College is traditionally considered to be the four years in which students are molded into the successful workers they will become and given the opportunity to practice their craft through hands-on classes, internships and co-ops. It’s becoming more and more common, however, that college is just the second stop on this train. That’s because many elementary, middle and high schools are already introducing students to career skills long before they ever step onto a college campus—because the dynamics of today’s fast-pace and tech-heavy economy demand that they do so.
What is College and Career Readiness?
Like so many aspects of contemporary education, the answer to this question has changed drastically over the last couple of decades. Since the job market is so fierce and employers demand increased and specific skills from the people they hire, it’s often no longer sufficient to simply attend college classes and pick up the necessary skills just by reading a $400 textbook. Since many students opt to not attend college after high school, they miss out on the time when students would traditionally learn these important skills. The thing with today’s education system, however, is that many students already have a pretty sturdy foundation before they even get to college thanks, in large part, to project-based learning, Maker Education and collaborative learning experiences during school.
There has never really been a concrete way to determine if a student is truly career ready. Sure, they could take a test like the SAT, but tests don’t measure the core 21st century skills they will need, like creativity and problem solving. When preparing to enter the working world, graduates will have needed to accumulate significant experience and aptitude in areas that written examinations cannot account for. They will only build skills like critical thinking, tech knowledge and resilience through active engagement in endeavors that accurately mirror career-oriented experiences. While Math and English skills are important in the workforce, they should not be focused on as heavily as they are, if you ask us.
More so than being able to solve a math problem or write a grammatically correct sentence, modern students need to know how to evaluate and execute in other important areas. The areas they should be able to demonstrate proficiency in include content knowledge, learning skills and techniques and transition knowledge. Some superintendents have instituted measures to their curricula that help better ensure the future readiness of their students without requiring them to complete taxing programs and waste time on things they will not need to know. Things like service learning and giving them the opportunity to get a feel for what career path they are interested in through hands-on experience go a long way in preparing students for life. Now, more than ever, high schools especially need to make sure that their students are not just adequately prepared for the next step—they need to be engaged from start to finish and make sure that specialized and adapted guidelines are met for every student.
Redefining Career Readiness in Our Uncertain Future
The workforce and economy are each changing rapidly, especially compared to what they were like just 15 years ago, with new industries seemingly popping up all the time. Since we have witnessed the dramatic changes take place, we can only assume that the world will continue to evolve as technology grows increasingly powerful. Since the world has changed so much, so too must the education process. If you ask any employee involved in any of today’s most dynamic professions, they’ll emphasize the frequency of projects in their daily duties and the importance of teamwork. In education, likening learning to simulating these criteria include project-based learning and collaborative projects.
Since the economy is constantly changing and evolving, the term ‘gig economy’ was coined to intimate that careers become obsolete more quickly than ever. What’s more is that artificial intelligence and robotic machines have already began eliminating a number of traditional jobs that the average person relied on in the knowledge economy. One report even predicted that as many as 47 percent of current middle-class jobs could soon be replaced by automation, including wait staff, news writers and even lawyers. We just don’t know what exactly will happen, especially when it comes to this rise of the machines, so the best course of action is to shape students who possess the qualities that robots cannot have, including creativity, problem solving and innovation.
For these reasons, there is starting to be a sizable shift in what exactly it means to be career ready. In general, it would seem to be the case that current education approaches are insufficient in addressing these realities. By working career education into the curriculum, schools can help students get comfortable with chasing constantly changing and elusive jobs. This, presumably, will require a much greater focus on learning specific skills rather than generally learning academic subjects. Teachers should also adapt their styles to be more fluid, which would organize learning experiences around the specific needs and interests of each student rather than traditional boundaries. There is little doubt that the economy is complex, but there is a lot of doubt that students are adequately prepared to serve a purpose in our uncertain future.
Getting Career Ready…But, For What Career?
Today’s workforce is trending towards being much more contingent than long-term. Often referred to as the gig economy, this workforce is filled with freelancers, part-time workers, temps and other specialists, who are able to fill a need that a company has right now. By being able to be plugged right in to the operation due to a variety of skills, these kinds of workers are valuable to employers as they dramatically increase efficiency and flexibility. While valuable for the company, however, the gig is not so much valuable for the employee. As soon as they’re no longer needed, the project is completed or there becomes a more efficient option, the company lets them go and they’re on to their next gig. How do we make it so that the company would not be able to afford to lose them?
Almost 30 percent of the current workforce is contingent, meaning that no matter how smart a person is, they’re likely to be looking for work soon. In fact, that number is expected to reach 40 percent by 2020 at the latest. Experts predict that traditional, full-time jobs will be a lot harder to find. Self-employment is expected to increase, partly due to the aforementioned conditions and partly because of the entrepreneurial skills that students will pretty much be forced to learn. On this path, students will still need the skills we continue to preach as valuable: self-discipline, adaptability, creativity, inventiveness and resilience among others. They need to be ready to do whatever the market demands of them.
There is little remaining doubt that today’s teachers are preparing their students for wildly different careers than they have traditionally been used to. School curricula can and must foster entrepreneurial skills in children from a young age and support a vision that aligns with the current and future trends in our economy and workforce. Curricula should be designed to prepare students for navigating a lifetime of contingency, highlighting the importance of critical thinking and problem solving. In any case, due to the unpredictability of the market, educators need to be prepared for anything. It won’t always be perfect, but this focus on the uncertainty of the future should at least help a little bit when it comes to preparing students for plenty of unknowns and lots of opportunities for gigs.
Proposed Bill Would Place Greater Emphasis on CTE
In an effort to increase the availability and quality of CTE nationwide, the Senate recently proposed a bill that would give it quite a boost. Dubbed the Workforce Advance Act, the bill would allow states to invest in increasing the number of CTE-related courses offered to students and encourage districts to beef up their CTE programs. If the bill is passed, states would be encouraged to expand access to CTE as well as early college high school courses, allowing students to earn college credits while still in high school. The funds that the bill would provide would allow educators to do this effectively.
Along with funding for being able to create in-school CTE programs and courses, the bill would provide assistance for students to physically attend college courses while still in high school. At the same time, money would be allocated for teacher development as well. Since teachers need certain credentials to teach these advanced courses in high schools, the bill would help them attain these certifications at a substantially reduced cost to them. The Workforce Advance Act is also designed to help the Department of Education identify the best ways of providing similar dual-enrollment programs in the future and if the greater career experience even had an effect on student success.
Thousands of students are already enrolled in similar programs across the country. So far, there seems to be a connection between CTE in high school and students getting into and doing well in college. The hope is to build on this and create opportunities for even more students to have a chance at doing what is best for their future. A bill like this would create a fast and affordable route for students to take in learning the skills necessary to thrive in our global economy. The classes offer so much valuable hands-on experience that it’s hard to argue with the premise and, perhaps, soon it will become a reality. The bill is currently awaiting review by a Senate committee.
The Most Valuable Career Skills to Have Right Now
There’s no denying that everything about today’s workforce has become complex. We’re so caught up in ensuring that students have specific skills to succeed in the real world, but, a lot of the time, we don’t even know what those skills should be because they are constantly evolving. The job market itself has become incredibly complex and equally fast-changing that it seems to almost be a waste to spend time during school focusing on anything but career and technical skills. To succeed in what essentially amounts to an unknown environment, today’s students will need an edge—something or some group of undeniable skills to separate them from the rest of the pack.
The most effective way to ensure you always have an edge is to possess the skills that are most in demand in your particular field. Think about what it is that employers want—they want to keep up with technological, economic, and social transformations. What’s current is always changing, so employees cannot afford to be stagnant and must always be learning something new in order to remain relevant. Research has shown that of the thousands of skills that people could potentially possess, there are a handful that those with the highest-paying and most sturdy jobs tend to have. For the people that have these skills, their employers, historically, have been willing to pay up in order to keep them around to help the company.
To get a little more specific, companies thrive when they know exactly what they’re putting out versus exactly what their customers want. For that reason, data mining skills, particularly statistical analysis, data warehousing and data modeling, are extremely valuable to employers. They also look for people with exceptional business and communication skills for things like contract negotiation and financial analysis because, after all, they always want to be executing at the very top of their game. Further, if you’re not up on the latest technologies, you can all but forget about a lucrative career in a dynamic industry. Employers are looking for people with search engine marketing skills, knowledge of customer service metrics and an ability to manage SAP materials. And, finally, they need creative people to boost their strategic thinking efforts, particularly in the areas of strategic planning and business analysis. Sound boring? Well, there are plenty of ways to start building these invaluable skills by incorporating project-based learning and creativity in K-12 education. You never know how valuable it might be.
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