Higher Education & Workforce Development:
Friend or Foe
SHEEO Higher Education Policy Conference
August 2016
Debra Humphreys, Senior Vice President for Academic Planning and
Public Engagement, AAC&U
www.aacu.org/leap; @debrahumphreys
[email protected]
The Big Economic Picture
“Human work will increasingly shift toward two kinds of tasks:
solving problems for which standard operating procedures do not
currently exist, and working with new information—acquiring it,
making sense of it, communicating it to others….today, work that
consists of following clearly specified directions is increasingly being
carried out by computers and workers in lower-wage countries. The
remaining jobs that pay enough to support families require a deeper
level of knowledge and the skills to apply it.”
“Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, “Dancing
with Robots” (2013)
Dancing With Robots (2013)
What do Employers Say?
Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success
(Hart Research Associate 2015)
AAC&U has commissioned a series of studies—focus
groups/surveys of students and business leaders, see:
www.aacu.org/leap/public-opinion-research
5
Three in five employers believe that it takes BOTH specific
knowledge/skills and broad knowledge/skills to achieve longterm career success.
Which is more important for recent college graduates to have who want to pursue advancement
and long-term career success at your company?
(employers)
Range of knowledge and skills that apply
to a range of fields or positions
25%
College students:
Specific
15%
Both
63%
Broad range
22%
Knowledge and skills that apply to a
specific field or position
15%
60%
Both field-specific and broad range
of knowledge and skills
6
Learning Outcomes that at Least Four in Five Employers Rate
as Very Important
Proportions of employers rating each skill/knowledge area
as very important for recent college graduates to have*
Oral communication
Students:
very important
for success
in workplace*
85%
Working effectively with
others in teams
83%
82%
Written communication
78%
77%
75%
Ethical judgment and
decision-making
81%
74%
Critical/analytical thinking
81%
79%
Applying knowledge/
skills to real world
80%
*8, 9, 10 ratings on zero-to-10 scale, 10 = very important
79%
College Learning for the New Global Century:
A Unified, Both/And Outcomes-Based Vision
“In a society as diverse as the US, there can be no ‘one-size-fits-all’
design for learning that serves all students and all areas of study….Yet
all educational institutions and all fields of study also share in a
common obligation to prepare graduates as fully as possible for the
real-world demands of work, citizenship, and life in a complex and fastchanging society….”
“[We must] create new crosswalks and communal spaces that support
educational collaboration across the traditional academic dividing lines
between the liberal arts and sciences and the professional fields.”
College Learning for the New Global Century (2007)
The Equity Imperative for Inclusive Excellence
“ A liberal and life-enhancing college education is especially
important to low-income students, who too often are steered in exactly
the opposite direction….[we must] make the most empowering forms
of learning expected for all college students, not just for the most
fortunate among them.”
“Bringing Quality and Equity Together” (AAC&U 2016)
Implications for State Systems and Policies
• Need to track students’ pathways based on their majors, but also
their specific educational experiences; Both long and short-term
• We need more data on broad outcomes required in different
careers/jobs and correlation between achievement levels and success
post-graduation;
• Policies must account for fact that about 40% of college educated
workers work in jobs unrelated to undergraduate majors;
• Labor market trend projections aren’t always reliable; be careful
about “new program development” based on short-term trends;
• Salary data isn’t everything—states need to understand how well
higher education is advancing success in socially valued professions
that may be less well paid.
Salary Isn’t Everything:
KCTCS Social Utility Index Measures Non-Wage
Returns to Graduates and Regions
“KCTS’s existing metrics focused on high-wage and high-demand
occupations, but did not identify occupations that provided value to the
community not reflected in occupational wages. In the absence of a
definitive list of ‘meaningful’ occupations, KCTCS developed five
indicators as components of the index.”
Identified low-wage, but high social utility occupations:
firefighters; medical records technicians; cardiovascular
technicians; childcare workers; EMTs; home health aides
Source: Whitfield, C., et. al. “A Social Utility Index: Developing a Method to Measure
Noneconomic Occupational Returns for College Graduates,” Change (March/April 2016).
Implications for Institutions and Systems
• Curricular redesign must focus on learning outcomes as much as
mix of majors;
• Need more and better data on student learning outcomes—
especially those outcomes most important for long-term career
success;
• More internships/experiential learning especially for liberal arts
majors (see Burning Glass reports);
• More big-picture thinking/broad learning in CTE and professional
majors;
• Gen Ed not just foundational; not just about knowledge areas
• All deserve education for responsible and active citizen engagement