Dive Brief:
- McGraw-Hill Education released findings from its online Workforce Readiness Survey of college students, finding only 40% of seniors feel their college experience helped prepare them for a career.
- According to eCampus News, just 24% of male students and 19% of women feel “very prepared” for their careers, and arts and humanities students are more than three times as likely to say they don’t feel prepared for a career at all.
- Since McGraw-Hill’s first survey in 2014, more students say it is “extremely important” to plan for a rewarding career while they are in college, and 61% say they chose their major based on job prospects, up from 48% two years ago.
Dive Insight:
Preparing students for careers has become a more serious focus of both high schools and colleges. Updated standards and assessments in K-12 schools aim to get a better sense of whether students are mastering the concepts they need to succeed in work as well as higher education.
Going into college, female students seem poised to be more prepared than male students. They take AP exams in higher numbers, overall, yet males continue to take advanced STEM classes in higher numbers. In the Workforce Readiness Survey, students in STEM fields were much more likely to feel prepared for career. That could explain a portion of the gender disparity. It could also be affected by women not feeling as confident in their own skills. Research has found women do not apply for jobs as often as men if their skillsets don’t match exactly what is being sought and they are less likely to advocate for themselves when it comes to raises and promotions.