How the Student Readiness Gap Is Impacting Colleges and Employers

0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, we examine ways the student readiness crisis is affecting every level of the US education system and is even beginning to bleed into the workforce. Employers report that workers fresh out of college are struggling to adapt to professional norms such as meeting deadlines and working in multi-generational settings. Our experts discuss how employers and colleges can gain better alignment in terms of equipping students with the hard and soft skills they need to launch and sustain successful careers. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

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0:00:54.7 Carla Hickman: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Carla Hickman. I lead the research division for EAB’s Strategic Advisory Services. We have a really talented and deep bench of researchers who partner with educational institutions to examine and find solutions to some of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing our K through 12 and higher ed systems. And one of the greatest challenges that our partners face today is the fact that more students at almost every age are performing below grade level expectations. Now, there are many reasons for these growing readiness gaps, and we’re gonna talk about a few of them today. But here’s what I need you to know upfront. About half of public school students in the United States are performing below grade level in at least one academic subject.

0:01:45.3 CH: Math and reading or literacy scores have been in decline, not just since the pandemic, since 2012. They were worsened during the pandemic. Students arriving on college campuses today are on balance, much less prepared academically and in terms of their mental and emotional health than students of earlier generations. Now, colleges and universities have been struggling to adapt to this reality, and employers too are beginning to feel the impact of these changes. Now, with me today to discuss this very important topic is Seramount President Subha Barry. So Subha, welcome to the program.

0:02:23.2 Subha Barry: But thank you so much for including me, Carla. I was listening to what you were saying, and I think about it and say to myself, students that are in our schools and universities are tomorrow’s talent. They’re gonna be in seats at our employers. And when you look at this present moment in time, this is when the two constituencies, the universities and schools and the employers really need to speak to each other, compare notes, and start to build some muscle strength and muscle memory that these students are going to need to be successful in their careers.

0:03:01.6 CH: Could not agree more. That’s why I’m so excited for this conversation today. Before we dive into that topic though, Subha, can you share with our listeners a little bit more about Seramount?

0:03:12.8 SB: Well, at Seramount, we are committed to building inclusive workplaces. We are the expert partner to about 600 organizations. We are equipped with a strategic set of comprehensive capabilities to address talent and DEI needs, and that’s diversity, equity, and inclusion. We use research, assessment strategy, learning, team development, recruitment, events and conferences to deliver the results that bring about measurable impact. Our research strategies and tools draw from over 40 years of best practices across thousands of organizations that span dozens of industries from directly listening to the voices of employees and those organizations.

0:04:05.0 CH: Now, Subha, it would not surprise you at all that I spend a great part of my day with college university and K-12 leaders talking about student readiness gaps, but I know that you are constantly talking to those 600 organizations and many others. How does the student readiness gap conversation come up in the employer conversations? How is it starting to spill over into the workforce already?

0:04:29.5 SB: Before I respond to that question, I really wanna tell you something about what skills employers are looking for. It used to be that what we used to call soft skills earlier, they are now the essential skills. You can call them hard, you can call them soft, but essentially you need them to be successful in your careers. Some skill gaps that employers are beginning to notice early on. And remember, these are very core skills that are developed during the years that a student is growing through their school and college years. I used to call them the 3Rs. They are as crucial today as they were 59 years ago when I started kindergarten. So things like how do you look at problems, problem comprehension? How do you be analytical about solving those issues and problems?

0:05:24.3 SB: How do you learn to write effectively and how do you learn to communicate that verbally? Do you know how to listen effectively? Are you well organized? Do you know how to prioritize? What kind of judgment do you use in making decisions? And then how do you deal with pushback and failure and rejection, very much part of life? And what kind of resilience do you show to bounce back? Now, it used to be that many of those things were considered, “soft skills”. But guess what? They are essential skills to be able to succeed in the workplace now.

0:06:04.1 CH: I’m actually really heartened certainly on behalf of education institutions to hear that employers are describing it that way. I do think it’s a mix of the essential competencies as well as the technical know-how, and often the technical know-how, you can learn on the job. It’s more of how do you work with others, how do you confront failure? How do you sort through lots and lots of information and understand what’s fact from fiction? So I guess there’s a part of me that is heartened that employers value those skills. Although clearly we have work to do to ensure that early career talent are graduating with what they need. I guess in some respects, you could say the ripple effects of these student readiness gaps, they’re felt in the classroom, they’re felt in the lecture hall, they’ve made their way into the workplace as well.

0:06:53.0 CH: I think what’s also challenging, at least from my vantage as a researcher, is there is no silver bullet solution here. So at EAB, we are undertaking a comprehensive research effort. We want to examine the ways that institutions are gonna be asked to rise to the challenge. They could be elementary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, all of the other public sector and private sector organizations. For us, we think that it’s not just about success in college. It’s gonna be success in career, success in life, and that it’s going to require working across all sectors. It’s gonna be about academic readiness gaps but it’s also going to be about socio-emotional, financial, career preparedness. All of which I think have been exacerbated by the disruptions of the pandemic. So I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, we have a big kickoff event here in just a few weeks in Washington, DC.

0:07:45.9 CH: We have leaders from universities all across the country who are gonna be gathered in our office. They are all committed to closing student readiness gaps on their own campus. And what I like about an EAB meeting is they’re also humble enough to admit not any one of those campuses has all the answers. So they really want to have a robust dialogue and discussion, what’s working, what’s not. I think that we all know there’s a little bit of a moral imperative here. We wanna do right by the students that we admit and enroll. But there’s also enrollment and demographic realities facing universities. There’s a real financial imperative to reach out to students. Subha, we often call them the college opt-outs or the non-consumers. We have a growing number of students completing high school in the United States who are just saying, college is not showing value.

0:08:36.6 CH: I am going to go a different direction. Now, your partners, employers in the workforce might say, well, they’re coming to me. I think what’s scary in the statistics is they aren’t all going to the employers either. I think some of them are just in a sort of period of searching for what their next step should be. But we do know that that cost equation, that value question, that preparedness question is top of mind. We saw that actually EAB had a survey recently. We wanted to understand the biggest concerns, not for the prospective students, but actually for their parents. So we had surveyed the parents of current high school students. No one listening will be surprised that their number one concern was just cost. But number two on that survey was, is the investment the university or college is asking me to make, is it gonna pay off?

0:09:26.7 CH: Is my child going to get what they need to actually launch and sustain a successful career after graduation? It’s the skills that you just mentioned, not only the interview, but actually all of the skills that they’re gonna need as well. So we often say that’s return on investment, that’s return on education. I think really it’s just about, we have this changing relationship between our prospective students, our institutions, our employers, on what is it that we’re all really driving toward here, and are we using a common language and a common understanding in order to communicate it.

0:10:04.9 CH: So on my side, worried that students are showing up on college campus, if we can get them there, not fully prepared for the rigors of college. You started to talk about the fact that they’re then entering the workplace not fully prepared to thrive or be productive. I wonder if you could give us a little bit more about what are the things that employers are sharing or that they need when they’re thinking about these entry level cohorts? What’s different? What are they finding with either recruiting them or making sure they’re productive in seat?

0:10:37.6 SB: Before I answer that question, Carla, I actually wanna go back to what is happening with this sort of broad sense that we can do without college and get trained for a job, and we can go in into the workplace. And what I will tell you, students are finding, or entry level employees are finding is sooner than later, they have to go back to get that added education, to get the added expertise that comes out of actually going to an academic institution and really credentialing themselves and learning the specifics of what it’s gonna take for them to have an impactful, successful career. So I think that that is going, when we look back, this whole push towards is college really needed? I think that, that we would’ve been making a mistake by stepping off of that.

0:11:30.3 CH: I always love, it’s funny to me, people always talk about, well, if you only went to a pre-professional program or something that was very technical and specialized, but the students that go to MBA programs, by and large, are still engineers. Because they have these very technical backgrounds and incredible skill sets, and then they’re asked to manage for the first time. Or it’s the individual who was the bench scientist in an R&D lab who for the first time has to manage a P&L. And so it’s always the both hand. These aren’t mutually exclusive conversations. I really appreciate that point.

0:12:08.1 SB: And I think that that is something we should double click on. We should emphasize that. And very often I look back of what I took away from my MBA. Yeah, I was a math and accounting major. So the MBA really taught me about communication. I still use the lessons learned from teamwork and collaboration and innovating and building on ideas of others and things like that, that I learned in business school that I used till today. And so was it really about learning to read an annual report or a profit and loss statement? Not as much as it was about knowing and understanding and working with people. So with that, here are some of the top line difficulties that early career recruiting talent departments face. Firstly, with the rollback of affirmative action policies, accessing early career talent has become more challenging.

0:13:12.1 SB: No longer can corporations just walk into elite schools and expect them to provide a ready portfolio of candidates who reflect the changing demographics of our country. In fact, you can’t walk into any campus and ready made expect you to get a portfolio that has been screened for you. They are having to work harder. They have to dig deeper. They have to cast a wider net to access a broad set of qualified talent who reflect truly the diversity of our country. Meanwhile, you think about what’s happening to talent teams, tightening budgets, less people having to cover more universities, more ground. So this whole notion of having to do more with less, having things that were feeder pools being taken away from you.

0:14:02.4 SB: So I would tell you that if you were happy being one of those recruiters that looked at the leadership of your organization and figured out where they went to university and asked them to refer you to those universities and pick off a few students from there, if that’s your strategy, then perhaps you’re not that impacted. But anybody else who really wants to recruit a workforce that is a reflection of this country and its demographics is having a hard time.

0:14:34.8 CH: Actually, there was new data just released today. I think we knew what was going to happen with the incoming classes, post affirmative actions, godes decision, but unfortunately for many it has. And so we’re gonna play that story forward. And to your point, we’re gonna need to think about all of the many sources of talent across the country. And that’s gonna be a ground game. It’s gonna be harder. I’m wondering a little bit it’s hard to have any conversation about talent and skills these days without touching at least a bit on the future of work and how that’s impacted by technology and AI. I imagine that’s also impacting early career. We’ve heard some people say that the first rung on the ladder might disappear in certain areas, particularly if employers have been struggling to get great early career talent in seat. Maybe we just automate those positions away. Is that a real risk that you see?

0:15:29.5 SB: Well, yes and no. Technology is evolving rapidly, entry level roles are being automated by leveraging generative AI. And sometimes these roles are being outsourced. But the added rub there, in my opinion, is this whole challenge with a group of people making decisions around it who are not as expert in the technology space, around understanding what generative AI is. So what that brings me to is this notion of having multiple generations in the workforce and the friction that comes up from trying to play in a space where they may not have the level of expertise they need. And they have other true and trusted ways and methods that they have employed that no longer work as effectively anymore. So when you think about what younger workers want, just imagine and think about how they act and behave.

0:16:35.3 SB: We have five generations in the workplace. Each is coming with their own set of values, their work ethic, approaches to work, attitude towards work-life balance. If I’ve heard it said once, I’ve heard it said a thousand times, your generation, you actually live to work. We work to live. And there are times when I’m humbled when I hear that because I think sometimes I wonder if they have it right. And perhaps I didn’t have it so right. But it’s about how they think about giving and receiving feedback, how they think about compensation and career advancement expectations.

0:17:18.7 SB: So if you overlay on top of that remote work, the gig work with side hustles during work hours, and that is happening whether you like it or not, you have to have a way, if you are busy figuring out how long somebody’s on their computer, they’re smart enough to figure out how to have somebody that comes in and moves their keyboard every… Hits a key or two every once in a while so you think they’re still there while they’re not, they’re driving an Uber or doing something else on the side.

0:17:50.3 SB: And then take the notion of what the pandemic did in terms of stress, mental health issues, that’s more prevalent in these younger generations than they were before, but also needing to acknowledge that they’re more vulnerable, more open about it. So it’s a true clash between generations in the workplace in a way that we need to have a better understanding of the gifts, the superpowers and skills that each brings to the table. Because ultimately, we work better when we work together.

0:18:24.0 CH: It reminds me, Subha, we did interesting research on the millennial workforce a few years ago. Now, of course, we’re talking about Gen Z too, but they tend to stay in positions for shorter periods of time. So if during onboarding you’re emphasizing your phenomenal retirement and pension plan, that might not be the thing that they’re excited by. I think the status that millennial and Gen Z workers will stay in a role about three years before they’re seeking their next opportunity, that could be in your company, if you’re lucky, it could be elsewhere.

0:18:56.2 CH: What’s challenging about that is that managers will tell you it takes about three years before you’re good at your job. So just the second you get good, you’re looking for something else. So we actually have been consulting with higher ed and their own talent issues and reminding them too, they need to think about what matters to different audiences if you really want someone to see themselves as a valued employee who wants to stick around.

0:19:19.9 SB: What’s interesting here is that employers have typically come from the place where they believe, hey, I’m paying you. If I pay you well enough, you adapt to what it is that we want you to do. And realizing and recognizing with this generation of employees is they are not willing to adapt quite the same way. So you have a generation of baby boomer bosses at the most senior levels in organizations and they very quickly forget that they raised the millennials and Gen Z and pandered to their every wish and demand. I am at fault as much as the rest. Imagine asking them, what would you like for dinner tonight? Where do you wanna go on vacation? On and on and on about everything. I didn’t grow up having my mom or my grandmother asked me, what would you like for dinner?

0:20:15.9 SB: Whatever was made was put in front of you and you better ate it. And every once in a while you’d get your favorite dish. The rest of the time you just ate. So this notion of knowing that these are the very young people that are stepping into your workplaces and they expect more than just, I’m gonna give you an onboarding here and let’s get started and do the work. They really wanna learn more about organizational culture expectations. They need to be brought along on this very much along the same way in which you consulted with your kids at home. There’s got to be a give and take and I think we are finally coming around to waking up and recognizing that this is a different generation and what worked for us does not work for them.

0:21:09.7 SB: So the other thing I always think about is, think about television, social media, video games, all the ways in which we delivered bite-sized pieces of information to them to consume. And what has really resulted from that is a real diminishing attention span. And when that comes into the workforce, it’s almost like you feel you wanna medicate every one of them with ADDA, ADHD medication in order to get them to focus on completing the project or the job. So I really think it’s an issue that we need to start to think about really seriously because in the long run, unless we work with them, we’re gonna have to work around them. So I constantly think about ways in which employers can think about what they need out of it. They need tasks completed, work’s done, people working well on teams and doing their part in it.

0:22:15.9 SB: Because if one part of the team doesn’t do their job, guess what happens to the rest of it? The job… Either somebody else has to pick up the slack, which nobody really wants to be doing their work and someone else’s. So I think that especially and I think about where I started my career in banking, they believe that if they paid you enough, there will always be somebody to do the job. And that is not happening, with this generation having either parents to fall back on, and even socioeconomically disadvantaged families offer their kids a basement or a couch where the kids can come crash at. So they walk away from jobs in a way that I know in my generation I never would have. Another challenge that employers are grappling with. And the other part I always think about is this whole power dynamics that happens between when students are in college, they behave like they are the bosses.

0:23:17.0 SB: They demand, they command, somebody either the student themselves or their families or the government or somebody is paying the tuition bill. In workplaces, guess what? The employer is the one that’s paying you. And that creates a different power dynamic. Which is why when they all worried about, oh my God, think about what’s happening on college campuses with all these protests happening, is that gonna spill over into the workplace? That was tolerated for about a nano moment. And then they very quickly knew, Hey, these are our rules and our boundaries and our frameworks, and if you can function within it, great, otherwise there’s the door. And very quickly, when you need that paycheck, you decide on how important it is to stand up and protest something.

0:24:05.5 SB: So I think that it’s, I believe that administration, faculty and colleges and universities and higher ed institutions have made the mistakes of pandering very often to the kids, very much like their families did. And workplaces are going to yield a very different result with that same kind of behavior. You’re either going to be rated poorly and you’re gonna get fired. That’s what ends up happening with it.

0:24:35.4 CH: I think it goes back to some of those essential skills you talked about in the beginning, Subha, with the need for resilience. The attention span, I would add, we have a number of faculty members who are probably applauding somewhere listening to what you just said. ‘Cause they also want the students to just do the work as assigned. But it’s also about way finding, help seeking behavior. It’s all of these things that are so far beyond the content of the curriculum that you hope the experience of being in higher education helps those. We talked about it as a maturation. It’s an important moment of development where you move from childhood to adulthood. And I think what I’m hearing is that we need to think about how to create that space as well so that students arrive in the workplace more able to deliver the work that needs to be done and realize it’s not always them centered in what that company is trying to accomplish.

0:25:26.8 SB: See, what is happening is with less tolerance for delays and excuses or why something couldn’t get completed. The burden to adjust and adapt falls really on that employee not on the employer. That there’s gonna be some willingness to support requests for flexible work, for support on mental health issues and wellbeing. But employers really want the work done. So the same sort of excuses that may have worked in school where you said, my dog ate the homework, or I stayed out too late last night with friends and need an extension on delivering this paper or the equivalence just simply will not succeed.

0:26:13.1 SB: On the other hand, if we have students understand and appreciate that I’m gonna enter the workforce with some distinct advantages, some skills and that I can also be a teacher while I’m learning. This notion of being reverse mentored on both ways is so powerful. I think about there’s such opportunity for respectful and mutually beneficial interactions that I think that senior leaders and junior talent can really work together to create a huge win. Think for example, junior employees. In fact, I saw this firsthand in some of the companies I worked at. You have reverse mentoring programs where junior employees, entry level talent is mentoring senior talent on technology, social media, gender and sexual orientation. Some things as simple as the correct use of pronouns, for example.

0:27:13.4 SB: And they have been documented success plans and measures and senior leaders can help mentor junior staff to build business acumen, to problem solve, to think strategically. All of those things have been great ways to have gives and takes where they come together, not with a power imbalance, but rather a give and take in terms of what each can do for the other.

0:27:38.1 CH: I so appreciate that point. I just wanna underscore that that give and take should be happening on university and college campuses as well. So we will often tell universities to recruit the opt-outs, to convince a skeptical student that you’re worth it, that they should come to higher education is not simply telling your story better. It is not the same product and the same experience and just being more persuasive. It may be that we need to listen differently to where these students are getting stuck or what they’re not finding satisfactory. So when you’re talking about reverse mentoring, I keep thinking about how could universities listen differently to their prospective students and families about maybe it’s changing the curriculum, maybe it’s changing some of the experiences in the classroom. Maybe if we brought more real world application into the early first and second year curriculum and got students really excited about how the skills they were learning were preparing them for multiple career paths that would be more engaging. Not to say that I didn’t love my gen ed first year coursework, I did, but I think there’s a give and take here. Is it just about Gen Z always adapting to either what the workforce or the universities have always done?

0:28:54.1 CH: I wanna ask a very direct question, Subha, what do you wish sort of speaking on behalf of the partners at Seramount, the many companies that you work with, the places you’ve worked, what do you wish colleges understood about employers? What do those employers want those universities to focus on in terms of preparing students to be ready? We often hear the critique. We are not graduating students that are day one job ready. What do the employers wish colleges would hear?

0:29:27.8 SB: So I would say to you, we started off with talking about the hard skills, soft skills, life skills that are so important really in workplaces, but for life. We wish they would learn more of that in their colleges and in their homes as they are growing up. And I’m not talking about problem comprehension or analytical problem solving or effective communications. But listening, organization, knowing how to prioritize, having judgment around decision making. Learning that failure doesn’t mean you still get a reward at the end of so something. So failure means actually failing and accepting the rejection and being introspective about what it is that you need to learn and do better at. And resilience to bounce back from failure. So I hope that and I wish that colleges and parents wouldn’t roll over and pander to the every request they get.

0:30:44.7 SB: Let them toughen up a bit. Build that discipline and work ethic muscle. Teach them the importance of building self-awareness. Have you ever thought about getting them to look into themselves and not just build up their ego, but rather have them acknowledge, I may be an eight or nine at something, but boy, I’m only a one or two or three at something, and how do I make sure that that doesn’t derail me? How do I take tough feedback without really getting it to get under my skin in a way that I just can’t deal with it and have an emotional mental breakdown from it?

0:31:23.3 SB: And help them appreciate that lived life experiences like those of their parents and grandparents or those of their leaders at work, actually should be respected and honored. And respect begets respect. So you put that out there and they will receive that back. So I’m really hoping that we are able to build more resilient young people because that is what the workplace demands.

0:31:55.8 CH: And certainly what the world is demanding of them around them too. I might offer in our last few minutes, what on behalf of our university and colleges, some of what I’d love employers to hear as well. ‘Cause I think there’s a healthy tension sort of a productive tension across these sectors. So I do think when I listen to you describe those skills, Subha, I think that’s the liberal arts, that’s the hallmark of a liberal education.

0:32:25.9 CH: And so let’s stop having an argument about, is the technical better than the liberal arts? Is workforce dev better than a selective liberal arts campus? I think there’s a both and here and I think there’s a common language we might be able to all agree upon which could be lovely. I think that also for the university community, it’s learning to listen differently to employers to ask the follow up question. Particularly with those institutions where they are a strong pipeline, where they have internship programs or it’s an important employer in the local community in which they’re situated.

0:33:04.6 CH: The other thing I’d say is employers have a louder megaphone sometimes than higher ed when it comes to talking to the federal government or to the State House about the importance of education. And while I would always invite the criticisms and the critiques and we should be doing that both directions. We really need employer support as well so that our both public and private systems of education in this country remain vibrant so that we can be economically competitive. So that we can have and continue to attract great talent from around the globe to want to come to our universities and want to flourish in our economy after. So we need you, we need your support and we need to keep the dialogue going. Subha, I know you and I, like any other conversation we’ve had could keep going for ages, but I just wanna thank you for coming on Office Hours today. Thank you for the conversation and the insights you’ve shared.

0:34:00.5 SB: Carla, this is such an important conversation to have and I hope that people listening to this podcast will continue to take that into their lives and their families and their friends and their colleagues at work to talk about how important it is that the two come together to help create this future that we want for these young people.

0:34:25.0 CH: Here. Here.

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