Southern Nevada Vocational Technical Center students T'erra Teal, left, and Victoria Janson prepare soup ingredients. Business leaders say Las Vegas needs more vocational options. Photo by Issac Brekken/Review-Journal

Business leaders in the Las Vegas Valley have given poor marks to the area's education system, according to a Review-Journal poll.

Asked if local schools and universities are properly preparing students for today's work force, 70 percent of respondents said, "No."

The skills and attributes they said recent local graduates lacked include effective communication skills, problem-solving abilities, an understanding of "real-world issues" and a strong work ethic. New hires are also deficient in basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills, survey participants said, and they're often missing the soft skills -- an awareness of appropriate workplace attire or a positive demeanor -- essential to success on the job.

Survey participant Carl Rowe, president of Las Vegas consulting firm Clarity Advisors to Management, said his customers often lament the capabilities of local graduates.

"Problem solving, which I would define further as critical thinking, is really an issue," Rowe said. "My clients all grouse about it. Kids just don't seem to know how to think. I can't imagine living life without refining one's ability to think through issues and problems. I don't care if someone is a waitress or a lawyer, that's a life skill you need."

Rowe, who helps an accounting firm find new hires, said the local college students he interviews have basic numbers-crunching skills, but they have trouble understanding when to apply book knowledge and when to go with common sense -- looking, for example, at a client's previous tax returns as a basis for the current year's paperwork rather than starting from scratch. Many of them aren't fluent in the latest industry software.

"I'm not sure what they've been studying," Rowe said. "This (client), as well as most companies, has to do pretty intensive on-the-job training to get (new employees) to a point where they can do the job."

Cornelius Eason, president of placement firm Priority Staffing USA, also said both he and his corporate clients have observed the skills deficit among new additions to the local labor force.

"I'm not sure what the reason is within the Clark County School District, but they're just not preparing kids in communications skills, written or verbal," said Eason, who didn't participate in the Review-Journal's survey.

Steve Hill, president of concrete supplier Silver State Materials and chairman of the government affairs committee of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, said local business owners are familiar with the reality behind statistics showing 35 percent to 40 percent of Nevada's high-school graduates require makeup courses in math and English once they arrive on college campuses.

"We see that a lot -- people who don't have remedial skills," Hill said. "The construction industry is more complex than it looks from the outside. We don't want to hire entry-level workers who have a ceiling because they don't have the skills to move up at the company. There's a lot of math that goes into building buildings. People need to be able to read blueprints. They need to be able to communicate well with customers, fellow employees and supervisors. There's a need there that's certainly lacking."

And based on feedback from his trade group's membership, Ray Bacon, executive director of the Nevada Manufacturers Association in Carson City, said he's surprised the percentage of businesses taking issue with local education isn't higher.

When Bacon implemented literacy testing for job candidates as vice president of a Las Vegas manufacturing firm in the 1980s, nine out of 11 new graduates couldn't pass muster.

"It's worse today," Bacon said.

The Clark County School District requested a copy of the survey's analysis Tuesday, but representatives didn't comment following the faxed delivery of the results.

David Ashley, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said employers have a right to expect college graduates to communicate well and think critically.

Ashley said students should learn skills related to problem-solving, creativity and communication while fulfilling UNLV's general-education requirements, which include courses in English, math and liberal arts, among other areas.

"UNLV probably needs to look at (general education) right now, and I will be encouraging people to take a good, hard look at it," he said. "Harvard University has decided they need to rethink their general education. Even a university as established as Harvard understands the world has changed, and they have to update the basic skills they provide graduates."

Ashley added that businesses should primarily expect universities to graduate students who provide added value to the company through mastery of specialized fields, such as engineering.

"That is always a place I think universities can put energy into and get better at," Ashley said. "I don't think any university should assume they're doing it right."

Ashley added that businesses themselves have a responsibility to impart an understanding of proper workplace attire and attitude.

Business leaders said they weren't sure what's behind the gap between what businesses need and what schools deliver. But they cited an array of possible causes.

Eason suggested that the state's economy -- largely based on service jobs that don't require technical skills or college degrees -- translates into less emphasis on education than states with economies based on higher-order skills might see. Bacon said sheer size and centralization have made public schools unresponsive to the needs of parents and employers. Rowe said a combination of dwindling family participation in kids' education and a greater focus on nonacademic materials in schools might be behind the skills dearth.

"I think the quality of kids (entering schools) is probably not as high as it used to be, and that can be traced to a lack of family involvement," Rowe said. "Most learning takes place in the home, so I think the schools have been saddled with more responsibility for bringing kids up when that wasn't even their original intent."

Business executives said readying local students for work would require numerous reforms.

First, students who aren't planning to attend college need more vocational options.

Rowe noted that Nevada's service-oriented economy doesn't create a need for large numbers of workers with college degrees.

"We're a blue-collar town," Rowe said. "Why not pump some money into vocational education and stop this quest for a four-year degree for everybody? I think it sorely dilutes the value of a college education when we try to force everybody into a baccalaureate program."

Local executives said they'd also like to see the city's high schools and colleges add instruction in soft skills.

Hill, chairman of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas, said the nonprofit has added a class to teach kids how to be good employees.

"If they don't have that instilled in them, it doesn't seem to cross their minds," Hill said. "Realistically, the schools ought to have some role in teaching (job skills). There should be instruction on what will happen when students leave high school -- what they can expect and what will be expected of them."

Eason agreed, adding that though parents have a responsibility to reinforce career-related values in their children, too many parents fall down on that job.

"The reality is, that message doesn't always get across, because parents might not have those values," he said. "So if we as a collective society feel that these (soft) skills are important, then we ought to build these skills in the people who serve us."

To Rowe, schools could actually use less concentration on life and social skills.

"Schools ought to be allowed to educate academically," Rowe said. "I think bogging them down with life skills really detracts from their main purpose. Dress, demeanor and basic human courtesy are things you need to bring from home."

Executives said local schools and colleges would benefit from greater input from the business community.

Eason pointed to the community colleges and private colleges that hire part-time instructors who have day jobs as professionals.

"When you have a person who leaves an office and goes into a classroom (to teach), that day's experience goes into the classroom with them," Eason said. "If there were some way to get more businesspeople into the classroom as assistants, instructors or mentors, that would help educators."

Bacon said he'd prohibit unions for school administrators, so that administrators would become at-will employees who are accountable for poor performance. He'd also "readdress the entire need for colleges of education," and instead direct prospective educators toward majors in the fields they want to teach.

"If you survive a degree in a college of math and sciences, you're probably going to learn some math and science," Bacon said. "That means you might be able to teach some math and science."

Bacon advocated using online programs through the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence to help professionals outside the world of education enter the field. The board allows people whose four-year degrees are in a field besides education to study for a teaching license on the Internet. The program tends to bring in professionals who are interested in a second career in teaching but who don't want to earn a degree from a college of education. Bacon said such certification could help ease local teacher shortages.

Hill said measures related to accountability -- merit pay for teachers and administrators who perform well, for example -- would improve the quality of local education.

"The general feeling from the business community is that the school district is a big monolith that's not really accountable for its results," Hill said. "In general, I don't think the business community is down with putting more tax dollars into a system that's already not working and that's not accountable."

Hill said empowerment zones, which put decisions about teacher pay and curricula in the hands of principals rather than more-distant school administrators, would also boost accountability.

Perhaps most important, said Rowe, is a fresh focus from all quarters, including families, on the importance of education.

"We can blame (schools' performance) on all kinds of things, but it really comes back to basic values," Rowe said. "If you don't have those values, you can talk all you want, but it's not going to do any good."