Why Students Aren’t Graduating Career Ready

The following article is from the first video of a 3 part series presented by Tim Elmore where he tackles the missing piece to career readiness among our Generation iY population.  

Generation iY is the second half of the millenials, and are those born after 1990.

In this first video, he talks about the state of students today and why they are unready.

You can see the video in its entirety here.

Students have shown that they can master the classroom, but still aren't prepared for the work-room.

They often come out of school with a high IQ but a low EQ, and they are often not prepraed for the level of responsibility or the workload.

Artificial Maturity
A big reason for students lack of success after school is due to what Tim calls 'artificial maturity.'  The students grow up, make it successfully through school, and think that they are prepared for the work-world when they really aren't.

Students are savy enough to make it through school, but aren't ready for the professionalism that the work-force requires.
- Some applicants have actually texted during interviews
- 1 in 8 applicants bring their parents to interviews

Content Without Context
They have content without context.  They have a lot of data, but know context to work within and to tie the content to.  It can be a struggle transitioning and applying what they have learned in school to the real-world.

Context without Consequences
We have removed a lot of the consequences from the students and the choices that they make.  A lot of the time, their choices aren't tied to consequences.  In the name of self-esteem and safety, we tend to over-praise our kids, and it does not prepare them for the real-world when you don't get a cookie for just showing up.

-  The unreadiness of the new generation of graduates are contributing to our economic struggles.

-  Students are struggling to merge the skills that they used to find success in the classroom with the skills needed to find success in the workforce.

Series Of Skills That Their Fast-Paced World Has Not Presented
Emotional intelligence
Good communication
Teammwork
Collaboration
Problem Solving
Looking your supervisor in the eye and shaking their hand

Number 1 statement that K-12 educators hear is, 'This is too hard.'

The Three Reasons
Theory vs. Practice
Most graduate from high school without having a real job.  Sports and activities are great, but it doesn't substitute for having actual job experience.

Classroom Subjects
We push our students to master core subjects, but students struggle in translating the skills need to master core subjects into skills needed to master on job performance.
Google has found through research that they see no correlation between GPA and academic success.
- Success in schools is 75% IQ and 25% EQ, while success on the job might be the opposite.

A New Parent Model
Having a job early will provide responsibility, work-ethic, and people skills.  We tend to look to keep our kids busy with activities, but we need to provide real, work experience.

Tech Skills Vs Employability Skills
We do a great job of preparing them for specific job hard skills that they need, but we are missing the soft skills that employees are begging for.  The skills needed to find success as a professional.

We need to do a better job of preparing our students to become professionals by teaching them not only th technical skills needed to be successful on the job, but teaching them the soft, professional and employable skills needed to be successful.  We also need to provide them with responsibility and accountability now so that they are not given a false sense of security that will blow up in their face when they face adversity in the real world.