What do Employers Really Want from College Grads?

Another in a long string of articles (this from marketplace.org) that return the answer: something like a good liberal education, preferably with an internship involved. Marketplace teamed up with the Chronicle of Higher Education to ask employers what they wanted. The employer who is the focus of the story said that his company puts every new hire through an expensive year long training program that "covers basics – like how to write an effective business document – and throws in some philosophy and history."  

“We ask people to read Cato the Elder,” Boyes says. “We ask people to read Suetonius.”

“We do that because we ask them to look at the process – the abstract process – of organizing ideas,” Boyes says.

Sounds a lot like an argument for liberal arts education, at a time when more students are being told to study science and technology as a path to a career. Maguire Associates, the firm that conducted the survey, says the findings suggest colleges should break down the “false dichotomy of liberal arts and career development,” saying they’re “intrinsically linked.”

Or, as Boyes puts it: “We don’t need mono-focused people. We need well-rounded people.” And that’s from a tech employer.