70% of employers have confidence in universities – Survey

Seventy per cent of employers indicate that they have either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s higher education institutions, according to a new survey by the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U).

Another 23% indicated they had some confidence, with only 7% indicating “very little confidence”.

Seventy-three per cent said the time and money spent earning a degree was either “definitely worth it” or “somewhat worth it”.

The findings contrast sharply with those studies conducted among America’s general population and registered voters.

In July, a Gallup/Lumina study reported that only 46% of people indicated they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s colleges and universities, although that share had risen six percentage points over the previous year.

In addition, an NBC poll released two weeks ago showed that 63% of registered voters believed that a four-year degree was “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off”.

The AAC&U survey, on the other hand, found that 85% of employers say that colleges are doing a good job of preparing students for the workforce – although this is made up of 38% who say: “They are doing a very good job and do not need major changes”, and 47% who say: “They are doing a somewhat good job but should make some changes”.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the AAC&U, told University World News the latest study “creates a more expansive narrative around the value of a college degree and whether we’re actually delivering the promise that we’ve made to our students and society”.

The fact that 77% of Republicans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s colleges and universities (three percentage points higher, in fact, than self-identified Democrats) provides the materials to “change the narrative” and counter the critique of higher education by the current administration.

“It’s an opportunity to tell a fuller, richer story of the value of higher education in America,” says Pasquerella.

The study, The Agility Imperative: How Employers View Preparation for an Uncertain Future (How Employers View), conducted by the business analytics firm Morning Consult, surveyed 1,030 employers in four different sectors of the economy (73% being private companies) last August. The results are considered accurate to within + or – 3%.

Diverse perspectives

While 70% of all employers indicated “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s colleges and universities, and Republicans and Democrats were only 3 percentage points apart, How Employers View found that Independents (who make up about one-third of American voters) have the lowest level of confidence, with only 55% reporting “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in American higher education.

The gap between respondents who are 50 or more years old and those under 40 years old was significant, with 74% of the younger cadre indicating “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence” in the nation’s higher education institutions but only 56% of older managers indicating so.

How Employers View broke the question about colleges’ and universities’ mission into six areas: 1) Provide a skilled workforce; 2) Help students become informed citizens; 3) Create an environment where students of all backgrounds feel supported; 4) Engage with and serve their community; 5) Provide a platform for exploring ideas; and 6) Foster cross-cultural understanding. The results were surprisingly uniform, with between 94% and 88% of employers indicating that these were either “very important” or “somewhat important”.

Even when the study disaggregated the responses for “Provide a platform for exploring ideas” and “Foster cross-cultural understanding”, and presented them by age of respondents and by political party, the results were remarkably similar, ranging from 94% of Democrats who underscored the importance of “providing a platform for exploring ideas” to 86% of Republicans who underscored the importance of “Foster cross-cultural understanding”.

On the question of providing a platform for exploring diverse ideas, the difference between older and younger respondents was 4 percentage points: 87% to 91%. Ninety per cent of the younger respondents said that “fostering cross-cultural understanding” was “very/somewhat important” compared to 80% of older respondents.

While the findings in How Employers View cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the findings in the Lumina/Gallup report, seeing where the two studies diverge is not difficult.

In the context of the debates about the so-called “wokeness” of American universities by President Donald J Trump, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’ Gregg Abbott, items two through six (above) would be termed by many as ideological “woke” activities encompassing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and courses that focus on the racial realities of American history.

The Lumina/Gallup study found that 38% of Lumina/Gallup’s respondents said they lacked confidence in higher education because of such political agendas on campus, while 32% said that colleges and universities had the “wrong focus”, with this theme including “Indoctrination/brainwashing/propaganda”, “Too liberal/political”, “Not allowing students to think for themselves/pushing their own agenda” and “Too much concentration on diversity, equity and inclusion”.

The distance between what Lumina/Gallup found and the banning of DEI and critical race theory in dozens of state public institutions and what employers told the AAC&U could hardly be more stark: 90% of Democratic employers, 83% of Republicans and 75% of independents said they would look “more favourably upon a degree from an institution known for respecting diverse perspectives (that is, political, economic, social) in the curriculum”.

Government restrictions

While the so-called ‘compact’ that the Trump administration offered colleges and universities in October landed like a damp squib, at their year-in-review podcast last week, Sarah Spreitzer, the American Council of Education vice-president and chief of staff for government relations, and Jon Fansmith, senior vice-president for government relations and national engagement, said that they expect the administration to come back next year with Compact 2.0.

How Employers View might, however, give the US administration pause, as it provides support for Fansmith’s critique of the original compact: “It destroys the idea of civil debate. It destroys the idea of academic freedom. It destroys these things that we understand to be effective in accomplishing not just preparing students to be great citizens, but to be effective employees and powerful innovators and creators of our economy.”

Morning Consult found that only 13% of Republican respondents indicated that they would look favourably upon an applicant with a degree from an institution that was “subject to government restrictions on what students learn and discuss”.

Fully 83% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat agreed that they would look favourably upon “a degree from an institution that was not subject to government restrictions on what students learn and discuss”. The figure for Democrats was exactly the same, while among Independents 78% opposed government control of what students can learn and discuss.

Put another way, even after months of the Trump administration pressuring elite colleges and universities to knuckle under to the government’s demands for viewpoint censorship and demanding that they restructure departments and curricula according to the government’s directives and, in some cases, appoint government overseers to ensure compliance – and after Trump used legal manoeuvres to force universities to disband DEI programmes and courses and ban the teaching of critical race theory – American business leaders strongly prefer that the government stay in its own lane.

Challenges to ‘America First’

Nor did a large majority of the employers surveyed agree with the 32% of Americans who told Lumina/Gallup that universities had the “wrong focus” and did not “teach right [relevant] things”.

Overall, 85% of employers were either satisfied with what universities were teaching or felt that they were doing a good job, but some changes were needed. Among Democrats, this figure rose to 90%, while among Republicans it was 72%.

The gap in answers to this question between respondents over 50 and under 40 was one of the largest gaps of any question in the survey. Seventy two per cent of those over 50 were largely satisfied with what new employees had learnt at college, while among those under 40, the figure was 90%.

The findings of Morning Consult’s drill-down provide another indication of the distance that employers are from the administration’s “America First” agenda, as was discussed in these pages last week in relation to the reorientation of the Fulbright and other international scholarships.

To the prompt, “Recent college graduates possess the skills and knowledge to succeed in entry-level positions within my company or organisation”, 84% said they were either “very/somewhat prepared” to appreciate cultural differences, and 75% said new hires were prepared to “situate issues in global contexts”.

Additionally, the Morning Consult found that 76% of employers were “very/somewhat more likely” to consider hiring a recent graduate if they have experience “with community org/did community-based project”, 75% if they “worked with people from diverse backgrounds or cultures”, 69% if they “completed a project focused on addressing a global issue” or 69% if they “participated in a global experience.”

‘Reframe the narrative’

Pasquerella said that the questions concerning artificial intelligence were new. But even here, again, employers are relatively pleased with new graduates’ skills. Fully 91% think that AI skills are essential. But 81% are “very/somewhat confident” that colleges and universities are helping students develop skills that align with current and emerging uses of artificial intelligence in the workforce.

Interestingly, more than 70% of executives feel this way, while 55% of hiring managers do. Equally interesting, non-tech industries are 13 percentage points less sanguine than are tech industries: 56% vs 69%.

The overall support for what universities are teaching about the use of AI led Pasquerella to say that this shows that “colleges are [being] adaptable and flexible, counter to what’s being said about higher education”.

“We often hear students that say that they feel they’re not prepared for the workforce, and yet employers are saying, ‘No, actually, we think that these graduates are prepared. Here are the skills and competencies we want’.

“What we have to do is make … transparent to students what the value of the liberal education they are receiving is and how those skills and competencies translate into what they will need to do in the workforce.

“We have not been good at that. We haven’t been good at being transparent about assignment design, the way in which employers are looking at students who have internship experience or applied learning in the classroom.

“So, there’s work for us to do. The study is a call to action to reframe the narrative in ways that help restore public trust, in ways that align with employers’ trust in higher education,” said Pasquerella.