Preparing Students for the Labor Force

This entry was posted on 12.24.13, in Career Technical Education, Curriculum, Postsecondary and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

College is supposed to prepare students for their future careers, but half of America’s employers believe that today’s graduates are unprepared for the labor force. For this week’s installment of “Diverse Conversations,” I spoke with Dr. Lynn C. Owens, Associate Professor of Communication at William Peace University in Raleigh, NC, about her research on the intersection of higher education and the labor force.

Please provide me with a little background information on your study.

Since 2008, I (along with my co-author, Professor Deb Wenger of the University of Mississippi) have been doing a content analysis of journalism job postings to discover what skills and attributes journalism employers are looking for in their new hires. Our findings have been published in several journals and books, including Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Electronic News, and The Future of Journalism Education, Training and Employment. Our most recent paper won third place at the World Journalism Congress this past summer. <Read the rest of the interview.>

Via Matthew Lynch, Diverse Issues in Higher Education.