The jury is in, and for most American companies, there is a continued skepticism that college graduates are ready for the workplace. A review of several surveys found that an average of 60% of employers felt our graduates lacked the skills needed for the workplace. This “skills gap” has often been seen as a problem in the United States, but recently our Executive Director, Dr. Michael Preston, traveled to Singapore and found out this gap extends all over the globe. Dr. Preston recently served as a panelist and keynote speaker at Singapore Management University’s Co-Curricular Transcript launch.
His involvement included conducting a workshop for faculty and staff and serving on a panel of experts on skill development that included: Singapore Education Minister Mr. Chan Chun Sing, SMU Chairman Mr. Piyush Gupta, Dr. Michael Preston, and Ms. Melissa Aratani Kwee, Chief Catalyst, National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre. For over two years, the staff at SMU has been working on this program to help students make sense of the co-curricular experiences and connect them to the skills desired by employers. Beginning in 2025, students will receive a companion transcript to their academic transcript to help them communicate skill proficiency to employers.
Dr. Preston has authored and co-authored several articles, along with his longtime research partner Dr. Adam Peck, on employability skills and co-curricular experiences and is often asked to speak about these experiences and how they can help students enhance their skills. SMU President Lily Kong outlined the value of these documents when she commented: “We align learning objectives from the various co-curricular platforms to these Graduate Learning Outcomes and promote a culture of meaningful reflection to guide students in deepening and documenting their learning. In so doing, we empower students to enhance self-awareness and articulate areas of personal growth.”
The university members of the Florida Consortium have been supporting skill development through co-curricular engagement for many years now. Our offices of student involvement include access to programs such as KnightQuest at UCF (https://osi.ucf.edu/agencies/kort/knightquest/), involvement consultations at USF (https://www.usf.edu/student-affairs/involvement/get-involved/involvement-consultants.aspx), and Skills Badging at FIU (https://microcred.fiu.edu/micro-credentials-catalog/index.html) in all cases our member universities help students make sense of their outside the classroom experiences and align, though the assessment, skill proficiency. SMU hopes to do this and more by validating these skills in an official transcript. “I believe once we start to recognize the power of these co-curricular experiences as important though cataloging and verification are, I believe we will struggle to show college students are ready for the workplace,” said Dr. Preston. He continued, “but I am proud to assist SMU on this project and believe they are leading the way in skills verification, and all we need to do is modify for our system here in the United States’.”
This presentation and trip to Singapore is the start of a new series of projects the Florida Consortium and ED Preston are embarking on to highlight employability and career readiness among our Consortium members. Using the Taskforce on Workforce recommendations from the Florida Board of Governors, the Florida Consortium is poised to prioritize workforce and career success in the coming year. “We know our students are ready for the workplace now we need to highlight all the great careers our students embark on and ensure that all students find their place in the workforce.” Dr. Preston added during the event. “After all, we know engaged students make engaged employees, and we want to prove just that.”
