Higher Ed Failing Students as They Navigate College and Career

Reading new national student survey results showing deep dissatisfaction with campus career services, I felt a familiar tension. As a nontraditional university president nearly five years into my job, I felt a tad defensive. Our career services team has been working incredibly hard to keep pace with a changing job market, and we are making great progress. But as a former special forces officer and business leader, I also know that sometimes blunt, negative results like these can prompt an entire sector—in this case higher education—to take action and seek big solutions.
 
The immediate problem identified in the recent survey is that we’re not effectively meeting students’ career-readiness needs. Only 14 percent of the 2,239 undergraduates around the country who replied to a summer survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse, with support from Kaplan, felt that they had received good service from their school’s career center (Just 2 percent felt they had received bad customer service from the career center, and the rest didn’t feel strongly either way.)
 
At a time when many in this country are questioning the value of a college degree, this is an alarming result. And it’s a stark reminder that simply making a service available to students isn’t the same as, well, identifying their needs, developing effective ways to help them achieve their goals and earning their respect and loyalty...

Read the full article here at Inside Higher Ed