<p>Katonahmom's post included these quotes</p>
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To succeed in a chaotic environment, graduates will need to be intellectually resilient, cross-culturally and scientifically literate, technologically adept, ethically anchored, and fully prepared for a future of continuous and cross-disciplinary learning.</p>
<p>Moreover, employers are calling with new urgency for graduates who are broadly prepared and who also possess the analytical and practical skills that are essential both for innovation and for organizational effectiveness:
Employers do not want, and have not advocated for, students prepared for narrow workforce specialties. Virtually all occupational endeavors require a working appreciation of the historical, cultural, ethical, and global environments that surround the application of skilled work.... To succeed in that kind of marketplace, U.S. firms need employees who are flexible, knowledgeable, and scientifically and mathematically literate… [The] curriculum needs to help students develop . . . leadership, teamwork, problem solving, time management, communication and analytical thinking. [Business leaders are] frustrated with their inability to find "360 degree people".
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<p>As I wrote, it's all well and good for businesses to want this type of college graduate, but there are two little difficulties. The first is that many people, including many college students, have a little bit of a difficult time attaining these rather high abilities. The second is that for the most part, college faculty, who are in the first place not necessarily trained to be top-quality teachers in general, do not know how to teach these particular skills. One of my acquaintances, a professor of industrial psychology, may have this ability, but to expect it from faculty in literature and other liberal arts, who are educated in their specialty is a bit much.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this situation can give some business leaders the chance to bemoan that current graduates of American colleges can't make their companies competitive enough in the global marketplace and use that as an excuse for various actions.</p>