Why tertiary students need life skills

A problem I have noticed in my line of work is that students that come to university lack life skills.  In an earlier post I laid out what I thought I felt were core skills people need to make it in life.   As part of my creative projects this week I thought I would reinvent your standard business degree with a core life skills component.  Why?  Here is the crux of the problem:

Students need an education 

There’s a oxymoron for you!  Students need to be educated.  The majority of students that I see come through university preparing and writing papers for lecturers that I think are not that familiar with the outside world (myself included).  We give them theory or practice (like work integrated learning).   So either way they become indoctrinated either to a business practice or a theory.  Which is worse?  Both in my opinion.  A real education should involve training that teaches a person how to think creatively. I will be as blunt as I can when I say: at the very best university will help you think creatively.   At worse, you will turn into a memex machine.  A real education should impart life skills such as problem solving.  Life skills like ‘managing relationships’ and so on.

The conflict

At the heart of this conflict is the problem where life skills education is somehow seen to be seperate to the training the next generation of managers.  Here is a layout for your typical Business degree: Business Stats, Accounting, Marketing, Information Systems/Informatics, Business Communications, Policy and Governance, Economics.  These form the core ideals we think a graduate ought to have.   We assess core life skills like problem solving BUT we don’t not formally train them in how to actually do it.  We might expose them to problems but rarely do we impart the necessary life skills to make a difference.   So the conflict expressed is how do we get life skills into tertiary education to the extent where it’s training and not just mindless paperwork?

Synthesis of Life Skills and Tertiary Education 

My proposed solution involves a heavy implication and what I am about to say may at first seem simple but I have thought about this for a very long time.   Each subject should really form part of an overall structure where these skills are tested in each subject area.  That and there should be practical ways students can do this work as well as learn the ideas they need to.    So the synthesis I am suggesting involves:

1. Building a life skills based curricula: finding out what core skills are required to be involved in real world affairs and how we can help impart these at a university level.

2. Taking those skills and assessing them: using assessment that will require students to develop these skills in real world settings.  By this I mean, to get your degree you have to have been able to demonstrate a key level of the development of life skills.  Not just knowing them but being able to demonstrate the way in which you expressed them through assessment exercises.

3.Reflecting on 1 and 2 and developing a set of skills for lifelong learning: I am talking about creating the knowledge you need as a manager and also having the skills needed to develop as a manager.  It’s one thing to say I know something because I scored a good grade but it’s another story to say you can think creatively and offer new solutions when you are under pressure to do so.

The bottom line here is teaching people about management and then equipping them to do it.  So what does this mean for educators?  It means we have to get serious.  No longer is higher education just about critical thinking… it’s about creative thinking.  One of my students challenged me the other day and said, ‘University teaches people how to think critically but rarely teaches us how to think creativity.’  He caught me out and I really couldn’t agree more … after almost ten years in the system.  So for my first synthetic redesign I have created a rough design for merging practical skills with tertiary skills throughout the life of the degree.  Sure it’s muddy… but it’s a lot better than we have at the moment.

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