5 Ways Colleges Can Prepare Students For The Workplace

Remote working has widened the industry-academia gap more than ever

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a troubling skills gap between the traditional four-year college education and skills required for entry-level jobs. 

When, where, how and even why people work have been transformed by the experiences of the pandemic – making the industry-academia gap more glaring than ever. 

Here are some steps colleges and universities can implement to better prepare students to embark on their careers: 

Community colleges can be an incredible resource for local businesses hoping to fill entry-level and short-term positions. Community college undergraduates represent 44% of all college students; this is an enormous talent pool, especially in a competitive jobs market. 

Miami Dade College actively seeks partnerships from a variety of industries, and has landed some impressive ones. In concert with Tesla, students learn the basics of servicing electric vehicles as well as soft skills like teamwork. They can earn a Tesla Technician Career Technical Certificate and a commitment from the company to employ them at one of its many service centers across the country.

MDC also partnered with Amazon Web Services to award scholarships and train students in cloud computing, and got IBM to commit more than $10 million for teaching the fundamentals of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. These skills can translate into a two-year associate degree or be applied toward a four-year bachelor of applied science and data analytics. 

The old saying, “it’s who you know” still has some merit when it comes to the job market. And one of the major value propositions that traditional college education offers is the opportunity to form connections with peers within the same field that will eventually go on to work at different employers and in different positions across the industry. 

Colleges should help facilitate networking among students with regular events like social meet-and-greets, meetups at local businesses, and online video events, which are likely to stick around even after the pandemic. 
 
Networking between peers naturally migrates to alumni networking as students move closer to graduation. Most colleges have alumni groups, whose members can help build business connections, provide informal mentorships or simply serve as inspiration to young graduates.

Mentoring relationships help connect students and their goals with opportunities to succeed. A Gallup Alumni Survey found that "college graduates are almost two times more likely to be engaged at work if they had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams." While most colleges have mentoring programs, some are more robust than others. 

Good mentors are able to talk about life goals, give helpful feedback on entrepreneurial ideas, and share insight to maximize college careers. Colleges should build relationships with local business leaders to make mentorships more readily available, and establish a feedback system for students to monitor the program’s quality.

The in-the-classroom, textbook-based, lecture-style may work for certain subjects, but in general doesn’t adequately prepare college students for a real-world work setting. People don’t learn new skills in the workplace by attending a lecture, they experience new situations, are exposed to different skill sets and then work and collaborate with colleagues. 

Colleges should support a diversified teaching approach that incorporates a variety of learning experiences. Consider having students complete a coding project, send them to conferences or networking events, have them shadow someone for a day, set up mock peer-to-peer groups and encourage them to follow and report on business influencers on social channels. 

A  two- or four-year degree isn’t for everyone. Certificate programs are an incredible resource that prepare young people for employment in a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional college education.
 
These programs are career-oriented, as students often perform the work for their future jobs. While certificates may not approach higher salaries of four-year graduates, the average weekly earnings for full-time workers with active certificates were 35% higher than those without such credentials. 
 
Colleges can invest in offering more certificate programs to support the growing demand for this practical approach to education and job preparedness.  

As someone who runs two businesses and consults hundreds of small businesses, I can personally attest to how dramatically the workplace has changed in the past two years and this has (or at least should have) dramatic implications for how we prepare college students to enter the workforce.