Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the results of an interesting survey that should encourage some reflection and review by both university graduates and businesses, and hopefully the various educational institutions as well.

From April to June of this year, over 10 000 currently employed university graduates (graduated university between 1999 to 2010) were asked to rate how satisfied they were with their current career path. Naturally, the result which has received the most attention is the rather low satisfaction rate found among psychology majors, who ranked almost 20-percentage points lower than the second-to last group on the scale. While the title of the Wall Street Journal article succinctly explains the reason behind this low satisfaction rate among psychology majors, there’s something more disturbing about the overall findings that should really be the focus here.

Looking at the group of university graduates that ranked as the most satisfied in terms of their current career path, we see that only 54% of respondents replied in the affirmative. And this result comes from a group of employees that the survey authors define as working “within a set of jobs deemed satisfying, well-paid, and with growth potential”.  In other words, regardless of what discipline you study while attending university, there’s a 50% or more chance that you won’t be satisfied with the career path it helps you to take.

Evidently, businesses are doing their part through offering opportunities for growth and reasonable financial renumeration, given the profile of the respondents that were the focus of this study.  So what then can we make of this discrepancy among employees who are well-paid and have those desired opportunities for professional growth, and their assessment that their career path hasn’t lived up to what they hoped for?  Looking at the other key player in this equation, it’s clear that the disconnect seen here comes from Click here to continue reading »”Leadership Failure In Our Education System – Guest post at Bretlsimmons.com”

Last week, Dorothy Dalton shared an intriguing guest piece on my blog which questioned whether management training should take into account the inherent differences between men and women. Not surprisingly, her piece resonated greatly among women readers, who both participated in the follow-up discussion, as well as sharing this piece with others on Twitter. Although on the surface this might seem to be a “women’s issue”, the reality is that gender issues should be viewed as an important topic for those involved in managing an organization’s workforce.

While Dorothy’s piece posed the question of whether such gender-specific measures are needed today, the points she put forth got me thinking about what we should expect in the decades to come based on some issues arising from today’s education system.

A dramatic shift in gender strengths in education

There have been numerous reports over the last couple of years that have shown that girls are excelling in the fields of mathematics and science, areas of knowledge which in the past were dominated by boys both in terms of grades and interest. At first glance, these results seem to indicate that girls are finally catching up with boys in their mastery of these subjects. A closer examination of the situation though, reveals something more problematic at play here.

In order to address the obvious difficulty girls were having with math and science, many education boards took on Click here to continue reading »”Are We Ready For The Workplace Gender Shift?”

One of the things I remember about high school was having all these hardcover textbooks that I would trudge home with in my school bag. And more often than not, when I would drop my bag on the hallway floor with this loud reverberating thump, my mom would ask me why on earth was my bag so heavy. My answer to her query was always the same – I needed those heavy books to finish all the homework assignments handed out to me that day.

I’m sure this is a memory most of you have as well from the rites of passage through the hallowed halls of the high school education system and beyond. And yet, looking back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if our parents worried or obsessed over homework to the degree that parents do these days. To wit, at the school board meeting held this past week, a rather intense discussion was held among the various school representatives over a survey we were asked to fill out regarding the value of homework at the elementary school level. Although the overall issue of our children’s education is sadly one that rarely stirs up any collective emotion or drive to continually examine the system’s current efficacy, one aspect that does draw parents in like bees to a field of flowers is the subject of homework – specifically how much is enough.

Of course, the key factor to addressing this issue is to answer the question of what we expect the goal of homework to be, of what we hope our children will gain from the process of doing homework. Obviously, the first expectation behind homework is that Click here to continue reading »”What Is The Value Of Homework?”

This past Monday night, I experienced a strange sensation – I left one of my education board meetings feeling optimistic that things were finally turning around. To put this in its proper context, I should point out that I currently serve on two education board committees – the Governing Board for our school where we discuss and plan out the school’s operations (school budget, criteria for the principal, school allocation time for various subjects, etc) and the other as the school representative on one of the regional school board committees. I serve on these committees not because I’m hoping to one day enter the political arena, but because I’d rather be a player on the field trying to make a difference instead of just standing on the sidelines complaining about poor game plays. Sure, it can be frustrating at times to see how much inertia has to be overcome for progress to be made, but as I witnessed at Monday night’s meeting for the school board committee, it can happen and when it does, it’s quite elating.

I’m sure my fellow parents feel the same resignation over how our society seems to be continually disregarding the current state of our education system – from the limited resources provided to teachers to attend workshops/conferences to improve and build on their knowledge of teaching to the very building infrastructures wherein which our children are expected to learn. Although my kids are fortunate to attend a school that was recently rebuilt (they had an issue with mold several years ago that resulted in the school basically being torn down and rebuilt from scratch), several other schools in our system are in very poor shape and I can only imagine how that affects the school’s staff morale and subsequently the teaching environment for the children.

During our meeting last Monday, one of the school board Directors informed us about a new plan that our provincial government has implemented, which can be basically construed as a mea culpa in regards Click here to continue reading »”Our Children’s Education – It’s About Time”