Teaching: What Employers Want

Have you ever wondered what employers are looking for in our graduates?

While news outlets have trumpeted headlines that Americans believe that higher education is headed in the wrong direction (see the Pew Survey announcement), the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) just released a report entitled “Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the Future of Work” (July 2018). The report summarizes the results of a national survey of business executives and hiring managers from private sector and nonprofit organizations, both of whom have a higher degree of confidence in colleges and universities than the wider American public.

The full report is worth a read, but there are two graphs of interest that show how we, as a liberal arts college, are headed in the right direction (at least according to employers – though that, of course, is not the purpose of a liberal arts education).

Note that the graph shows that employers (both hiring managers and executives) believe that high impact learning (especially internships) makes them much more likely to hire recent graduates.

This graph shows the value of ePortfolios, of the usefulness of ePortfolios in evaluating recent graduates’ potential for success in their workplace.

If you want to have students in your department or class make ePortfolios and are not familiar with the Davidson Domains project, come see us!