What do you want to be when you grow up? The answer to the age-old question — often asked as early as preschool — likely changes with life experiences. But when it comes time for college applications, most students feel the pressure to have a definitive answer. Not so, says Jane Ellis, associate dean of academic services at Bentley University. In fact, not knowing may be just what you need to set you up for success.
Higher education has taken a hit lately for not preparing graduates for a successful career. Arguments are flying that graduates walk across the stage with degrees that have left them ill-equipped for today’s complex workplace. In particular, employers are disillusioned by their inability to relate to and manage millennials. It would be easy to dismiss this as a generational gap, or millennials not understanding the realities of the workplace, but the story is more complicated.
When Bentley senior Aaron Pinet walked in to a job interview at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the first question he got wasn’t about his grade point average or accounting courses. The conversation starter was his service-learning work: presenting policy-related research on energy literacy to congressmen on Capitol Hill, or developing a financial literacy curriculum for prospective college students.
Bentley’s PreparedU research study outlined a number of possible solutions to help millennials, higher education faculty and staff, and business leaders better meet one another’s needs. What does that mean in practical terms for college-age millennials? We asked a panel of experts from Boston-area schools.
The fact that many of us had to overcome significant hurdles as we banged our heads against the glass ceiling doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to help smooth the path for the women who come after us. If we don’t, how can we expect our male colleagues to do so? As Madeleine Albright famously quipped, in her 2006 keynote address to the WNBA, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
We all know that millennials are tech savvy, diverse and highly motivated when it comes to advancing their professional careers. But did you know that they're also passionate about social causes?
Millennials — roughly defined as someone in their late teens to someone in their early 30s and often labeled as “lazy” and “self-centered” by those from older generations — not only want to help make the world a better place, they’re actually doing something about it.
Why do women lag far behind men in the senior ranks of business? What can be done to level the playing field?
In a keynote address to a forum hosted by Bentley University’s Center for Women and Business (CWB), a prominent researcher on race and gender relations in organizations said finding answers to these questions requires challenging long-held assumptions.
Can today’s millennial women break through the barriers, stereotypes and inequities that have so plagued women in the past?