IHE: "Liberal Arts What Employers Need"

[Wahoo Redux]

I think we have been around this block before, but still, the commentary fizzles on...

[polly_mer]

The examples of jobs aren't related to the liberal arts classroom experience.  Instead, those job skills are much more likely acquired by being well off enough to have put a lot of effort into organizing clubs, networking with the right people, and other experiences related to having grown up with a hefty dose of social capital.

In other words, the correlation remains between having good social capital and good life outcomes, not anything related to the educational experience itself, as many of the comments point out.

[Wahoo Redux]

Does it ever occur to you that you and I both come here and beat the same drums, Polly?

Sure, some of the comments say something close to that---but several more say something completely different.  And we must take said "comments" as nonscientific editorializing and conjecture anyway since these are most likely people like us: higher ed educators who have basically quick observations and opinions. 

And in any event, that is not what the article said.

[marshwiggle]

A couple of interesting points from the article:

The discussion also suggests some changes liberal arts colleges could make to keep employers happy. At some point, institutions could start certifying skills that contribute to what McBride calls inclusive leadership, just like some institutions provide certificates for coding skills.


The experience of Brandman University in California might offer some insight.
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Brandman's chancellor and chief executive officer, Gary Brahm, described what he called "backwards program design." It involves designing degree programs by looking at the knowledge, skills and capabilities that will help employment outcomes.
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Degree programs can be validated by employers and outside sources of workplace data, such as Burning Glass, to ensure the skills really match employer needs and wants.

Brahm also stressed a need to make sure students are picking up the competencies.

"Because we will embed these competencies across the curriculum, we need to have institutionally developed standardized testing to measure how well you're doing," he said.

These sound shockingly like "job training" to me. In other words, verifying that specific skills that employers want are independently verified to be taught in specific courses sounds like what humanities people often disparage.

[mythbuster]

   One of my roommates in college uses to joke that she was really majoring in "Meetings and Committees".  She was very social, and an active leader in several different organizations. She has been very successful, but not in the field of her major. My guess is that she would qualify under Polly's definition of gaining more via social capital than formal education.
   I think that nowadays, we really undervalue formal training in social and organizational skills. I also think these skills are much of what employers are actually looking for in college graduates. Unfortunately, many of the students I know so devalue the social aspect of college that they are graduating without having developed any of these skills. They are stunted, and therefore lag behind in finding and succeeding in entry to career type jobs.

[marshwiggle]

   One of my roommates in college uses to joke that she was really majoring in "Meetings and Committees".  She was very social, and an active leader in several different organizations. She has been very successful, but not in the field of her major. My guess is that she would qualify under Polly's definition of gaining more via social capital than formal education.
   I think that nowadays, we really undervalue formal training in social and organizational skills. I also think these skills are much of what employers are actually looking for in college graduates. Unfortunately, many of the students I know so devalue the social aspect of college that they are graduating without having developed any of these skills. They are stunted, and therefore lag behind in finding and succeeding in entry to career type jobs.

So here's the question: How can these skills be formally taught in a meaningful way, and/or how can students be made consciously aware of their development in the "social aspect" of their education?

(I've said this before, but in STEM, labs (in principle) focus on the practical skill development, somewhat independent of theoretical course content. Humanities don't have a similar structure for that purpose in my experience.)

[Aster]

The U.S. university model has dual purposes of education and enrichment. Over the last few decades some people have been forgetting or starving out the enrichment component.

Attend a university that keeps to the dual-purpose mission.

Get out of your house.

Live in a campus dormitory.

Engage in campus activities.

Take a study abroad course.

Join some clubs.

Try a sport.

Get a part-time job on campus.

It's not really about the Humanities at all.

**Don't hide out at home enrolling in nothing but fully online courses and only "socializing" with your facebook "friends" **
** Stop blaming the educational arm of the Academy for enrichment cutback policies carried out by university leaders. A U.S. bachelor's degree is designed to teach much more than just what one gets from formal courses. **

[spork]

From Derek Bok, Higher Education in America, 2015, p. 191-192*:

"At Indiana University, professors in the history department concluded that undergraduates were misconceiving what the study of history was all about. 'Students come into our classrooms believing that history is about stories full names and dates,' explained one of the professors. 'They discover that history is actually about interpretation, evidence, and argument.' The problem was that neither the lectures nor the exams given to students reflected this view of the subject. Instead, they reinforced the students' notion that history was all about facts and dates."

Bok then describes how faculty members changed their teaching methods.

Unfortunately undergraduates encounter the "facts and dates" approach in too many of their courses, taught by faculty who don't know how to change or have no interest in changing. The net effect on students is a bunch of empty requirements to meet on the way to a bachelor's degree, while not learning skills or knowledge that employers want.

*full disclosure: I came upon this by following comments on another IHE editorial.

[Golazo]

Maybe this is a good place for the following study, which found "that the median ROI of liberal arts colleges is nearly $200,000 higher than the median for all colleges. Further, the 40-year median ROI of liberal arts institutions ($918,000) is close to those of four-year engineering and technology-related schools ($917,000), and four-year business and management schools ($913,000)." This includes plenty of non-selective LACS that frequently get pounded on here in the calculation:

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/CollegeROI/