The Chronicle of Higher Education hosted a reception at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities that included a discussion of the value of higher education. The Wall Street Journal, the very next day, also published an essay titles Why American’s have lost faith in the value of college. If higher education has truly lost its way, what is the pathway back to prosperity? The solution is remarkably simple, and yet implementation will be exceedingly difficult.
Higher education needs to do a better job of providing those who pay the bills (students and their parents) with a greater return on their investment. The one factor that has remained consistent year after year in the annual survey conducted of incoming students by HERI at UCLA, is the expectation that an undergraduate degree from a four-year institution will afford them a better job. That is not to minimize the other reasons why a student might attend an institution of higher learning. Rather, it reflects the high cost of attendance and the corresponding desire to earn a return on that investment.
Of course, higher education administrators like to point to the on average, 1.2 million dollar premium associated with a bachelor’s degree. However, the Center for Education and Workforce at Georgetown has collected a vast amount of data that shows the actual return is very much dependent on major, with many majors (mostly in the humanities) showing returns substantially lower than the average. To further add to the mix, a 2019 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that if one looks at wealth rather than income, then graduates are, on average, no better off. The thesis being that many students graduate with massive debt which prevents them from purchasing a home or investing in financial assets that help to build wealth over time.
All of this is cause for concern and compounded by the various reports that large corporations and government entities are no longer requiring a bachelor’s degree for many of their entry level positions. In part this reflects the work that needs to be done and in part, it is a different approach toward growing the applicant pool to better capture individuals with potential who for one reason or another, choose not to enroll in a traditional four-year degree program. Yet, choosing an alternative instead of attending a college or university does not, in many cases, obviate the need to acquire needed skills prior to gaining employment for a position traditionally held by someone with a bachelor’s degree.
It is here that higher education is failing its graduates and has an unrealized opportunity. In the most recent employer survey by the AAC&U, in many key skills that employers value most, their perception is that at best, only around 50% of those graduating with a bachelor’s degree are very well prepared. It should therefore come as no surprise that many institutions of higher learning in an effort to formulate a response, have turned to skillification (or something similar) as the pathway forward. Holding to the steadfast belief that the existing educational processes develop these coveted skills; employer perceptions are viewed more as a communication problem than something that requires substantial change.
In our view, higher education is making a serious mistake by taking a curriculum designed to impart knowledge and thinking that the development of skills as a by-product of that educational experience will create a work-ready graduate. Where much of the development of skills has not been put into practice within an appropriate context, graduates will find themselves only marginally better off. With the growth of alternative avenues to develop those skills and employers who are increasingly willing to consider alternate paths to work readiness, it should come as no surprise that there are increasing perceptions that a college degree is not worth the investment.
Businesses are looking for employees that can contribute value regardless of the credential they may or may not have earned. If higher education is to create the next generation of thinkers and doers, it needs to move beyond recording the skills it is hoped that a student might have gained, to turning skills into capabilities that prepare a graduate to successfully navigate both those current and future challenges facing employers.
Skills are developed through repetition and those that are most highly valued are ones that can meet the current needs of business. With skills, one only needs to know how to do something within a previously determined set of circumstances. Capabilities, however, reflect the need to apply those developed skills in new and unfamiliar circumstances. The former can be easily learned through any number of online skills-based courses that teach the basics and provide opportunities for practice. The latter requires a more fundamental understanding of how something works so that it can be either improved or applied within a constantly changing set of circumstances. This requires more than a cursory understanding of how something is done and the context in which it is to be applied.
By focusing on capabilities and not just skills, higher education can carve out an important position that will not only defend, but also elevate its position in the eyes of potential employers as well as prospective students. It leverages existing curricula and offers something of value that businesses would be hard pressed to find elsewhere. However, this requires that colleges and universities pay more attention toward how ideas are put into practice.
This is something we have done at the University of New Hampshire, where we created a program called Business in Practice. Business in Practice, now in its fifth year, is a program that is designed to help students develop those work-ready capabilities needed to contribute to today’s technology-driven and globally competitive economy. It consists of a curated collection of courses designed in collaboration with industry professionals that seeks to leverage their knowledge gained from years of work experience. We think of it as a guided form of experiential learning that employs active learning in a controlled environment to ensure a consistent high-quality experience that accelerates a student’s professional development.
Careful oversight enables us to create the appropriate learning goals and ensure that each course delivers on the promise of contributing to the development of a student’s work readiness. It goes beyond merely stamping a credential on something that was designed for a different purpose. Rather, experiences are built from the ground up to intentionally develop intentionally work-ready capabilities that are embedded within the program design. Over time, employer satisfaction and a graduate’s employment success enhance the reputation of the program and that becomes the currency that enables an institution to enhance the value its primary credential–a bachelor’s degree–what it can offer potential students who are deciding on the next step of their life journey.
While we have chosen to put ideas into practice in the form of custom-designed courses, those same principles can be included within existing course designs to develop work-ready capabilities more explicitly over the span of a set curriculum. Rather than career preparation, the focus needs to shift toward thinking in terms of the type of work or the development of those capabilities that extend across a myriad of employers who are all looking for the same basic thing – employees who can put their knowledge into practice, collaborate with others, communicate their thoughts clearly and appropriately, and engage in creative problem solving. A result that only emerges through the thoughtful design of courses and a curriculum that helps students understand what they enjoy doing and have the requisite capabilities that enable them to contribute value from day one.
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