to a machine and find your solution, instead of another person. “”

Part 3: Student skills gap.