I had a very interesting conversation at lunch today with a friend of mine who I now work with and went to college with that sparked an idea that I would like to share.

We had a very intriguing dialogue about how colleges do not prepare students for the real world. My friend went to college for a technical degree in information technology management. He said with his own mouth that he doesn’t remember anything from college nor does he use any of the skills he learned in college. Frankly, I don’t remember much from my classes either.

Do you feel the same way? Are you using the skills you learned in college? Do you remember what you learned? Is it applicable in your day-to-day work?

His feeling about college was they were training him to be a CIO rather than an entry-level employee. Let’s face it; new college graduates are at best entry-level employees. This statement is especially true if students do not have any experience under their belt before they graduate. One of the chapters in my book, The 7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Graduated, is titled, Real Life Work Experience Matters More than Textbooks. The basis of the chapter is to illustrate the point to students on how important it is to gain real life work experience before they graduate. At the end of the day academics are not as important as experience when looking for a job. In the technology industry, especially in smaller companies, they expect students to be able to hit the ground running with little training. So, how else are they going to be able to do this outside of have some type of experiential learning?

I think we give far too much credit to young people to know how to do the following:

• Look for a job
• Create a resume
• Write a cover letter
• Articulate what they want to do for a living
• Understand how business works; (since all they have done for the first 20 or so years of their life is sit in a classroom and study)

How can these new graduates, dare I say kids, know how to do any of this by the time they are 20 if all of their attention has been on tests, test taking, homework, and memorization?

Here is my proposal for change within four-year traditional colleges. Adopt the following experiential learning program for their college to ensure their students are workforce ready when they graduate.

Year One: Two semesters of academics
Year Two: Academics in the fall; Co-Op for the entire Spring Semester
Year Three: Academics in the fall: Co-Op for the entire Spring semester
Year Four: Co-op / Academics for the entire year

The schools should structure a co-op program so that all of their students not only get the academics they need to be successful but more importantly the experience that will allow them to apply their academics in the real world before they graduate.

The school should have a team of people who structures agreements with companies in the area who will hire X number of their students every semester so that they have a rolling group of students in their company from that school. That way the students will know and the company will know exactly what will happen and when. This will allow the company to always have projects available for the students to work on and it will allow the school to place their students in willing companies.

Nearly every student I speak to tells me the same thing.

1. They have no idea what they want to do with their career or the degree they just paid thousands of dollars for.
2. They are not sure how to leave the classroom and enter the boardroom. To them it is one big mystery. In fact many of them are plain scared.

In my opinion there are only two ways to combat this confusion
1. Old-fashioned mentoring by industry professionals or
2. Hands-on work for the students before they leave college

If anyone else has any other ideas I would love to hear them. Please email me at justindri@gmail.com