<p>Colleges need to create a required course that would teach students how to get, and succeed at, a job.</p>
<p>Good opportunity for that in high school.
Every kid should have a paid or volunteer job by the time they are 14, or at most 16.
Not all kids go to college, and not all go immediately from high school.</p>
<p>Agree with you Emerald. I’m OK if career service centers want to have nonrequired services but plenty of kids are graduating with 7 years of work under the belt, know how to interview and put together a resume. </p>
<p>A handful of schools do prepare their students for life after college. Northeastern University is one such school:</p>
<p><a href=“Experiential Learning”>http://www.northeastern.edu/experiential-learning/</a></p>
<p>There is a required 1 credit course on how to write resumes, how to interview etc. Watch the video.</p>
<p>It does say something about the way we prepare kids for life that they have long lists of all their HS accomplishments and can seemingly sell themselves to particular colleges, but they don’t know how to tailor their resumes or interviews to particular jobs. I agree with EK that having a job in high school is a great way to begin to navigate the working world.</p>
<p>Students have a natural incentive to make full use of the college career center, where they can get information and training about how to interview, how to write a resume, etc. I don’t think the problem is that colleges don’t teach students how to get a job. The problem is that there are few high-quality entry-level jobs available, compared to historical norms. All the career classes in the world won’t help.</p>
<p>There is an assumption in much discussion about post-college unemployment that it is simply a training problem. Not so. There is no point in training students for jobs that do not exist. Go to college to learn and you will not be disappointed. Go to college with some vague cargo-cult expectation of middle-class employment afterwards, and you probably will be disappointed.</p>
<p>Of greater value, as suggested above, is having your kid volunteer and work outside of the academic setting, in order to develop an awareness of workplace norms and behavior. I do see a lot of young people, who have never had to get a job anywhere or take direction from anyone except their parents and teachers, struggle with the pavement-pounding realities of the employment search. Kids who have worked at minimum wage jobs in high school and college seem to find it easier to cope with finding work post-college.</p>
<p>Agree with NJSue. Work ethic is developed over the years and the sooner you start the better. Your children see you working and it seems so easy without realizing that if you are in your mid-forties you’ve probably had at least 20-25 of “practice” in the workforce. </p>
<p>Yet another way that kids in poor communities are screwed. In the city the McDonald’s and other minimum-wage jobs are filled by adults.</p>
<p>If you’re paying attention there’s plenty of people that teach you this in college. Mainly other students a couple years ahead of you. A course would just be useless. We had to take a 2 credit writing course, where one of the assignments was to make a resume. That was silly, as everyone already had a resume, and it was graded on these really silly criteria (I still remember because of how ridiculous it was - I lost points because I had my contact information in 9.5 pt font instead of 10 pt font). A class on how to write a resume is not useful. </p>
<p>And come on with this 83%. Yeah, I didn’t start working the day after my last final, I had 2 weeks in between. I guess I’m part of that 83% who was clueless. </p>
<p>I agree with NJ Sue. The problem has to do with the job market itself. Colleges can’t control that.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of students don’t make use of career services. </p>
<p>So we have 20-22 year olds who want to get a job, have a career services stocked with various literature about resumes, etc, have career counselors that will read your resume, etc., will even tape a mock interview with you and go over it, and students still don’t make use of it and call it ineffective? If it ends up being required in the curriculum, how will it be different than what they can get now?</p>
<p>At what point do we expect students to do something on their own–like realize they need to get a job and have the initiative to make use of this service that is available to them???</p>
<p>Im wondering if we staffed high schools with career & work counselors, like the one my D’s inner city school * used to have *, if students would be able to get jobs better than fast food when they graduated high school, or even if we would have a higher % getting vocational training or other education.</p>
<p>Correction: after my daughter graduated, the parent group apparently raffled off a car to pay for a career counselor & other academic supports.</p>
<p>I worked in high school, but unfortunately it did interfere with my studies. It was also my only EC. I didn’t graduate. My kids didn’t need to work, but they had volunteer jobs from the time they were 12/14 years old.</p>
<p>My vote: Two years of required national service. 
</p>
<p>We need to expand the Americorps programs.
Many more applicants than there is room for.</p>
<p>^^ 2 years of national service in exchange for partial student loan forgiveness. </p>
<p>The national service idea is so dumb. In countries where this is done it’s for the military almost always. The US has 0 need for a poorly trained unmotivated giant military of 18 year olds. And what else are you going to have everyone do? The same stuff you make people convicted of minor crimes do? There’s not enough work for everyone. You’d just be paying people for nothing.</p>
<p>It’s not that hard to figure out how to write a resume and interview successfully. Plenty of students manage to do this every day.with or without a class.</p>
<p>Your ignorance is showing vladenschutte.
Americorps is not military.
It s more similar to the CCC.
<a href=“AmeriCorps, today's Depression-era CCC - CNN.com”>http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/gergen.brown.americorps/</a>
Service workers rebuild trails, tutor at risk youth, and acquire skills that will enable them to succeed in college/in the workforce.</p>
<p>And Americorp and Teach America are great options for kids that have no jobs on their resume or simply don’t know how to find a job. They both seem to attract highly educated kids from what I read. They also serve as great post college experience for kids interested in service careers. I suppose the programs could be expanded if there was a compelling reason</p>
<p>Vladenschlutte, are you kidding? Remember the WPA? There is a ton of infrastructure work in this country that needs to be done. No shortage of public service work. Wouldn’t it be great if every classroom teacher in a low-achieving school had the opportunity for an aide? Not just someone dropped in without training but someone who was trained to really help by giving students individual help or managing the classroom while the teacher did so? And that’s just off the top of my head.</p>
<p>My college career center was the best even though the school is not top tier anything. But it was/is known for engineering.</p>