The majority of employers still view a college degree as being worth it, according to a national survey from The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).
Dr. Ashley Finley
The survey – conducted online in May 2023 in partnership with Morning Consult – asked 1,010 employers – hiring managers and executives – about their views on the value of a college education and preparedness of incoming graduates into the workforce.
Findings indicated that 83% of employers are confident that higher ed is successfully preparing students for the workforce, with 48% ‘strongly’ and 35% ‘somewhat’ agreeing. 81% of employers also either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agreed that getting a degree was worth it, despite the money and time involved.
Younger employers – those under 40 – seem to have more confidence in college than their older counterparts – those age 40 and above, with more of the younger employers signaling strong confidence in higher ed’s workforce preparation and degrees.
This finding is particularly relevant at a time when public sentiment for the value of higher ed is on the decline. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 36% of respondents had “a great deal of confidence” or “quite a lot of confidence” in higher ed, a significant decline from 48% in 2018 or 57% in 2015.
Based on their responses, employers seemed to value higher ed’s capacity to teach students how to think independently and apply ideas hands-on more than anything else, with 59% and 56% of employers, respectively, saying that those characteristics, in a well-rounded education, help ‘a great deal’ for workforce success.
Similarly, employers answered that they valued problem-solving smarts – knowledge from addressing real-life problems – more than any other kind of knowledge, with 66% of employers agreeing, compared to the next most valued knowledge, knowledge from interdisciplinary thinking (53%).
