Experiential Learning: Helping Students Pivot to find their Passion

In today’s tight job market, employers are struggling to find candidates who have the right combination of soft skills, technical skills, and relevant experience that they need to really succeed. This “skills gap” is especially prevalent for recent college graduates. Even though about 85% of first-year students report going to college to get a good job, only 11% of college employers strongly believe these new hires are ready to enter the workforce upon graduation. 

I can relate to this phenomenon. When I was an undergraduate at Lehigh University, I was a “straight-A” student, but felt largely unprepared for my first day on the job as a KPMG Intern. I was confident that the issue was not at the institutional or instructional level, since my university provided me with the resources and guidance I needed to excel in my classes and land my first job. I realized that the main issue was with the content we had been using. From stagnant textbooks to stale case studies and theoretical simulations, faculty didn’t have the tools they needed to truly challenge us and prepare us as emerging young business professionals. In other words, they weren’t imparting the skills and context I felt I needed to succeed from day-one on the job. 

It became clear that learning could be much more fun, interesting, and beneficial if it was designed to expose students to new experiences, that were real, critical, and challenging circumstances in our rapidly changing world. When I graduated from Lehigh in 2014, I set out to influence change within higher-ed environment since I was personally disappointed with my own experience and the resources available at my seemingly progressive institution. I thought there should have been more chances to engage with real business leaders, help them make real business decisions, and learn where within the real business world I wanted to focus my energy. 

My vision has always been to create products that serve as a bridge between the professional work environment and higher education. My businesses have served as a liaison between industry and higher-ed, making it easier for them to come together and offer students an opportunity to learn while making a real impact. I have always felt that the key to all of this is properly aligning course learning objectives with company goals so that everyone wins. 

Experiential learning is about discovery, which is most impactful when there’s trial and error, success and reflection, independence and mentorship. When experiential learning is integrated directly into the curriculum, students can explore different things (like job roles and industries) and change their career direction based on what they learned, what they are exposed to, and what they enjoyed most about the experience. 

Gone are the days where students graduate from higher-ed, in-debt, and without a clue of what they want to do with their lives. The worst case scenario is leaving students pigeonholed, feeling as if their degree doesn’t align with their professional interests since they never had a chance to dive in. Experiential learning, to the contrary, leaves students feeling energized and encouraged with real, tangible skills and reference-worthy experience in various working environments, making them versatile and prepared for life after college. Real-world collaboration, as offered by experiential learning and internship programs, helps students build their resume and confidence. In fact, a 2017 study from the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that engagement in internships and other career development activities led to much higher degrees of success in the job market post-graduation.  

CapSource is helping schools take their experiential learning programs to the next level. We believe schools and their educators need help transitioning into organizations that can handle high-quality, scalable experiential learning with real host companies like startups, non-profits, local businesses, and large corporates. Our mission is to help students identify what they’re most passionate about while providing them with the resources and access they need to build a resume filled with real and relevant experience. 

Over the past 2 years, as the go-to resource for experiential learning, CapSource has provided more than 30 university customers around the world with:

1. company sourcing and project design services, 
2. faculty training,
3. marketing production,
4. logistics coordination, 
5. project management and tracking tools.

For CapSource, the key is to help structure each project-based learning engagement so the timeline, objectives, and commitments are clear. Through our framework, experiential learning outcomes become easy to measure and track. We create project charters, which serve as a learning contract between student, faculty, their institutions, and host companies. It also helps to ensure all parties are fully aware of their expectations, and are subscribed to aiding with the project experience.

The best part: real results. Check out Brandon Schlette for example, an MBA graduate from Ramapo College of New Jersey, that undertook a CapSource experiential learning project with Verizon’s AR/VR/MR/XR business unit, Envrmnt. Brandon believes that his experiential learning engagement has been instrumental to his career success post graduation. In a recent interview, he said, 

“My experience working as a student consultant at Envrmt was truly exciting, enriching, and eye-opening. The Capstone Project that CapSource put together was multifaceted, challenging, and required applying my prior experience and technical skills developed throughout the Ramapo MBA program in order to excel. As a consultant, I had the opportunity to develop tangible skills in a real work environment by interacting with senior management, working as a team, and resolving complex challenges. There’s no question that the capstone course helped to inform my next step as a mid-career professional. I leveraged this experience to secure my current role and continue to draw on that experience now as a Grants Analyst in corporate giving & philanthropy at Celgene.

The theory of mandating students to declare their major and pigeonhole themselves at the age of 18 years old should be a thing of the past. So should case studies taken out of textbooks and a theory-based curriculum without the key element of real-world application. The goal of offering college and graduate degrees should be to help students experiment with different subjects, expand their horizons, hone their skill set, and find their passions. Through experiential learning, students are provided with structured opportunities to sink their teeth into industries and job roles that interest them--and gain the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy.