Students may be interpreting professionalism / work ethic as consistency in studying and turning in assignments on time in the context of coursework. But the s

Students may be interpreting professionalism / work ethic as consistency in studying and turning in assignments on time in the context of coursework. But the scale of problems that they need to solve in the workplace have a much greater scope in terms of time, complexity, and number of people involved. Employees need to integrate with the organization, not just do the equivalent of turning in assignments. Often the initial plan of work isn't complete or the right thing to do. Some fresh graduates have a tendency to latch on to some passing statement from a team meeting, work hard on that without doing any follow-up, and end up surprised when no one has a use for what they did. A professional keeps the big picture in mind and follows up with people so that course corrections are made and genuinely useful work gets done. Colleges try to teach teamwork, but few team projects in coursework are sufficiently complex that they genuinely require teamwork. Since everyone in a course project is taking the same course, no one has irreplaceable expertise. The consequence is that students never have to learn how to work as an organization instead of individuals. The exceptions are club activities like (inter)national engineering design team competitions in which, as in business, genuine failure is possible and success depends on everyone's contributions.