JobWorld | Students Feel Unprepared for World of Work

May 26, 2021

In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Greta Anderson cites a survey conducted by the company Cengage that shows college graduates across the nation feel unprepared for the demands of the job market. Students have the required degrees, but apparently don’t sense that they have the “job-ready skills” their employers are looking for.

The CEO of Cengage, Michael Hansen, urges higher-ed leaders to focus on skills such as people and time management. Only about half of graduates say they make use of skills learned in college classrooms.

The issue raised by this survey is important for English majors at Southern to consider. Unless majors plan to teach, it is unlikely that the direct application of, say, an assigned short story will apply on the job.

But English majors must remember what the work world is looking for—the ability to communicate and think clearly. This they will learn abundantly here at Southern in every course. The survey above indicates how students feel, not necessarily their actual situation. A college degree is fundamentally a good education, not merely job training. It is this good education that allows graduates to thrive in whatever work environment they find themselves.

The English Department at Southern Adventist University does not graduate unemployable poets! This is perhaps the stereotype, but far from the reality. The Department keeps careful track of what students do upon graduation. The record has been spotless for many years. Graduates with English majors from Southern quickly gain employment in the jobs they seek or land admission in graduate programs.

The moral of the story? When you come to Southern and major in English, you will almost certainly find satisfying and well-paid work. After that, the sky’s the limit! The Department will not allow you to leave without a sense of the vital importance in the real world of the knowledge you’ve gained.