Dive Brief:
- A survey by Instructure, the maker of the Canvas learning management system, asked 8,000 current and former students in 14 countries about how well their schools were preparing or had prepared them for career.
- Campus Technology reports that current students are more optimistic than former students, with 11.3% believing college would fully prepare them for the workplace, versus just 5% of former students.
- Instructure’s survey asked students to be more specific, finding overall that respondents thought their education got them two-thirds of the way to full preparedness, with those who work in their field saying they were more prepared and those outside saying they were less so.
Dive Insight:
The survey reached students in the United States, Denmark, Australia, United Kingdom, India, Singapore, South Africa, Colombia, Japan, Norway, Brazil, Sweden, Turkey and China.
Students from the United States, Brazil, and Colombia were most satisfied with their career skills across all countries, and students from Japan, Denmark, and Norway were on the opposite end of the spectrum. That’s the case even though Denmark had the second-highest proportion of graduates working in their chosen field (82.5%). Japan, on the other hand, had the lowest (29.7%). Preparing students for career has become a major focus in the United States in a competitive job market that many students have no choice but to succeed in or default on their student debt.