Students Want More Workplace Skills From Colleges. Will Higher Ed Adjust?
Jenn Hoffmann
March 15, 2023
Today’s high school graduates are increasingly questioning whether higher education is worth it, and that’s pushing colleges to rethink the value they bring students.
This was a key theme I heard at last week’s SXSW EDU conference, where several panels addressed what today’s generation of students want, and how colleges can respond. It was also a top-of-mind issue for me coming into the conference. As a graduate student in Stanford University’s School of Education and Public Policy department, I’ve been examining the intersection between higher education and the working world for the past two years.
One survey presented by ECMC Group during a session on “Is College Worth It? Re-bundling Higher Education” noted that today’s students are very much focused on the tangible — specifically, maximizing future career outcomes and earnings potential and building durable, technical skill sets. The survey found that 81 percent of students want skills they’ll use in the working world after college. What they’re not interested in, however, is paying the ever-rising price of tuition just to graduate without a job that can pay off those debts.
