Too many recent college graduates, the tail end of the millennial generation, still find it hard to find a job. Indeed, Americans aged 20 to 24 are almost twice as likely to be unemployed as older millennials.

The reasons couldn’t be clearer. As a recent Gallup study revealed, what employers want most are candidates who know a lot about their field and how to use what they know on the job. In other words, they want graduates with hands-on experience. And they aren’t finding them.

For America’s colleges and universities, this represents nothing less than a firm mandate to provide students with both the knowledge and the tools they need to be immediately productive.  No longer is it acceptable, if it ever was, to teach students solely how to think. Today we must teach them both how to think — and how to do. We must provide them with the tools they need to meet the needs of employers, enabling them to enjoy productive and satisfying careers.

Academics tend to divide the curricular world in two: theoretical and applied knowledge. Many still assume that theoretical knowledge, like virtue, is its own reward. For too many college graduates, unfortunately, that represents nothing less than a false promise. 

I teach in the marketing degree program at Bentley University, where I am also director of the Center for Marketing Technology. Certainly my students need a firm grounding in the liberal arts and a mastery of theory in subjects ranging from marketing research to psychology to consumer behavior. But they also need to be able to use the digital tools that transform theory into practice, even while those tools are transforming the marketing profession itself. 

Marketing students today need to know Google Analytics, search-engine marketing, social media such as Instagram, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more. They need to know how to analyze user experiences, develop websites, and create personas that will define an inbound marketing campaign using a HubSpot platform. They need to know what content marketing is, how to create a content calendar, operate a customer relationship management system, establish metrics that define success, and execute strategies that achieve marketing goals, based on data-driven objectives and tactics.

Another false promise often foisted on students is that the prestige of their alma mater will compensate for their lack of practical knowledge and ability. Surveys from places like Gallup and Bentley confirm that, especially in a digital economy, what a student knows and has done is far more important than where the student went to school, what he or majored in, or what grade point average they earned.

That’s why I tell students that they should put their accomplishments at the top of their résumés. They should highlight what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. They should show prospective employers that they have the tools to make a difference. And they should put where they went to school at the bottom.

The question every student today needs to ask is, “What should I do to be relevant?” That applies not only inside the classroom but outside it as well, especially when it comes to internships. Colleges and students need to insist that internships include exposure to cutting-edge practices. Otherwise, students are largely wasting their time.

Students also gain enormously when they can take advantage of Bentley’s Corporate Immersion opportunities that bring corporations into the classroom to share real-life business situations. Recently my undergraduate students partnered with Resolution Media, an Omnicom company, and HubSpot, the inbound marketing pioneer, on campaigns that were built around measuring digital results. Students became tool-certified and applied their learning to build B2B and B2C campaigns for partners including Liberty Mutual, Sperry Topsider, New England Coffee and others.

Both HubSpot and Resolution Media have created their own learning platforms with original content and content from the leading social companies. That means that they are providing the hands on education that their new hires need to succeed — and aren’t getting in school. 

I think there’s a lesson here for higher education. I am establishing relationships with companies to bring their own curricula into the classroom. We have an advisory board that includes senior executives from companies like Resolution Media, Havas Media, and Johnson & Johnson as well as entrepreneurs and thought leaders on the front line of digital marketing. The goal is to stay relevant, teach our students the principal digital tools they need to be successful and, in so doing, to make them even more valuable to the companies that will be hiring them. 

Ian Cross teaches marketing at Bentley University and is director of the Center for Marketing Technology at Bentley. He acknowledges with gratitude the ideas and insights shared by Bentley professors Perry Lowe and Alyson Kaye, along with his “amazing students who push the boundaries to keep it real, measurable, relevant and fun.”