Universities should provide students with skills beyond the classroom
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Two weeks have passed since the first day of classes, and it’s around this time many students realize there’s a lot to learn outside of a lecture hall.
Here’s the truth: some students can write an essay on symbolism in “The Great Gatsby” but have no idea how to read a lease, build a budget or figure out what to do when a roommate stops speaking to them. The skills that keep a person fed, financially stable and functional as an adult are often expected to be taught by parents. When that doesn’t happen, students don’t realize where they’re lacking until they get to college and are alone, having to figure it out for the first time under pressure.
This feeling isn’t isolated to freshmen. A survey found that nearly three-quarters of college students weren’t ready to keep their own space clean, and roughly two-thirds of parents suspected their kids didn’t know how to use basic cleaning products.
Another study on student nutrition found something similar: many students arrive at college without ever having learned to cook, often because it was never taught at home. Notably, the same study found that students who do pick up cooking skills while in college eat better well into their 20s. This further cements that it isn’t a lack of effort — it’s the lack of teaching.
Teaching students these life skills shouldn’t fall solely on parents. Universities need to spend more time teaching students practical skills, so we’re better equipped as students and citizens.
Early education already teaches plenty of topics that families could cover on their own: health class, driver’s education, in some states even personal finance electives. The question will never be whether schools can teach independent-living skills. It’s why this particular category of knowledge has been quietly excluded from college curricula when some students desperately need it.
The skills that keep a person fed, financially stable and functional as an adult are often treated as simply a parent’s role to play.William Dumond, Columnist
It might be because teaching life skills doesn’t fit neatly into a rubric. You can grade a calculus test in 20 minutes, but standardizing how well a student knows how to budget is much more difficult. So, schools default to what’s measurable, and everything else is assumed to be a parent’s responsibility.
This assumption is insensitive. Some kids are the first in their family to leave home for college, or have parents with different lived experiences than them. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a chunk of every incoming class arrives already behind, not because they’re less capable, but because nobody taught them what they needed to know.
This is happening every day. Students at Syracuse University who have the opportunity to live off campus have the pressure of signing leases up to a year in advance, and often have never been handed a written contract before. I personally experienced this and signed a contract without much preparation. Other times, students may have to learn how to navigate financial aid over the phone or figure out how to budget for groceries without assistance. It’s difficult without preparation.
At SU, resident advisor-led floor meetings or wellness programming through the Barnes Center at the Arch are available to teach students life skills, but none of it’s required. It exists on the margins, optional and easy to skip, whereas more traditional credits aren’t.
I don’t believe any radical overhaul is required to address this problem. The researchers who studied student cooking habits recommended something simple: offer actual cooking classes, because the data shows the skill sticks once it’s taught.
SU could take a similarly modest step: using required freshman courses for real skills, such as budgeting or navigating relationships. None of this needs to replace a major-required class, it just needs to stop being optional.
The truth is, there are some tests we never think to study for, because we aren’t being graded. A university that trains students to excel in a classroom but leaves them guessing how to feed themselves, manage their money or navigate a lease isn’t truly educating them — it’s just choosing which parts of adulthood are worth teaching.
William Dumond is a junior studying political science and policy studies. He can be reached at whdumond@syr.edu.
