Friday, March 16, 2018

Preparing students for work requires revised approach to education - Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive

P.K. Agarwal, regional dean and CEO of Northeastern University–Silicon Valley said there will be a shortage of one million STEM workers in the next five years. So the challenge, he said, is taking people with bachelor’s degrees and re-skilling them to fill those gaps. At Northeastern, the approach is to not just equip students with additional credentials, but to provide six months of paid workforce experience through a co-op program to help ensure graduates are ready to hit the ground running once they’re hired. He identified three key things students should leave college having. “You need high-quality experiential learning, that’s one leg of the stool. The second part is that you need a network, … and third is that we also are very passionate about the fact that soft skills are very critical,” Agarwal said. https://www.educationdive.com/news/preparing-students-for-work-requires-revised-approach-to-education/517738/