What does it really mean to prepare students for the world of work?

Too often, conversations about the value of higher education focus on whether graduates get jobs and how much they earn. Our new white paper, Beyond Job Readiness: Findings from the Good Work Value Alignment Study, asks a broader question: How well does postsecondary education prepare people not only to obtain work, but to do good work?

What does it mean to do good work when the consequences may directly affect another person's health, safety, dignity, or life? When we spoke with healthcare students and employers as part of our Good Work Value Alignment Study, participants universally valued expertise: healthcare professionals need deep knowledge and technical competence.

Investigating how higher education students and employers understand “good work” today.

In our work with teachers implementing The Good Project lesson plans, we’ve seen that real-life dilemmas are among the most powerful springboards for intellectual risk-taking— the ability to engage with uncertainty (e.g. asking questions, sharing ideas, admitting confusion) despite the possibility of being wrong or judged. The Good Project’s dilemma-based secondary school ethics curriculum invites students to grapple with questions that have no easy answers (Should a doctor treat a patient whose actions have caused harm to others? Should a teenager join a protest even if it goes against their family’s views?) and to tolerate ambiguity while weighing competing values and perspectives.