We will soon look back on the past few decades of education policies and values as disastrous for generations of students. A near obsessive focus on academic performance in the form of grades and test scores has left our youngest generations ill-prepared for success in today’s workplace. Overemphasis on these measures of academic achievement has come at the cost of the learning value that comes from work experience. Every school, college, parent and policymaker should focus on addressing this imbalance.
Doubts about the ability of schools and colleges to prepare students for success in the workplace are at an all-time high, and today’s 18-24-year-olds are the least working generation in U.S. history. Although there is high demand among students for internships and other work opportunities, our education-employer ecosystem is doing a horrible job delivering them. This past year, for example, out of 8.2 million college students seeking an internship, only 3.6 million landed one and only 2.5 million of those reported having quality experiences with meaningful projects and productive mentorship.
Our narrative about “jobs” and “work” hasn’t helped either. Many of the jobs available to young and inexperienced workers are entry-level roles in the retail, restaurant and service industries, and these jobs are often talked about in a demeaning way. This prevents us from seeing the incredible learning that comes from all work and any workplace. My first jobs as a cashier at a Ponderosa Steakhouse and running the manual printing press at a T-shirt screen printing company may not have had obvious learning value to them on the surface, but helpful and mentoring managers, as well as teachers who helped me reflect upon and learn from various ethical and organizational dilemmas in these workplaces, proved invaluable to my development.
We can learn from all kinds of work, and all forms of education can support and incorporate learning from work. Insights from the world’s largest study of college graduates demonstrate the impact of having a job or internship that is connected to classroom learning. Having a paid job during college had no correlation with a graduate’s success later in life or work. But graduates who strongly agreed that they had a job or internship where they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom (making both experiences much more relevant) were twice as likely to be engaged in their work and thriving in their wellbeing later in life.
Well-meaning parents – believing that grades and test scores are the sole path to success in life – have unknowingly contributed to the undervaluing of work experiences. I have frequently heard parents say to their kids that their ‘job’ is to get good grades and test scores – discouraging them from working so as not to distract them from their academic performance. This is not to suggest that grades and test scores don’t matter – but they matter much less than most parents are led to believe. The #1 factor employers look for in a recent graduate is work experience – a job or internship. And employers would rather hire a B-student with an internship over an A-student without one.
When only 26% of working U.S. adults with college experience say their education was relevant to their work and day-to-day life, we are left to ponder the massive disconnect between traditional academic instruction and what it takes to be successful in a career. Our education system simply cannot keep up with the fast-moving changes in the global workplace. And absent constant support and partnership from employers, it’s not reasonable to expect that education can remain relevant. Our now and our future depend on a symbiosis of learning and working: ‘work’ is core to learning and ‘learning’ is core to work.