College » Carol J. Carter

Study Finds College Students Not Preparing for Career After Graduation

A new study finds that college students are not aggressively preparing for their careers while in college, and that their lack of career efforts may be seriously hurting their future job prospects, according to The Student Career Development Study.

The study also found that the majority of college students (95%) have a Facebook account, while only 34% of students have a LinkedIn account. College students see the value of having an internship — with over half of students having over three internships in college — Â while 93 percent do not have an understanding of personal branding.

Is it the fault of the student that they are not actively pursuing their career while juggling deadlines for their history exam, their English paper, and their internship? Is it the fault of the university that the English teacher doesn’t make a connection between critical reading skills and the real world, the adviser doesn’t advise beyond the pinnacle goal of graduation day, or the business professor teaches theories without obvious ties to how they will help the student move from graduate to employed professional? Or, with the majority of students getting mentored on a profession by their parents (37 %), maybe it’s the parent’s fault?

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Math Affects Investments in College and Leads to Graduation

A discouraging fact is that many low-income U.S. students today lack the opportunity to study higher level mathematics in high school. According to the U.S. Department of Educationâ€™s Office for Civil Rights Data, there are close to 3,000 high schools serving nearly 500,000 students that fail to offer Algebra II or higher level math.Â For these students, performance on college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT that include higher level algebra questions is negatively affected.

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Looking Back: How Have Students’ Reading Competencies Changed Over Time

When you visualize the 21^st century classroom, what do you see? A smartboard on the front wall, iPads in every studentâ€™s hands, individualized learning programs on the computer, setting the pace of a lesson while a teacher stands by for questionsâ€¦

Some classrooms have moved into the digital age, however, the 21^st century classroom is more commonly described as overcrowded and underfunded. The student demographic is diverse with disabled, gifted, English language, impoverished, and enriched learners. Teachers are faced with having to teach to all levels of the classroom, and due to lack of time, resources, and bandwidth, they teach to the students in the middle; often leaving those who are falling behind behind and those who are gifted unchallenged.

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released the report â€œA Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reformâ€ inspired by â€œa rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.â€[i] This report, though controversial, did bring to light educational issues we are still fighting today.

The following are some noteworthy statistics from the 1983 report:

Â· Functional illiteracy among minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.
Â· The number and proportion of students demonstrating superior achievement on the SATs have dramatically declined.
Â· Many 17-year-olds do not possess the â€œhigher orderâ€ intellectual skills we should expect from them.
Â· There was a steady decline in science achievement scores of the U.S. 17-year-olds as measured by national assessments of science in 1969, 1973, and 1977.
Â· Between 1975 and 1980, remedial mathematics courses in public 4-year colleges increased by 72 percent.
Â· Too many teachers are being drawn from the bottom quarter of graduating high school and college students.

Sound familiar? Three decades later, minorities are trending toward becoming the majority, while the achievement gap continues to grow; college students are graduating with weak critical thinking skills; studentsâ€™ competency in STEM subjects arenâ€™t keeping up with the amount of job openings in STEM fields; and teachers are now said to come from the bottom one-third of their class.[ii]

[i] â€œA Nation at Riskâ€ By The National Commission on Excellence in Education

[ii] â€œAchievement Gapâ€ http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/achievement-gap/

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21st Century Writing: More Does Not Always Mean Better

The ability to write well is meant to evolve naturally from a few simple sentences on a first-graderâ€™s notebook to the polished draft of a senior paper, and when it does the entire school experience tends to proceed naturally as well. In the workforce, good writing is the hallmark of a professional that can express himself clearly and display oneâ€™s company/product in an attractive way. This has only become more true in todayâ€™s world, where email, text messaging, and social media have taken over many of the communications that used to be performed by phone or in person.

In fact, the changing role of writing in the world today has many teachers wondering how they should adapt their teaching to make it more relevant to todayâ€™s writing needs, personally and professionally. Susan Lucille Davis, a writing teacher with over 30 years of experience, expresses this question in her blog, â€œTeaching Authentic Writing in a Socially Mediated World,â€ but admits that she herself doesnâ€™t have the whole answer. She and many of her colleagues agree, however, that the answer would need to address and prove relevant towards improving writing in the following categories:
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The Power of Literacy: Preventing Poverty, Dropouts, Crime

Did you know:

60% of America’s prison inmates are functionally illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.
Approximately 50% of the nation’s unemployed youth age 16-21 are functionally illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.

55% of adults with below basic reading comprehension did not graduate high school.1

By 2020, it’s predicted that:

Â 75% of jobs will require some form of higher education.2

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Report Compares US School Districts with High-Achieving Countries

When we talk about improving student achievement in America, the conversation is usually about improving learning conditions for low-income students. While it’s valid that many low-income students do not receive the same education opportunities as their affluent peers, a new report by the Bush Institute finds that all American students are at risk when weighed against other developed countries.

The Bush Institute’s interactive map allows you to drill down to your state, county, and district to see your district’s scores and compare them to high-achieving countries. What’s unique about this interactive map is that it doesn’t just show that other countries have higher achievement rates, it adjusts your district’s reading and math score as if your district was “dropped into” one of the high achieving countries. For example, students in Denver Public Schools are in the 46th percentile in math and the 74th percentile in reading. However, if these students were dropped into Finland, they would be in the 32nd percentile in math and the 63rd percentile in reading.

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Your College Degree Timing: Should you Detour from the Pipeline?

This year, student debt climbed higher than credit card debt in the U.S. Though the recession has encouraged more people to pursue higher education, it doesn’t mean that we have more graduates. The Obama administration, along with the Gates and the Lumina Foundation, reacted to the low college graduation rates by vowing to make America the number one country for college graduates, according to Jeff Selingo in his article “On Students’ Paths to College, Some Detours Are Desirable.”
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How Might Students Benefit from Teachers and Professors Who Are Leaders from the Business World?

The education paradigm must shift in order for 21st century learners to graduate, land jobs, and create jobsÂ in the future. Currently, we have many unemployed graduates who arenâ€™t being hired to fill many jobs which do exist, especially in the â€œstart-upâ€ economy.Â Â There is a disconnect between what the world of work requires and what students do in their sixteen plus years of learning. It is crucial to our economic success that students begin to connect what they are learning in class to what they might do in the short and the long term in the world of work.
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Improved Literacy Skills Can Change Our Economic Future

Reading has been the sine qua non of culture and civilization for thousands of years. The spread of literacy from the upper echelons of society to the middle and lower classes is perhaps one of the most defining characteristics of modernism. According to the United Nations, the presence of illiteracy in the world today among less-developed nations has been connected to continuing cycles of poverty, poor health, and deprivation, and makes democracy in these nations difficult or nearly impossible to achieve ¹. So, the fact that reading scores for American high school graduates are the lowest they’ve been in 40 years should cause worry.
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Application Essay: How to Present Your Best Self

There are many things you can do to help ensure that your college application gives you the best chance at admission to your dream college. Making sure it’s on time, making sure you don’t have any embarrassing photos posted on your Facebook (about a quarter of all college admissions officers check your Facebook profile while considering your application), and watching out for spelling errors and other mistakes are all essential (see Emily Driscoll’s “Get Your College Apps in Order Now” for more tips and general advice). Your biggest opportunity to stand out, however, where you can really show who you are and why you’re applying, is through your application essay.

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