Degrees might open doors. But are graduates ready to walk through them?

But the term ‘soft skills’ does these capabilities a disservice. These are life skills, and it is no longer good enough for tertiary education institutes to equip their students with qualifications gained through content and examinations and leave the rest up to the workplace. Students need real-world exposure and opportunities that mirror the world of work, before they get there.

Beyond the lecture hall

Some private tertiary education institutions are rethinking what it means to prepare students for the world of work through initiatives and short courses designed to embed real-world learning into the curriculum. Business communication bootcamps; public speaking and interview simulations; design thinking and decision-making sprints; cross-discipline projects; change management and resilience training; and workplace ethics challenges – all of these equip students to integrate into and contribute to the organisation, from the get-go.

Equally important is creating an environment where students can gain early work experience alongside their studies. Tertiary institutions can enable this by offering flexible or distance learning options that allow students to structure their studies around part-time jobs, or by encouraging entrepreneurial ventures that give them first-hand exposure to running a business. This approach recognises that, while the institution plays a role in opening up these opportunities, the responsibility ultimately shifts to students to balance work and study, while learning the discipline and resilience that the working world demands.

At Richfield, our relationships with employers keep us up to speed with the skills they look for in their new recruits. To this end, we integrate complementary professional certifications into our degree curricula, so that our graduates have the latest badges and certifications from organisations like IBM, AWS, Oracle, Cisco and CIMA, for example, in addition to degrees. This kind of integrated learning not only gives our students a technical edge but, because this kind of technology-led information is continually being updated, they also encourage a habit of lifelong learning.

Systemic change required

Research by Harvard University shows that 85% of job success comes from having character skills in addition to technical knowledge, but the solution does not lie in replacing exams. It is about complementing them with opportunities to learn through doing. Degrees remain vital, but they cannot exist in isolation. If we want our graduates to thrive, we must move beyond rhetoric and embed work readiness into every layer of the student experience.

For matriculants and parents choosing a tertiary path and education provider, the message is clear: look beyond the qualification itself. An institution that is preparing students for work provides opportunities for its students to grow as people, not just as exam-takers. Because in the workplace, and in life, the successful graduate is rarely the one who has memorised the most content. It is the one who can communicate confidently on all levels and respond with agility to the challenges of the world we work and live in.