Many colleges are
beginning to make career development a core aspect of the college experience,
and US Daily Journal intends to aid in this by promoting USDJ Youth
Entrepreneurs Workshops.
In the coming
months, US Daily Journal will roll out a plan for sponsoring a number of
local USDJ Youth Entrepreneur conferences to help college students and young
people develop entrepreneurial and business skills so critical in the 21st
Century workforce.
The programs that
colleges, meanwhile, are offering include everything from ramped-up career
services to academic programs emphasizing real-world applications and efforts
to engage faculty in practical mentoring.
At Wake Forest
University, for example, students can hedge their bets, majoring in history and
balancing out Napoleon or the Prussians with a minor in.
Innovation,
Creativity and Entrepreneurship is a five-year-old program at Wake Forest
University and it is the school's most popular minor. It requires students to
learn the basics of starting a new business.
It and programs
like it at other liberal-arts colleges are new, and a sign that colleges are
wrestling what it takes to ready students for a tight and rapidly shifting job
market.
Job preparation
and training should be part of a liberal-arts education, but some traditional
educators are uncomfortable with such real-world training.
Liberal-arts
schools and the tenured professors who run them have are largely insulated from such issues. They say the benefits
of a broad liberal-arts education that covers everything from art and
literature to philosophy and sociology are as valuable as more market-oriented
courses. Of course, those very teachers and professors don’t have to compete in
the private sector – academia is very removed from the real world.
But with tuition
increases far outpacing inflation and graduates entering a bad job market with
record debt, students and parents are demanding a clearer—and quicker—return on
their investment.
Some schools are
warming to the idea of working directly with employers in the classroom,
something already common on the community-college campus. And smarter colleges
are helping students get a head start on such planning. Students begin planning
internships and research opportunities from their first year at the school.
Some point to a
risk in developing courses based on business trends or software languages. And
even proponents of applied-knowledge initiatives are wary of going too far.