Update: Three Takeaways from Forensic Managers
Spoiler Alert: Two out of three are wicked problems. Hooray.
UPDATE: It’s not just forensic science!
In a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, a mismatch was found between what graduates thought they were ready to do and what employers decided what they were ready to do. Shocking, I know.
“When asked to rate new graduate proficiency, employers deemed new graduates as very proficient only in the technology competency,” says VanDerziel. “While they didn’t give new graduates poor marks in the other competencies—their ratings fell in the ‘somewhat to very’ proficient range—it is clear that there is a disconnect between what students think they have to offer and what employers see.”
According to VanDerziel, “one of the reasons we see this disconnect is that many students don’t understand how their college experiences relate to the competencies. As a result, they aren’t very good at demonstrating that connection to employers on their resumes or in interviews.”
The gap is real. Forensic educators and employers need to work out how to fill it. The survey and the results are worth a careful read.
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While attending the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors in Austin, TX, three things kept popping up time and again. By the end of the week, it was amazing how often these topics came up, both in formal presentations and in casual talk between sessions or after hours. In some ways they are connected, so let’s go in order from most fundamental to the tippy point of the spear.
Forensic Lab Managers are Disenchanted with Forensic Educators
Despite decades worth of effort to improve forensic education and make space for it in academia, including the Technical Working Group on Education and Training in Forensic Science (TWGED) and its offspring the Forensic Science Educational Program Accreditation Commission (FEPAC), forensic lab managers really do not care about hiring graduates from forensic science education programs. Even before these projects, forensic education in the U.S. has been framed as more pragmatic than educational. In 1975, Ralph Turner said, “One must note, however, that Europeans tend to hold a broader and more intellectually sophisticated concept of forensic science than is currently evident in America.” He went on to discuss his views on forensic education at that time:
“Undergraduate and graduate criminalistics [forensic] programs have mushroomed from four in the 1940's to several dozen at the present time. As I understand the philosophy of these programs, they seem to be geared to producing technicians for a job market that is still very attractive…
Training in the laboratory, however, was of the apprentice type, assuming that the student had suitable academic preparation…. we still see the basic curriculum for forensic scientists paralleling that of chemistry, physics or biology majors. I do, however, see some new interdisciplinary programs evolving which are most encouraging,
…rework the existing patterns of forensic science training into new and different formats geared toward producing the more complete forensic scientist.
Specifically, quality has been sacrificed when we consider how quickly some of these programs have been organized, how minimal the qualifications of instructors are in some instances, and how seemingly obsessed some programs are with the acquisition of costly and elaborate instrumentation with very little forensic science expertise to build upon.”
What Turner wanted was what was later sought: A comprehensive forensic curriculum that avoided the “mere technician” approach in favor of a seat at the academic table like biology, chemistry, and physics.
Yet, nearly 50 years later, forensic managers would still rather hire a graduate with a biology or chemistry degree than one with a forensic science degree (except for management, then a master’s in forensic science is ok). Nevertheless, there is a significant lack of literature on the effectiveness of forensic laboratory education.
This lack of faith in forensic educational programs leads to the second topic: Hiring.
Hiring Good Scientists is Really, Really Hard
Nearly every manager said that the single greatest impediment to improving their laboratory’s performance was identifying and on-boarding new employees. Applicants lacked practical lab skills or knowledge of what the position entailed:
One applicant for a forensic biology position didn’t know how to hold, let alone use, a pipette
One applicant declined the position when they found out they would have to testify
A forensic chemistry graduate couldn’t explain how a gas chromatograph worked
Many applicants can’t pass a background check or a polygraph (which is another matter)
As one lab manager told a forensic educator who asked why they don’t hire their graduates, “Because they suck.” Well, there’s that.
It’s more than anecdotes:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the science and engineering sectors — which support the forensic sciences — grew by 10.5 percent (817,260 jobs) between May 2009 and May 2015, compared with 5.2 percent net growth in nonscience-related occupations. This growth outpaces the production of talent currently being trained to fill these jobs. To strengthen the forensic sciences, it is imperative that we train and employ more forensic scientists…
It would seem part of the disenchantment with forensic educational programs is that the lab managers feel their applicants aren’t prepared for the job. Some forensic educators have no experience working cases and this may be a factor; likewise, most universities refuse to recognize experts with experience but no doctoral degree. Sigh. I did say it was a wicked problem.
Obviously, fixing the connection between forensic education and the profession is critical. And, speaking of critical…
Employees Don’t Have Critical Thinking Skills
Over and over and over, lab managers complained about their employees’ lack of critical thinking skills. It’s not just forensic laboratories: Everyone complains about a lack of critical thinking, even in education:
According to a 2016 survey of 63,924 managers and 14,167 recent graduates, critical thinking is the number one soft skill managers feel new graduates are lacking, with 60% feeling this way. This confirms what a Wall Street Journal analysis of standardized test scores given to freshmen and seniors at 200 colleges found: the average graduate from some of the most prestigious universities shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years. Employers fare no better. Half rate their employees’ critical thinking skills as average or worse.
Teaching critical thinking in a classroom is one thing, where the instructor has the conventional role of imparting information and the student receiving it (many assumptions, there), but doing it in an employment scenario is another.
There are some resources available like:
And, especially, A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills
But those are for after the person is hired--why not make critical thinking a part of the interview process? Using documented questions like the Wason Selection Test or questions like:
What’s the best mistake you ever made and why?
You spot a mistake in a laboratory report but it has already been sent out to investigators. How do you handle the situation?
How would you go about putting together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle?
You need to measure out four gallons of water, but you only have a three-gallon jug and a five-gallon jug. How do you measure out four gallons exactly?
How do you make a 1:10 dilution?
Why do they make manhole covers round?
The correct answer is good but what’s better is questions like these demonstrate how (if?) the applicant thinks critically and solves problems. Critical thinking has to start in (before) education and continue through the employment process.