Universities need to better prepare students for jobs in the new Florida economy | Opinion

Florida is on a tear. Companies and high wage earners continue to migrate south, our unemployment rate continues to trend down and, overall, nearly 1,000 people are moving here every day from around the country. Our higher education system has been ranked No. 1 in the country for six years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

As chairman of the board of trustees at Florida State University, this news is welcome, but also raises a question: Are we producing and retaining the right local talent to sustain this economic growth and continue the rise of the new Florida?

When the Florida Council of 100 (FC 100), a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of Florida’s CEOs, asked this question of businesses throughout the state, the answer was “No.” Eighty percent of employers said that today’s new graduates are not fully prepared to fill their needs for talent. In addition, for those that do hire talent locally, more than one-third need to spend additional time or money re-teaching new hires skills they should have learned in school. This perspective is even more prevalent among businesses that have hired a college graduate in the past four years.

Now for the good news. Florida is nimble and moves fast. The FC 100 provided a number of recommendations that would better prepare our university students for jobs in the modern economy. Here at FSU, we intend to take those on.

When students arrive on campus freshman year, it represents the start of their job search. They begin to narrow their perspective on what interests them. They pick a major and begin to define the rest of their lives.

The university system, however, needs to do a better job of bringing students into the career-support infrastructure from Day One on campus. The job world is simply too competitive and specialized to delay developing career-readiness tools. One such tool is getting them experience in their career before graduation. Approximately 70% of respondents to the FC 100 survey said that the value of an internship to students is both in the teaching of general workplace professionalism and the teaching of specific, in-field skills. The larger the business, the more important this is.

Two-thirds of businesses in Florida said that a student having had an internship would make a material difference in their desire to employ them. Increasing access to internship programs and other experiential learning opportunities for our students will erode the talent gap our fast-growing employers in the state are dealing with today. It will also ensure our graduates stay here in Florida after they graduate.

For parents reading this piece today, know that, in Florida, we are focused on preparing your kids for the new economy from Day One. Here at FSU, we are going to focus on enhancing the breadth of job and internship opportunities available to our students and incentivizing businesses and students to take advantage of them.

Florida’s economy is changing. Our historic reliance on tourism is shifting as we attract new firms in financial services, technology, real estate, manufacturing and healthcare. The leaders of our public universities are paying attention and will ensure that our work supports this incredible opportunity for the state. Florida is open for business. This is a good place to be after graduating, and we intend to keep it that way.

Peter Collins is co-founder and managing principal of Forge Capital Partners, LLC and chair of the Florida State University Board of Trustees.