For too long, college students have been forced to make a false choice between a life-shaping liberal arts education or a pre-professional education that gives them valuable career skills.
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For example, an undergraduate who’s been majoring in economics might enroll in an Excel certificate program to improve their odds of landing the desired internship. In one case, a young alumna working in real estate completed a marketing credential to support her business aspirations.
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While online and virtual skills programs have their place, the in-person approach offers several advantages. There’s a cohort effect, a small classroom effect, and a mentoring effect that comes into play. Perhaps because of these intangibles, there are also much better odds for course completion than many online programs.
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And this summer we’re launching a summer immersion program that will enable a small group of 20 students to work full-time directly with a company here in Columbus for 6 weeks helping them solve a real-world business problem. That’s a terrific way to make valuable use of the full calendar year, given that students are only in classes for 60% of the year.
We’re serious about making these skills, certifications and experiences stackable, too. We work with a digital badging company that provides unique identifiers to anyone completing our programs; students then place these badges on their LinkedIn profile or resume. Companies can verify the program that the students or the professionals participated in, what the content of that program was, and how grades or marks were assessed.
Crucially, we can keep a finger on the pulse of the business community in Columbus to ensure that the programming we’re offering is relevant and that students are gaining the skills that companies are looking for. Columbus is humming these days, so it’s important to make sure the talent pipeline is firing on all the right cylinders.
If we’re going to serve our students in helping them successfully launch, and if we’re going to serve the larger world in providing talent that can drive economies forward, we must get out of this “either/or” bind that requires students to choose between a liberal arts education and technical pre-professional skills.
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