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According to a 2012 international survey conducted by McKinsey & Co., there is a schism among higher education providers, employers and youth in regard to their perception about graduates’ adequate preparation for employment. The education-to-employment survey covering 8,000 respondents in nine countries revealed that 72 percent of colleges and universities believed their graduates were adequately prepared for entry-level positions in their chosen field of study. However, only 45 percent of the graduates themselves and 42 percent of employers agreed that the employees they hired in the previous year were adequately prepared by their pre-hire education and/or training (Mourshed et al., 2013). Clearly then there is a divide between what we as academic staff believe and what stakeholders believe with regard to our graduates. The report goes on to suggest the reason for the divide lies with a lack of engagement among the stakeholders. In particular, they recommend that education providers and employers actively step into one another’s worlds, and system integrators take a high-level view of education-to-employment processes. A more recent study confirms the need for stronger links among these stakeholders to ensure that graduates, especially international students, are prepared with the skills to enhance employability (Jackling and Natoli, 2015). Work-based learning options, such as internships, may facilitate the development of dispositions and attributes necessary for successful initial labor market integration (Tomlinson, 2012).
Schools of business have been under pressure to change their curriculum since Porter and McKibbon (1988) called for more “realistic, practical, hands-on” education. And indeed, through the use of technology, simulations and other pedagogical efforts, the business curriculum has shifted over the last 30 years. Moreover, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business has established accreditation standards, which states in Standard 13 that curricula facilitate “student academic and professional engagement which occurs when students are actively involved in their educational experiences, in both academic and professional settings […]” (www.aacsb.edu). Nevertheless, these aforementioned differences in perception remain well into the twenty-first century.
The continued call for more active engagement between professional and academic communities appears to be one recommendation that business schools can heed – with minimal expenditure of additional resources, if any. Moreover, these same schools already have system integrators in place which can take a high-level view of education-to-employment...