And even more to the point, of course: Actually helping students prepare for their careers is easier said than done. That’s especially true for small colleges that aren’t sitting on fat endowments and that enroll a high proportion of financially needy students. Those students have the fewest advantages when it comes to having connections for first jobs and internships. And as graduates, they could be seriously at risk economically if their investment in college didn’t adequately prepare them for the workplace.
All of that came sharply into focus for me last week when I spoke to 75 college leaders from the Yes We Must Coalition at their gathering at Augsburg University, in Minneapolis, on engaging with employers. (The 35-member coalition includes only colleges where at least half of the students qualify for Pell Grants and the overall undergraduate enrollment is no greater than 7,500.)
Yes We Must, which I’ve been following since it became a national advocacy group, invited me to share some lessons on developing employer partnerships from my report. I took the opportunity to ask them about the particular challenges they face and the strategies they employ — considering their limited size and resources and the nature of their student bodies. In asking that, I kind of horned in on their meeting, so I’m grateful for their willingness to let me report what they shared.
Here’s some of what struck me:
Being located near a tech hub like San Francisco doesn’t guarantee that students can get internships.
Holy Names University is in Oakland, Calif. But because so many of its students need to work, internships at the many start-ups and tech giants in the region are often out of the picture for them. What’s more, they can’t always afford the costs of getting to them. BART, the local public-transit authority, can be pricey, and, as Laura Lyndon, the university’s vice president for student affairs, noted, “a lot of students don’t have cars.”
Making the case for changes that might enhance students’ career readiness can be tough.
Faculty members in the liberal arts can be wary of adding components from other disciplines to majors because “they’re scared they’re going to lose what students they have,” said Beverly Downing, associate provost at Huston-Tillotson University. And getting buy-in from administrators isn’t necessarily any easier. Some of them are mindful of the debates about the role of college, she said, and can be reluctant to adopt approaches that may seem too career-focused.
Colleges may need to create their own work-and-learn opportunities.
The nursing program at Martin Methodist College is the only one in a 17-county region of Tennessee. To give students hands-on experience, the college operates a “nursing van” service that takes them to see patients in church basements, school lunchrooms, senior homes, and community centers throughout the south-central part of the state.
Relationships with employers need to be thoughtfully cultivated.
That’s advice from Chris Dowdy, vice president for academic affairs at Paul Quinn College, which has developed an array of job-placement partnerships that place students with employers in Dallas and Plano, Tex., as part of its work-college model. “When employers think of it as a favor or a donation,” he said, the relationship may not be as lasting. Colleges should recognize that they, too, bring value to the partnerships, especially if their students represent a population that employers are trying to recruit, he said. Sometimes colleges should be talking with the talent-development office of the employer, not just the social-responsibility folks.
To use faculty members effectively in enhancing students’ career opportunities, give them support.
In “Career-Ready Education,” I floated the burgeoning idea of “faculty-employability fellowships” to acquaint professors more directly with what employers want. Turns out at least one college, Virginia’s Averett University, is way ahead of me. Next summer eight professors will spend two weeks studying employers’ needs in the region so they can incorporate some of that into their teaching and develop relationships that could lead to internships or student projects based on the real needs of companies and nonprofits. Billy Wooten, executive director of the college’s Center for Community Engagement and Career Competitiveness, told me he’s also hoping to create an Averett Corps, which would allow students to work in departments on campus that are closely aligned with their majors.
The best connections might already be on the payroll.
When Martin Methodist went looking for a new director of internships, it decided that the best person for the job was an internal candidate — Pat Ford, an instructor in business who just happened to also be the mayor of Pulaski. Politically popular and well-known in regional economic-development circles, he’s helped open doors for the college with many companies and says employers are eager to talk with him. Ford was at the gathering, too, so I asked him whether that openness was due to his being director of internships or his being the mayor. “It doesn’t matter,” he responded with a big grin. “It works.”
In other news...
Some interesting reports have recently hit my inbox. One of them, from the National Skills Coalition, deals with the big issue of how to define quality in nondegree credentials — things like certificates, industry certifications, and occupational licenses offered sometimes by colleges but mostly by employers, private training companies, unions, and other sorts of organizations. Yet, as the report notes, not all nondegree credentials are equal: “Some connect individuals to good careers, while others have little or no economic payoff.”
The coalition’s report recommends criteria that states could use to assess the quality of these credentials. And it couldn’t be more timely. A report slated for publication on Wednesday by Credential Engine, a digital repository, counts more than 730,000 credentials in the United States alone, including those at the K-12 level. It also notes that nonacademic providers now offer nearly as many credentials as traditional higher ed does.
A project focused on helping students who “stop out” is expanding. A year ago, I wrote about an effort to teach colleges how to develop the on-ramps that could help students who have left before graduating to “reclaim” their degrees. The project, known as Degrees When Due, announced this week that it was adding about 50 colleges to the effort. They’ll join an initial group of 104.
Finally there’s this, for anyone interested in a little compare-and-contrast between the Trump and Obama administrations. As we’ve previously reported, the U.S. Department of Education recently issued new rules for borrowers seeking to get their student loans discharged if the borrowers were defrauded or cheated by their colleges or if their colleges closed. Consumer activists contend that the rules create a nearly impossible hurdle for students to show that they have been wronged. Now three student-advocacy groups have produced a document comparing the new rule with the 2016 Obama-era version. And lest there be any doubt where these groups stand, you’ll get more than a little hint from the title: “Top 10 Ways the New Borrower Defense Rule Is Worse For Borrowers.”
Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com.
