Are Toronto’s universities out of touch with the needs of the marketplace?

As fears that a shortage of skilled labour is looming over the future of work in the Toronto region, students who will soon enter the workforce are searching for ways to diversify their skills.

Writing, reading, research, presentation — the skills associated with some of the most common undergraduate degrees — are proving insufficient for the elaborate needs of an ever-digitized labour market. This has students turning to extracurriculars and volunteer opportunities to better prepare themselves for life after graduation.

How can young people set themselves up for success? Here, four GTA students share their strategies and solutions for developing new skills, becoming employable, and what schools can do to prepare them for the jobs of the future.

Jazz Dev, 24, Ryerson University

It took me a while to figure out which career path I wanted to take. I went into university not really knowing what I wanted to do, and left feeling basically the same way. I went into the humanities because I figured I should study something I enjoyed, and then maybe do a master’s degree and continue an education in whatever area I found most interesting. Luckily, through a job I had as a customer sales representative at TD, I got a taste of the real world, and realized I wanted to diversify my skill set to become more employable.

I ended up joining a program called the Advanced Digital and Professional Training Program (ADaPT), a skill-development and placement program, where I learned a variety of digital skills valuable in today’s job market, like how to read analytics, the basics of design, and the basics of programs like Adobe Suite. The program eventually led me to realize what I wanted to do — to work as a project co-ordinator.

The opportunity made me think about how useful a multi-faceted skill-development program like that would be for a first-year university student figuring out what they want to do after graduation. While my experience in university certainly improved my writing, teamwork and presentation skills, I know I would have benefited from more technical digital skills — at least the basics tenets of them.

Siobhan Wagner, 21, University of Toronto

I went to a couple of career-finding events at U of T last year, and while talking to some of the people who were there to offer advice, I learned that most of them wished they’d have taken more business courses in school. A lot of them felt unprepared for work involving negotiation, communication and networking skills.

As someone studying biochemistry, I felt similarly. For me and most of my peers, the bulk of our skills often lie in research. There’s a lack of ability for science students to communicate their ideas in business — to talk about marketing, advertising and so on. So, we’re set up for success if we want to go to grad school, but not if we want to go into entrepreneurial areas that we know are growing in Toronto — like the tech sector.

I’m trying to improve those skills with a business course I’m now taking at U of T, through which I’m interning at a start-up specializing in property-management assistance. We know tech specialists are increasingly in demand, and being able to put those skills toward business-focused activities has been useful.

In general, I wish schools would incorporate more on-the-job opportunities for students that allow them to expand their skill sets and get real-world experiences. I really had to dig to find an opportunity like the one I have now, and to have more required or strongly encouraged opportunities like these would be incredibly valuable.

Shawn Cruz, 22, Wilfrid Laurier University

If there’s something I’ve learned from seeing how students are taught throughout their academic careers, it’s that integrated learning opportunities are the key to helping students succeed after graduation. From my experience, I know it’s something we need more of.

For example, I think the courses I took in political science were incredibly valuable, but most of the skills we practised had to do with stuff like memorization and writing. What if we added more experiential learning to this? For instance, creating briefs for a local municipal government and having elected officials or staff assess the briefs and offer feedback. If we invest more in areas that encourage this kind of experiential learning, we’ll enable more students to have work experience prior to graduation, and give them an opportunity to hone their skills.

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At the same time, even if a student were to have a really valuable work-integrated opportunity, it’s ultimately worthless if they can’t articulate and advertise the skills they developed during that program. So, ideally, the government should develop frameworks that allow students to learn to convey their academic and practical writing skills to potential employers in a wide variety of sectors. We have so many qualified post-secondary students in Ontario, and I think it’s vital to continue supporting them through funding for work placements and frameworks for skills articulation.

Thomas Hamberger, 21, University of Toronto

I came from a family where, if you got a science degree, you went to med school. I went into school with the general expectation I’d go to med school, and that would be that. But by my second year at U of T, I realized it wasn’t for me. I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial — something that combined my interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with business — rather than putting my head in the books for the next 10 years. That’s when I realized how few skills I had associated with the entrepreneurial and business side of things.

I joined a summer program, voluntarily, offered through U of T called the Impact Centre, which teaches business skills to STEM students. We were put into internships with start-up companies in the Toronto area that aligned with our interests and, honestly, it helped not only to improve my entrepreneurial skills, but also to get a better idea of what I wanted to do after school. It’s not like it’s just learning to code for the sake of learning to code; it’s learning to code because you know it’s a skill you want to incorporate in your professional career.

This is one of the biggest problems students have in school, in my opinion. It’s not that we don’t have skills, it’s that we aren’t really taught what to do with them. Interdisciplinary opportunities, like the one I had, helped tremendously.

Jacob Lorinc is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @jacoblorinc