<p>We are witnessing a pandemic of what I call "worklife unreadiness," and colleges face a daunting challenge in immunizing students against it. </p>
<p>Swarms of start-up adults, mostly in their 20s, lack the traction needed to engage the work side of their lives. Some can't make up their minds where to go and what to do, while others find themselves stranded along a career trail about which they are grievously na</p>
<p>The article posted above should be read in tandem with the one linked below to provide another perspective on the transition from college to work. My hunch is that college graduates are not any more inexperienced than those of decades ago. Employment prospects, however, are dimmer, and will continue to be dim. </p>
<p>Employers do indeed expect more of new grads than they did in the past. I know this because I graduated 30 years ago and I hire people today. Very little time is spent to get young people "up to speed" in business these days. It's sad. When I was a young newbie people and management looked out for you and mentored you. They consciously made a long term investment both in time and money in their young hires. Sadly this is no longer the case. The imperative of immediate profit now rules they day. And that is why the quality of our business lives has deteriorated so immensely.</p>
<p>My take: Mel Levine is one of those people who long for a mythical golden age, when kids still respected their elders. I remember well the high regard we had for our elders back in my day: "Don't trust anyone over thirty." "Up against the wall, ************." "Question authority." "Write your own ten commandments." </p>
<p>My generation often respected its elders by occupying their offices.</p>
<p>Toblin: could it be because, back in the day, people often would start at a job and stay there for years? Many people of my parent's generation have been at the same job since the Reagan administration, if not earlier. </p>
<p>Compare now, where we see people who invested their lives in companies having trouble as those companies go under (Polaroid being a prime example), and the average new hire will stay with the company for 18 months. </p>
<p>I'm seeing a lot of whining in the article - "these new kids just aren't as good because of their peer relations" - which tends to come off as longing for said Golden Age. Yes, kids grow up differently now... IMHO, the biggest problem is that kids are given so very much by their parents these days that it's difficult for them to have the same standard of living on their own. If you've worked at a lousy job over the summer, you know that you have to do grunt work; if you drove a 10-year-old car, you don't expect a huge salary to finance new cars... you get my drift. I also think a lot of it is that people are having fewer kids, and have more resources (time and financial) to invest in those kids. </p>
<p>How many parents on this thread have told their kids the stories about working up the ladder? How many have described the less-than-amazing jobs that they've held?</p>
<p>I graduated from college 15 years ago--a liberal arts college. I also felt stranded. I had expected that my classmates and I would graduate and almost immediately find ourselves in professional, career-oriented, secure, well-paid positions. When that didn't happen, I didn't know what to think. </p>
<p>Of course, I needn't have been so flummoxed. Within a few years my classmates and I found our way, although some of us are in jobs and on career plaths we would never have dreamed of at the time. </p>
<p>I really felt unprepared for the period of mediocre jobs, temp positions, low pay, etc. I wish more understood that this is normal. (I realize that there are some fields/majors in which grads get fabulous jobs just out of college, but they seem to be the exception, then and now). I wish they realized that it's not forever. I wish they didn't feel discouraged, or panicked, or like their education had failed them. Incidentally, I also wish they had longer than a 6-month grace period before loan payments begin.</p>
<p>Although I have not yet plowed through the entire article, Greybeard has hit on the portion of it that immediately threw me for a loop. I doubt that Mel Levine (the author) actually is part of the "previous generations" he describes,
[quote]
when young people "studied" and valued older people in the community
[/quote]
The previous generation I belonged to (coming of age in 50's, 60's and 70's) couldn't wait to take over the world from our "uptight" blundering elders.</p>
<p>I think Toblin has hit it right on the head. Employers want their new hires to be "fully cooked". They don't want to invest the time or the training to mentor or teach new hires the skills that would help them be successful. And with company loyalty being a thing of the past, companies don't really have the desire to invest heavily in a person only to have them leave in 2 years for another job. (In defense of people who do this, why not move to a better job when companies seem to really only care about the bottom line.)</p>
<p>I read the whole article and my impression, first of all, is that some replies in this thread are by people who didn't bother to actually read the article but responded to what they presumed it would say.</p>
<p>The article makes many valid points about expectations, peer groups, and how students grow up today, but in the end I think the author has quite unrealistic expectations for what colleges should do. There is no central authority that can impose the changes he seeks, and any college that attempted to do so would be abandoned in droves by students. By and large, the article boils down to saying kids today don't know what's best for them and colleges have to assume the role essentially of parent in guiding them. Whether this golden age of college ever existed is debatable (I think it did not), but it seems hopeless to try and impose it today.</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether the underlying assumption is correct: i.e., is there indeed a "pandemic" of college grads unready for the work world. The only evidence Levine cite in the article are the complaints he heard "repeatedly" from employers that he interviewed. So basically, the employers are now griping to him that they are not happy with the quality of the prospective new hirees they interview.... but could it be that the problem is that 21st century employers have unrealistic expectations? And could part of the disconnect be issues like the rising cost of college -- maybe employers are finding that they are unable to entice qualified candidate with entry-level wages, while the problem is not that the college grads have unrealistic expections, but that they are saddled with too much debt coming out of college -- yes, they'd like to take the job with the $26,000 salary, but simple math tells them that they aren't going be able to afford to pay the costs of rent and transportation, plus make payments on their student loan without more. I know that my son's employer offers student loan assistance as one job benefit -- I think they will make up to 50% of the loan payment for the student -- I wonder how many other employers offer the same? </p>
<p>Anyway - I really don't know -- but before assuming that there is a problem, I'd want to see some evidence, and I wouldn't want to rely on the viewpoint of employers without also hearing the view of the prospective employees.</p>
<p>Levine says, " Our colleges open their doors to kids who have grown up in an era that infiltrates them with unfettered pleasure, heavy layers of overprotection, and heaps of questionably justified positive feedback. As a result, childhood and adolescence may become nearly impossible acts to follow. "</p>
<p>This just doesn't ring true to my experience. I like Mel Levine. He has made a significant contribution to the study of how people learn, and specifically how the various learning styles of students contribute to their success or lack of success in school. But I find some of his statements without a lot of factual basis - it seems like a rant.
My kids work twice as hard in school as I ever did, and more is expected of them in every area. Kid's are competing for jobs and internships while in school, so I don't believe that they're so ill-equiped to face the work worl after college. In fact, I think if my son never went to college he'd do well in the workforce. I'm not sending him to college to become a more productive worker. I want him to get an education so as to become a more enlightened citizen.</p>