Career readiness is now about closing the skills gap

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We would never ask students to design their own degree requirements. We map courses, sequence learning, monitor progress, and intervene when students fall behind. But when it comes to career readiness, the exact thing students now expect from college, we often leave them to figure it out on their own.

A theme employer partners consistently reinforce in talent development conversations is that college graduates are underperforming upon entering the workforce. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Job Outlook 2026 report, employers rank communication, critical thinking, and professionalism highest in importance when it comes to career readiness, but rated college graduates’ proficiency at only 3.6 out of 5.

The skills gap isn’t simply a student problem: it’s also about infrastructure. We should treat career readiness the same way we address degree completion; with the same precision, sequence, and accountability as the curriculum itself.

Where career readiness belongs

Career readiness is now a defining measurement of the value of today’s college experience. It should come as no surprise that students expect college to fully prepare them for career success post-graduation and beyond.

In a recent survey, 92% of students expressed interest in career training that improves employability and access to internships, mentorship, and career coaching. Yet the number of students who engage with such support remains inconsistent.

Media headlines continue to tell us that the labor market is redefining entry-level employer expectations, with evolving skills criteria, increasing AI-driven impacts, and changing economic challenges which culminate in an increasingly competitive transition from college to career.

The Future of Jobs Report 2025 from the World Economic Forum shows the human skills employers most value have become competitive must-haves rather than optional or nice to have.

Employers now expect graduates to arrive with the communication, critical thinking, and career self-management skills that previous generations often developed after entering the workforce. Higher education is being held accountable to prepare students with career management skills prior to graduation.

Many institutions have invested heavily in workshops, networking events, and new technology platforms designed to expand career access. Better yet, some have integrated it across the student experience.

But few are teaching it with the same intentionality we apply to degree planning. We don’t expect students to master a discipline in a single semester; we introduce knowledge, skills, and experiences in a deliberate sequence that builds over time.

Similarly, career readiness is something students learn, and it deserves the same developmental approach we use in the classroom.

Preventing the skills gap

But how can higher education introduce notoriously difficult-to-define components of career readiness? These are the skills that often require students to navigate uncertainty, vulnerability, and unfamiliar professional environments.

Left undefined, many students elect to treat career readiness as an afterthought, one they’ll tackle in their senior year. Institutions can no longer afford to position career readiness as an oblique add-on. Instead, they should develop a roadmap designed around core competencies, durable skills, and key experiential learning milestones.

A degree audit shows what’s complete, what’s outstanding, and where intervention is needed before graduation. Career readiness warrants the same visibility.

Imagine if students could see their networking experiences, internships, leadership development, employer engagement, and professional competencies progressing alongside their academic requirements. What if institutions provided guaranteed exposure to them?

Some institutions are rethinking career education models to do just this. At the University of New England, this shift has led to the creation of a career curriculum that scaffolds career competencies over time, designed to mirror a student’s academic journey.

Skills are introduced to students incrementally, growing in complexity and scope over the course of four years. Frameworks like this simulate degree audits, providing trackable benchmarks whose incompletion signals for intervention.

Roadmaps that embed networking events that connect students with employer-driven talent pipelines deliver more than in-demand skills; they cultivate the social capital necessary for long-term career mobility.

At the University of New England this is not optional. Participation is baked into central, high-touch systems woven into the institution’s infrastructure, the very ones students rely on to navigate their education. An integrated academic and career advising team guides students through every step, pairing degree planning with career preparation, progress, and purpose.

We need to teach students to become architects of their own career management, not simply applicants for their first job. But this is only possible when career readiness is intentionally built alongside academic learning.

The conversation shouldn’t be about how colleges can close the skills gap after graduation; it should be how to prevent the gap from emerging in the first place. We need to design career readiness like the developmental learning experience it should be.

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