Is College Prep Enough for Today’s High Schools Students?

Students attending high schools spend a large portion of their academic lives “preparing for college.” This is especially true for students attending college prep boarding schools. What if there is more to a good education than just preparation for college? Who is preparing these students for professional life?

Advocates for college education argue that college will teach students the skills they need to enter the job market. While colleges do a marvelous job at giving students the necessary knowledge they need for employment, oftentimes colleges fail to teach basic job skills like customers service, punctuality, managing people or teamwork.

College prep boarding schools do more than their name suggests. One of the core purposes of the curriculum at these boarding schools is to prepare students to go to college. They also focus on giving students vital skills they will need in their professional lives.

Public high schools shouldn’t narrow their focus on college alone. Only seven out of 10 students go to college after graduating high school. While this is a majority of high schools students, the minority amounts to hundreds of thousands of kids across America. These kids are overwhelmingly unprepared for the job market. Schools can do more to prepare these kids for grown-up life. College doesn’t have to be the only avenue.

Programs like the Distributive Education Clubs of America, or DECA, are leading the charge to teach high school students professional skills. DECA doesn’t discourage students from attending college, but it offers valuable life skills to students who decide not to. College prep boarding schools don’t usually use DECA because they have their own programs on campus to help students learn professional skills.

With the cost of high education on the rise, students are looking to the job market to pay their way through college. It’s more and more common for students to take a year or two between high school and college to work up enough money to pay tuition. High schools and college prep boarding schools alike should teach kids professional skills to aid them during this gap time.

Among middle-class Americans there is a stigma about those who don’t attend college immediately after high school. The current financial burden of college should be enough to dispel this stigma. Most students who don’t go to college right after graduation are planning to do so in the future. They just don’t want to accrue overwhelming amounts of student debt.

Stigma or not, schools should be preparing students for the future that they choose. Generally speaking, college prep boarding schools excel at this. Many public schools need to follow suit. DECA does a good job, but there needs to be more action on the part of the schools to compensate for the change in financial climate surrounding the college experience.

Joshua Valdivia is an academic writer for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. Information provided by Wasatch Academy. Follow on Twitter.