SKOWHEGAN — The best way for students to learn and prepare for a career is to tie real world experiences to academics.

Allowing students to do hands-on training engages them and increases the chance they’ll graduate from high school.

And they shouldn’t be pressured or expected to attend four-year colleges.

Bill Symonds, who directs a project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to find ways to improve the national education system, addressed more than 300 career and technical educators from across Maine on Friday.

The keynote speaker of the Maine Career and Technical Education Conference, he emphasized the need to strengthen the connection between businesses leaders and schools. That way employers can provide apprenticeships and help design better programs of study to prepare youth for the workforce.

“The core point is we’re increasingly failing to prepare our young people to be successful adults,” he said to the crowd gathered in the auditorium at Skowhegan Area High School.

Despite billions of dollars being spent on education, high school graduation rates haven’t improved, and test scores have remained flat during the past 30 years, Symonds said.

Also, the recession has especially hurt those under age 25. Young people ages 20 to 24 are “really struggling to find work, including many recent college graduates,” he said.

A four-year college is not the only route to success, he said, particularly when examining where the jobs are. Currently, 33 percent of jobs require a four-year degree or higher. Meanwhile, 30 percent require less than a four-year degree but still some post-secondary education, he said. And 36 percent of jobs require a high school degree or less.

Schools in Maine and the U.S. are “cutting off a lot of pathways,” he said. “People have gotten the mistaken impression the only way to get ahead is through a four-year college.”

For example, in the fastest growing part of the labor market, the health care sector, about 78 percent of jobs require less than a bachelor’s degree, he said.

On top of that, young people going to four- and two-year colleges are likely to be unprepared and drop out. Symonds said 56 percent of students who start working on four-year degrees graduate — even with a six-year buffer. For two-year degree programs, the graduation rate drops to 29 percent, even when allowing for a three-year buffer.

High schools need to help students find the post-secondary training that matches their goals, he said. And they need to support more apprenticeships, so students can make better decisions about their future plans.

“We need to get across the idea there are different pathways to achieving the American dream,” he said.

For example, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria have dual apprenticeship models where students learn skills at a job in the community several days a week. The programs are so rigorous, Symonds said, students graduate high school with the equivalent of a U.S. associate’s degree.

When American students begin their first job interviews, they will likely be asked whether they have any experience, Symonds said. So high schools should help provide that experience through increased vocational and work-based options.

There’s “not one road to heaven,” Symonds said, adding that strengthening the tie between work and school will have another positive effect: It will help strengthen the economy.

Erin Rhoda — 612-2368

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