A recent survey of employers by Gallup found that only half believe that college students are getting everything they need to enter the workplace.¶
Experts say high school graduates entering college are still on the right track to long-term success, but employers now expect additional work experience and skills. In a recent panel on the value of higher education, experts called this new expectation “college and,” meaning experience beyond a degree through internships, project-based learning, or training in artificial intelligence.¶
Executive Director of the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia, Scott Fleming, said during the panel that employers also expect graduates to develop durable skill sets along the way, including teamwork, communication, and collaboration.¶
“We’ve seen a transition into employers wanting a little bit more quantifiable evidence that students actually have skills,” Fleming said.¶
Still, the importance of a degree is highly favored for student success in entering the workforce, according to experts on the panel.¶
As of last year, “Most Americans say a degree is as, if not more, important than it was 20 years ago,” Gallup’s Senior Partner in Higher Education Research, Stephanie Marken, said.¶
Although the importance of a degree has not wavered, a degree is still not enough on its own for graduates to land the job they want.¶
Marken said that, based on past-year surveys, younger entrants to the job market believe they will not only get a job from their degree but also a good job that includes “pay, purpose, and mission fulfillment.”¶
On the other hand, Gallup conducted a survey of almost 2,000 employers last fall, where research shows that employers felt graduates were poorly situated to be successful within the role they applied for due to a lack of pre-developed skills.¶
“We heard a lot of demand for education and training beyond high school for the employer population, but also some criticisms that they weren’t exactly arriving on day one ready to be successful,” Marken said.¶
The Solution
Western Governors University President Scott Pulsipher told panelists that tackling this kind of disruption to the job market doesn’t have to be a battle between graduates and employers. Pulsipher said the solution is to start working with the “end”, the goal of attaining an opportunity, and then work backward by linking learning outcomes to those skills required.¶
Pulsipher encourages investment in employer and sector partnerships to surface learning outcomes for graduates that will be relevant to the world of work. He said that if learning outcomes are then implemented into curriculum design and content development, individuals would actually feel they are gaining the skills demanded by employers as they are progressing in their courses.¶
“That starts to increase the perception even of the individual that what they’re learning is of value,” Pulsipher said. “And when they know it’s a value, it also increases their propensity to persist in the pursuit and completion of that credential.”¶
He said that employers working with degree holders can then hold the assumption that individuals can present abilities such as reasoning and effectiveness in the real world that they are going to be working in.¶
Fleming said that, from a policy perspective, states such as Virginia have increased the number of work-integrated learning experiences that students have through opportunities like paid internships in order to enrich the curriculum.¶
“We’ve spent a considerable amount of time doing that, and I’d say we’ve still got a long way to go, but I think that’s an additional layer that employers are looking for that has not been historically as strong as it is right now,” Fleming said.¶
