Should universities
find jobs for their graduates?
By RON McGOWAN
August 20, 2013
This was the “Question of
the day” CNN posed for its’ viewers on April 4, 2013. It’s a question
that is increasingly being asked, in different ways, by graduates,
their families, and the public. It’s a question we should have been
asking at least twenty years ago. If we had, we would have
significantly fewer unemployed/underemployed graduates today.
Universities have been shortchanging their graduates for years and the
main culprits are the senior bureaucrats who are in charge of our
education system and the senior administrators in charge of our post
secondary institutes.
These people have never
missed a paycheque in their lives and their own work environment
doesn’t look any different from what it did fifty years ago. They have
no affinity whatever with the challenges their graduates are facing in
trying to find meaningful employment in today’s workplace.
Here are a few examples of
how universities/colleges can help their graduates:
In 2011, Tom Friedman, the
bestselling author and New York Times columnist, was in India where he
met Prem Kalra, the director of the Indian Institute of Technology in
Rajasthan. He told Friedman that he tells recruiters for major
companies to stay away from his campus. He wants his Indian students
to think about inventing their first jobs, not applying for them.
In the U.K., the heads of
five Further Education Colleges are working with venture capitalists
and entrepreneurs to help their graduates create their own jobs.
Fintan Donohue, the head of North Hertfordshire College said:
“Everyone is in favour of entrepreneurship, but we’re saying is that
colleges like ours need to embrace an entrepreneurial culture. We need
to be producing students who embrace self-employment and who are
prepared to walk out and create their own businesses.
Bloomberg Businessweek
reported in 2012 that six U.S. undergraduate business schools require
students to attend classes that prepare them for the process of
finding work. Most significantly, these classes are embedded in the
curriculum and students must complete them, just like all their other
classes, before they can graduate.
In World War II, the U.S.
was facing a critical shortage of ships. Henry Kaiser, the famed
industrialist, said he would solve the problem by building ships in
six weeks. The experts in the shipbuilding industry said he was a
fool; that this was impossible. But he did build his Liberty Ships in
six weeks.
That’s the kind of bold,
visionary initiative we need to help today’s graduates. It won’t come
from the government or the education sector. Not from a politician.
Not from a senior bureaucrat. Not from a senior educator: but from
another Henry Kaiser.
Ron McGowan is the author of the international bestseller “How to Find
WORK – In the 21st Century”. The 2013 edition has just been released
by Thames River Press and is available from Amazon and other
booksellers.