How Educators Are Failing America

An estimated 2.8 million newly-minted college graduates have a framed certificate but little else. Universities are churning out students who are woefully unprepared for today's job market.  The situation has created a crisis that threatens to undermine the nation's economic growth.

A number of surveys, including a recent one by the Gallup polling organization, underscore the disconnect between the skills required by today's businesses and the academic preparation offered by most of the nation's 4,700 community colleges and four-year universities

In the Gallup study, only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agreed that graduates had the necessary skills and competencies to succeed in the workplace.  Employers are not interested in theoretical learning. They want proof of a graduate's ability to execute required skills.

In today's workplace, computers and robots have replaced the mundane tasks once performed by low and mid-level employees.  Jobs today require critical thinking, problem-solving, the ability to work in teams, and technological competency.   These skills are seriously lacking in many graduates.

This is not a new phenomenon.  For decades, businesses have been trying to convince academia to change course.  But colleges may be the most stubborn, hide-bound of all institutions.  Rapid change undermines their propensity for incremental advances.

For example, a survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed with Gallup showed 96 percent of academic officers thought their schools were doing a good job of preparing students for the future.  These leaders obviously are not spending much time asking business people about their job requirements.

Frankly, they don't care.  Their mushy academic goal is molding young minds.  Businesses and the economy have very specific requirements. Virtually every job at American business firms, large and small, is changing at the fastest rate ever.  Colleges are not keeping up with the pace of innovation.

Technology is creating new jobs, but destroying old ones along the way. Jobs for administrative assistants and secretaries are nearly extinct. Data entry clerks are dinosaurs. IT positions, once the golden goose, are being automated and outsourced.  Even agricultural work is computer-driven.

As the economy undergoes titanic shifts, companies require workers who are life-long learners equipped to deal with ambiguity and nonstop change.  Unfortunately, one of the downsides created by this economic metamorphosis is a shrinkage in businesses' investment in human capital.  

Consider in 1979 General Motors, then the world's largest car company, had a payroll of 853,000 people. Today four of the world's high-tech behemoths, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Goggle, employ fewer than 150,000 workers combined.  And these firms are all recruiting talent outside the U.S.

Colleges are cheating today's generation by not recognizing the need for more grads with mathematics, statistics, engineering and computer science training.  They are not producing graduates
armed with interpersonal characteristics, problem-solving skills or oral communications talent.

Instead, universities are rushing to add courses in Gender Inquiry, Diversity Training and African-American Studies.   Meanwhile, students are paying more and getting less relevant educations. Students and graduates have racked up $1.2 trillion in debt underwritten by American taxpayers.

Debt-ridden graduates face an appalling future.  Recent data published by Forbes shows that 44 percent of colleges grads in their 20's are stuck in low-wage, dead-end jobs.  The number of young people earning less than $25,000 a year has risen to the highest level since the 1990's.

America needs a world class workforce to remain the global economic leader.  College and university presidents need to climb off their academic high horses and begin preparing the next generation of workers with marketable skills instead of dishing out theoretical nonsense.

Without discernible change in academia, American businesses will lose their premier position in the competitive world because of the lack of skilled workers.  If that happens, this nation's colleges and universities will deserve more than a failing grade. They will cease to be relevant institutions.