Teaching Students About the World of Work: A Challenge to Postsecondary Educators

Teaching Students About the World of Work argues that educational institutions—especially two-year and four-year public institutions serving low-income students—need to make the topic of employment a central element in their educational offerings. Indeed, the book demonstrates that a far greater emphasis on teaching students about the work world will be necessary if colleges are to give disadvantaged students a realistic chance for professional and economic success. The recommendation is a reconfiguration of postsecondary education that represents a paradigm shift in career preparation and learning.

Editors Nancy Hoffman and Michael Lawrence Collins and their authors provide a rich and comprehensive view of both today’s work world and the challenges facing many young people who are determined to find a place within it. The book offers detailed accounts of how several community colleges have put employment at the center of the curriculum; provides practical insights into the twenty-first century labor market and ways to improve the choices and outcomes for low-income job seekers; and explores the daunting structural barriers to securing successful and satisfying employment.

Throughout all its chapters, the book highlights increasing inequalities—in both opportunities and outcomes—within our society. In order to redress those disparities, it argues, postsecondary educators will need to offer enhanced insights and sophistication to disadvantaged young people preparing to enter and navigate the work world. An urgent but unfailingly reasonable book for our times, Teaching Students About the World of Work will be required reading for educators determined to create practical opportunities for young people in search of good employment and better lives.

Michael Lawrence Collins is vice president at JFF, a national nonprofit working to transform the workforce and education systems to accelerate economic advancement for all. For over a decade, he has led a multistate postsecondary reform network committed to increasing the success of students from low-income backgrounds through connecting colleges and state systems to evidence-based practices and policies and supporting their implementation through nationally recognized initiatives such as Achieving the Dream, Completion by Design, and the Student Success Center Initiative. He serves as Chair of the Board for the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and serves on the boards of the National Student Clearinghouse, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, and the advisory board for Guttman Community College. He is the Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow. Michael is a graduate of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with his wife, Dana, and son, Dashel.

Nancy Hoffman is senior advisor at JFF, a national nonprofit based in Boston. Nancy is the cofounder, with Bob Schwartz, of the Pathways to Prosperity State Network, a collaboration between the Harvard Graduate School of Education, JFF, sixteen states, and sixty economic regions with the goal of building pathways to careers for low-income young people. Nancy also led JFF’s work to develop early college high schools and expand opportunities for college-level work in high school to a wide range of students.

Nancy’s most recent book, coauthored with Bob Schwartz, is Learning for Careers: The Pathways to Prosperity Network (2017). She is also the author of Schooling in the Workplace: How Six of the World’s Best Vocational Education Systems Prepare Young People for Jobs and Life (2011). She edited three JFF books: Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth; Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It; and Anytime, Anywhere: Student-Centered Learning for Schools and Teachers. Nancy is also the author of Women’s True Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching. These books are all published by the Harvard Education Press. Nancy serves on the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education as well as the boards of North Bennet Street School, Adult and Continuing Education Martha’s Vineyard, and BuildUP Birmingham. She holds a BA and PhD in comparative literature from University of California, Berkeley, and has held teaching and administrative posts at Brown, Temple, Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere.