The admissions cheating scandal at some of America’s universities is only the iceberg’s tip in post-secondary education.
Another troubling issue: Do college consumers — students and graduates — think their education gets them “a better job,” which 86 percent of college freshmen, on average since 2010, say is a “very important” reason for attending college?
There’s good and bad news, and implications for how post-secondary institutions achieve their student employability objectives.
The bad news: Consumers don’t believe colleges are succeeding that well at preparing them for job market and workforce success, sending threatening signals to these institutions about their relevance and value.
This information is from the nation’s largest source of post-secondary consumer information from Strada Education Network and Gallup of more than 500,000 individuals in three nationally representative surveys.
Some good news:
- Half of current students “strongly agree” their major will lead to a good job.
- Black, Hispanic, first-generation, and nontraditional students find advice from college career offices very helpful.
- Informal work-based advice is important for making decisions, especially for first-generation students, with those receiving it less likely to choose another major.
But the bad news suggests many students have buyer’s remorse. Only 26 percent “strongly agree” their education is relevant to career and daily life, with relevance the strongest predictor of perceptions of quality and value. More than half would change at least one of the post-secondary decisions they made. And more than one-third would change their major.
Such buyer’s remorse collides with the optimism that post-secondary leaders exhibit: 96 percent of chief academic officers say their institutions are very or somewhat effective with students’ workforce preparation.
These college consumer rumblings suggest many want different approaches after high school to acquiring knowledge and skills that lead to “getting a better job.” That points to disruption in how and what institutions do.
Such prognostication is reinforced by other postsecondary education pressures. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and his colleague Michael Horn predict that “a host of colleges and universities — the bottom 25 percent of every tier — will disappear or merge in the next 10 to 15 years.” As Horn points out, the average tuition discount for full-time 2017-2018 freshmen is “a whopping 49.9 percent” of the advertised “sticker price.” Discounts above 35 percent place colleges deeply reliant on tuition in a “danger zone,” suggesting that the college business model is broken.
Meanwhile, at least one quarter of private colleges now run deficits. And demographics work against traditional colleges as the pool of 18-year-olds shrinks. And nearly 20 percent of today’s students enroll in accredited online programs, with many in unaccredited programs.
Efforts are underway by current and new providers to develop novel options for college consumers aiming to overcome consumer remorse and other challenges postsecondary institutions face. Scripps College, a private women’s liberal arts college enrolling about 950, is one of a growing number of institutions using winter break for a formal student career advising program, with the goal of improving placement rates and salaries.
Georgia Institute of Technology offers an accredited online Master of Science in Computer Science degree that enrolls individuals from more than 30 countries and includes partnerships with for-profit online Udacity and AT&T. It costs around $7,000.
General Assembly, a for-profit “boot camp,” offers short and long, in-person and online courses in computer programming, data science, and product management, with 20 percent of courses for company employees, 20 campuses worldwide, over 35,000 graduates, and 2,500 hiring partners.
Kenzie Academy in Indianapolis, a two-year for-profit software engineering skills program, includes a student apprenticeship in Kenzie Studio, the company’s consulting arm. An income-share agreement makes the $24,000-a-year program affordable and accessible by delaying payments until job placement paying at least $40,000; and a partnership with Butler University so students receive a certificate from both organizations.
Aspects of these approaches exemplify what Ryan Craig calls the new “hybrid educational intermediaries” functioning like staffing companies and service providers and offering “last mile training” on skills that employers need. He names them “placement colleges.”
There are new methods of education emerging to close the aspiration-to-experience gap that college consumers describe, providing individuals with new options to gain the knowledge and skills that can lead to “getting a better job.”
Bruno V. Manno is senior adviser for the K-12 Program with the Walton Family Foundation.
