When it comes to education and the labour market, universities (well, the bits outside the professional schools, anyway) like to say they are in the business of preparing students not for their first job but for their fifth, or (more grandiosely), “preparing them for life”.  There are some powerful reasons for and assumptions behind that statement, and on the whole this view has served universities and their graduates well over the past few centuries.  But in a world where experience rather than education is the key to job advancement, the importance of a good first job looms ever larger: preparing for the fifth job is great and all, but who’s going to help students get to that fifth job in the first place?  And if universities choose to punt on helping students get a first job, they shouldn’t be surprised either at negative reaction from governments, parents and students or the emergence of genuine alternatives to universities.

Now in Canada, we have a decent alternative to universities in the form of community colleges.  But in the United States, where community colleges are frankly less well-managed than Canadian ones and too often function as inefficient conduits to four-year degrees rather than offering their own vocationally/professionally focussed programs, there is a significant problem placing students into the labour market (the absence of a significant, functioning system of apprenticeships doesn’t help either).  So, there is a growing trend in the U.S. for entrepreneurs to create what some call “last mile” programs to connect young people in the labour market, either after a degree or, in some cases, in place of it.

If you want to know more about these often fascinating programs, your best bet is a new book called A New U by a fellow called Ryan Craig, erstwhile Torontonian and managing director of University Ventures, an education-focused investment firm.  This isn’t his first book: a few years ago, he put out a book called College Disrupted: the Great Unbundling of Higher Education.  The book is much better than the title, mainly because Craig defines disruption more narrowly and precisely than do the tech evangelists.   I’d say I agreed with about 90% of it, though I am more skeptical than him about the speed that alternatives to the present institutional model will spread.  Craig’s great talent, as far as writing goes, is his ability to make ludicrous metaphors about higher education do the heavy lifting in terms of getting the reader to think through aspects of higher education business models; in his books, higher education is at times various likened to the Spice Girls, Olive Garden, and the debutante balls from Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan.  (Full disclosure: I have unconditional love for anyone who can wrangle in a Metropolitan reference).

I’m not sure Craig’s new book hangs together quite as well as his first one.  It reminds me a lot of Jeff Selingo’s Life After College, in that it seems uncertain about its key audience: is it for students making a decision about college, or is it aimed at people with a professional interest in alternatives to college?  And while it’s incredibly handy to have short descriptions of a dozen or so of the most interesting last-mile training programs out there, Craig’s choice of expositional method (interview a graduate and describe their inevitably successful pathway) can get a bit wearying.

Still, that’s not a reason to avoid the book.  What Craig has done here – apart from telling the entire world how unappealing the dining experience at Fran’s is – is put together a very clear statement about why we should all pay more attention to helping graduates find their feet in the labour market, and describe ways that certain types of job-relevant skills can be imparted in a relatively short space of time.  The programs he describes are not – by his own admission – designed for everyone.  But it would behoove everyone in higher education to think through which parts of those programs can be adopted and integrated into higher education (hint: it’s not about beefing up career services).  Quite frankly, that’s the most pro-student stance anyone could adopt.