DULLES, VA--(Marketwired - August 01, 2016) - Every recent college graduate wants to believe that college has prepared him or her for the "real world" of work. Today's hiring managers, however, feel otherwise, as both academic and privately funded research has shown for the past several years. To help both students and professors bridge the gap between classroom learning and the work environment, Real Time Cases (RTC) uses its multi-media learning platform and 125+ case prompts to connect business students with real business leaders and challenges. With RTC, professors can make their classes more engaging, and students can develop the skills necessary to succeed in real-world business situations before they graduate. RTC will be demonstrating cases from leading businesses at Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting in Anaheim (Booth #400), August 5-8.
According to CEO Jake Schaufeld, RTC is changing the way students use experiential learning tools by creating use-case studies with leading business executives and real business challenges, rather than hypothetical situations or case studies that are decades old.
"For the past three or more years, studies have shown that recent college graduates are entering the workforce without some of the essential hard and soft skills that today's business leaders value most," said Jacob Schaufeld, RTC CEO. "That may stem from the fact that today's business environments evolve more rapidly than ever before. To connect students with executives who want to share current issues with them, as we do through our RTC case prompts, will help students better understand today's workplace and today's challenges.
"The students benefit, because they enter the workforce knowing some of what is expected of them," Schaufeld continued. "Professors benefit, because real work with real companies is more exciting than traditional cases, and, therefore, their students are more engaged. Companies benefit because they access bright minds and creative input from students who are within just a few years of becoming potential employees."
The studies to which Schaufeld refers are the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AACU) survey, "Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success," and most the PayScale survey, "Workforce-Skills Preparedness Survey." Both surveys found that hiring managers feel that recent graduates are lacking in both hard and soft skills needed for business success.
According to the PayScale survey released this spring, only 50 percent of managers feel recent graduates are prepared for a full-time job, while 87 percent of the graduates surveyed said they were ready. Hiring managers who responded to the survey also said that recent graduates are lacking hard skills, such as writing proficiency, as well as soft skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving.
In addition, they cited public speaking and attention to detail as other hard skills that graduates lack. In terms of soft skills, those most lacking in recent graduates, according to PayScale respondents, were critical thinking/problem solving, attention to detail, and communication.
"RTC helps in many of these areas, because our case prompts are written to spur problem solving and encourage communication with other students and -potentially - engage with the company that has presented the business challenge," Schaufeld said. "Our cases are designed to help professors involve students in exciting projects that allow the professors to show the students how theory plays out in the business world. Also, students and instructors benefit from these experiences without taking on the costs or disruptions brought on by physically bringing an executive into their classrooms."
This is particularly valuable, as the AACU study found that employers value a graduate's ability to apply learning in real-world settings and "broadly endorse an emphasis on applied learning experiences in college today." In fact, 73 percent of the AACU respondents said that requiring students to "complete a significant applied learning project before graduation would improve the quality of their preparation for careers," and more 60 percent think this type of project should be required for graduation.
About Real Time Cases
Real Times Cases is an Education Technology (EdTech) Publishing Company that empowers professors of undergraduate and graduate-level classes with the tools to stimulate young minds. Based in the Washington, D.C. area, RTC is a multimedia platform that aims to bridge the gap between the professional work environment and higher education through experiential learning.
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Contact Information:
Margaret L. Brown
margaret@mlbpr.com
703-898-9443
