A Holistic Approach To Career Success: Moving Beyond Traditional Measures Of College And Career Readiness

Efforts to better align the transition between secondary and post-secondary education have gained momentum in recent years with a universal goal of preparing students to be both college and career ready. U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated, “It is the responsibility of K-12 educators to prepare all students for both college and a career.1” At the same time, workforce development stakeholders are focused on ensuring that secondary and post-secondary education are aligned with job skill requirements that reflect trends in the global economy. This effort is backed by various national initiatives, such as the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, to ensure that students will graduate with the knowledge, skills, and industry-relevant education needed to get on a pathway to a successful career.2

Among education and workforce development circles, much has been discussed about how to ensure that individuals are “college”, “career” and “work” ready in order to prepare them for career success. As a result, there is a great deal of confusion in the education and workforce market about what these terms really mean in terms of readiness. ACT released a research report introducing a broader definition of college and career readiness that moves beyond traditional indicators of core academic skills such as high school grade point average, class rank, scores on college readiness assessments and classroom rigor to also include non-cognitive skills and workplace competencies that are not addressed in traditional academic settings.3 Framed by this expanded view of college and career readiness, the next step is to examine the inclusion of foundational workplace competencies, both cognitive and non-cognitive, that are important above and beyond just core academic skills as potential additional measures of career success.