|
|
|
The views expressed on this page are soley
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
|
Credit: Pixabay
Graduates value degrees and courses relevant to their jobs, survey finds
Natalie Schwartz
Nov. 18, 2019
Dive Brief:
Students tend to see more value in their postsecondary education when
it features coursework relevant to their jobs, according to a new
survey of 340,000 people from Gallup and Strada Education Network.
Most (57%) graduates of nondegree vocational and technical programs
strongly agreed their education was worth the price. That's compared to
50% of respondents with graduate degrees, 48% with associate degrees
and 40% with bachelor's degrees who say the same.
Only about one-fourth of students who left college before completing a
credential said it was worth the cost or strengthened their job
candidacy.
Dive Insight:
The report's authors note that students don't just consider wages when
determining the value of their credentials. They also want to see the
connection between their education and careers. For instance, students
viewed college majors as more valuable when they were tied to specific
jobs.
More than half (52%) of graduates with degrees in health care fields
strongly agreed their degrees were worth the cost and 72% said they
made them more attractive to employers. Meanwhile, only about one-third
of liberal arts majors said the same about the cost of their degrees
and use in the job market.
Moreover, when the students surveyed saw their coursework as relevant
to their careers, they valued their credentials more and had greater
confidence in their ability to land jobs.
These results support previous findings from Strada-Gallup surveys. In
a 2018 survey, respondents were 5.5 times more likely to agree that
their education was worth what they paid if their courses were relevant
to their work.
Yet there's a well-documented disconnect between the skills colleges
teach and what the workplace demands. Only 26% of working adults that
went to college agree their courses are relevant to their job and that
they use them in their day-to-day lives, the 2018 survey found.
Employers have voiced similar concerns. In a pair of surveys last year,
business executives and hiring managers said new graduates often lacked
important job-place skills such as oral communication, critical
thinking and self-motivation.
To fill in these gaps, colleges are borrowing tactics commonly used by
workforce-oriented institutions to bring in-demand skills into liberal
arts curriculum.
"We're at another turning point," Andrea Backman, chief employability
officer at Strategic Education — which owns Capella University, a
for-profit online college for adult learners — told Education Dive
earlier this year. "Education is turning on its head to be
skills-based."
Other institutions are turning toward partnerships. For instance, the
Dominican University of California, a liberal arts college, is working
with the Make School, a coding academy, to offer its students a
computer science minor. In exchange, the university is helping the
coding school become a fully accredited institution.
Boot camps are also a popular partner. Johns Hopkins and Harvard
universities have enlisted the help of boot camps in the past year or
so to provide adult learners with career training.
And colleges are strengthening their often-underused career services
offices. To do so, some are requiring students to see career advisers
more often and helping them explore more career paths, as well as
gathering data on employment information for individual programs.
|
|
|
|
