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Saddening: Women say colleges not preparing them for a career

New report sheds light on 2016’s college seniors’ feelings about career-readiness —and they’re not great.

Only four in 10 (40 percent) college seniors, and a similar number of college students overall, feel their college experience has been helpful in preparing for a career—and percentage that drops to 19 percent for women when asked if they feel very  prepared for their career overall .

These are just some of the all-too-real findings part of McGraw-Hill Education’s [1] recently released third annual Workforce Readiness Survey, conducted by Hanover Research [2] among 1,360 U.S. college students during March and April 2016, using an online survey.

Looking to national conversations, the growth of career readiness programs and past reports over the last two years, the perceived importance of preparing for careers while in college appears to be on the rise, yet certain college students – including humanities majors and women – continue to report lower career confidence than their peers, found the report.

“Despite the increasing cost of attending college, it continues to be a great investment for young people to make in their futures if they graduate,” said Peter Cohen, McGraw-Hill Education’s group president of U.S. education. “It should be our collective goal to maximize the experience–whether in community colleges, four-year colleges or graduate programs–so students can feel confident they’ll have a successful career after finishing their higher education journey. While no two students’ career aspirations are the same, every college graduate deserves to enter the workforce with the confidence that their degree was worth the investment.”

Take Our Quick Career-Readiness Poll!

Some of the differences in perceived career preparedness among specific groups include:

(Next page: More career-readiness findings from the report)

Clamoring for More Career-Readiness via the Institution

While students report that they are increasingly satisfied with their overall college experience (79 percent in 2016, compared to 65 percent in 2014), an increasing percentage report that they would have preferred their schools to provide:

Students Themselves Focusing More on Career Prep 

According to the report, college students are more focused on preparing for their careers than they were just a few years ago:

Hedging on “Soft Skills” and Majors

In planning for their job search, students value their “soft skills,” but indicate that those skills could be developed further:

A significant portion of students also says they are unsure their major will help them get a job:

Technology Seen as Beneficial for Career-Readiness

Some students see benefits of classroom technology that extend far beyond the classroom:

Many more findings, as well as methodology and detailed infographics can be found on the report’s homepage here [3].