Brian Herman and Claudia Neuhauser

Soft Skills—We Have Heard It Before

With cooler weather across much of the nation, opinions about higher education are heating up again as students return to our colleges and universities. Campuses continue to wrestle with free speech and how to create welcoming and inclusive environments for all students while fighting the perception of leftist professors indoctrinating impressionable young minds. It is perhaps time that we answer a more practical question lest we lose sight of why colleges should still exist in the 21^st century: What do business and industry as the primary recipients of college graduates want from colleges and universities?

For years, we have seen survey after survey that employers are looking for candidates with soft skills, or, what a recent survey called “uniquely human skills.”[1]  One such survey is the 2013 Hart Research Associates survey of employers, which explains in great detail what employers want: Over 90% of employers who participated in the survey indicated that critical thinking, clear communication, and complex problem-solving skills are more important than a specific major. 80% of employers want candidates to have broad knowledge in the sciences and the liberal arts. And they are looking for candidates with “ethical judgment and integrity; intercultural skills; and the capacity for continued learning.”

Soft skills alone aren’t enough, however. While the specific undergraduate major may not matter as much, employers still want to see that students can apply the skills they acquired. Specifically, practices that employers want students to experience include “a) conduct research and use evidence-based analysis; b) gain in-depth knowledge in the major and analytic, problem solving, and communication skills; and c) apply their learning in real-world settings.”[2]

There is no disagreement about the importance of these skills and habits. Colleges and universities list them in one form or another as learning or development outcomes on their websites, and spend time, in particular during accreditation, to demonstrate that students achieved those. Yet, despite these significant efforts, employers struggle to find graduates with these skills. It is not difficult to see why: Far too few students are exposed to these practices. Most undergraduate students go through college without ever having done a substantive open-ended project that is critical to developing the “uniquely human skills.”

Expanding collaboration between the private sector and academia

With the rapid transition to a new economy driven by automation and A.I., the private sector will be looking even more for employees with “uniquely human skills.” We believe that expanding collaboration between academia and the private sector could deliver such employees, and reshape what, and likely also how, we deliver postsecondary education. We may even end up with relevant curricula that engage students and improve their success.

Many four-year institutions already work with industry, but mostly on research projects. Instead, we are talking about opening the classroom to industry partners. This can soften the transition between college and the workplace. Students can learn from those who are already in the workforce about what it is really like to work in the private sector. Highly skilled industry employees can also alleviate gaps in expertise in academia, in particular in rapidly growing areas where recruiting faculty is a challenge.

Curricular collaborations are already common practice in community colleges where a number of large companies have been partnering for years with community colleges to offer programs that meet their workforce needs, in particular in high tech jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. These partnerships give community college access to curricula and certificates that prepare students for specific tasks they encounter in the workplace.

These kinds of public-private partnerships deserve a closer look as to how they might be expanded to four-year institutions. This will be more challenging since faculty in four-year institutions will be much more hesitant to collaborate on curricula. They might be afraid that they are relinquishing their prerogative of what happens in their classrooms to the private sector.

Why? For many decades, there have been strong voices in academia that have warned about taking money from industry as this might compromise academia’s ability to create “reliable public knowledge,”[3] untainted by special interest groups. Having this reputation is of immense long-term value in a democratic society where the public needs to be able to trust experts whose opinions influence decision-makers. It will therefore be important for academia and the private sector to spend some time listening to and learning from each other to build trust for effective collaborations and overcome their cultural differences.

Focusing on today’s needs to build tomorrow’s workforce

The cultural differences between academia and the private sector can slow much needed change. Yet without a deeper involvement of the private sector in higher education, employers may continue to see candidates lacking the “uniquely human skills.” There is an added advantage of deeper ties, namely this would give the private sector access to students who they may want to recruit. Here are some concrete suggestions.

Bring industry into the classroom: Building the skills employers want can be done in a formal classroom setting. Over the past couple of decades, problem-based learning and other forms of active classroom learning have spread across institutions, in particular in the physical and life sciences. These approaches not only increase student learning, but they also provide opportunities to work on more complex problems in teams and to communicate results in written or oral form. There are opportunities for the private sector to bring problems to the classroom to expose a large number of students not only to the types of problems the private sector faces but also to ways the private sector approaches solving them.

Have students interact with industry more outside of the classroom: Co-curricular activities also would hugely benefit from involving business and industry a lot more. Co-curricular activities are academic experiences that complement formal classroom learning. Students don’t get credits for these activities, but they build valuable skills. Externships and internships are examples of co-curricular activities that have helped traditionally to expose college students to the workplace by embedding them in the workplace for periods of time. Undergraduate research is another example of a co-curricular activity that has spread substantially in higher education over the past twenty years. While undergraduate research is often thought of as a pathway to graduate education, students could be integrated into research projects that are jointly done by a faculty member in academia and a private sector partner. Larger companies also often have community outreach programs where participation of undergraduate students could not only benefit the outreach program but also allow students to meet employees outside of work and see a more human face of the private sector.

Enable life-long learning: Becoming a life-long learner is the reality of today’s fast-paced economy. Right now, there are enormous needs to upskill the current workforce in data science. Tomorrow it might be some other area. Continual upskilling of the workforce requires more flexibility beyond what colleges and universities offer through traditional degree programs. Students who are already in the workforce often juggle a job and family on top of taking courses. They may not want a full degree but rather focused certificates. They need courses in the evenings and on weekends in addition to online courses. And universities should consider delivering education at the workplace instead of asking employees to leave their workplace early and try to find parking on campus. These students also want hands-on experiences, ideally in projects that are directly related to their day job and can be done at their workplace to provide immediate benefit to their employer who might then be more willing to provide financial support to employees for their education.

Society might swallow the high cost of education more easily if they had more confidence that the degree or certificate would deliver skills that the private sector values, both for those where a college education is a path to the first job to launch their careers and for those who are already in the workforce and need to upskill and expand their capabilities. Involving business and industry in shaping college experiences could do just that. And, who knows, leveraging the private sector may significantly reduce the cost of education and provide the US with a more highly skilled workforce.

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[1] New Survey: Demand for “Uniquely Human Skills” Increases Even as Technology and Automation Replace Some Jobs. News Provided by Cengage. January 16, 2019. (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-survey-demand-for-uniquely-human-skills-increases-even-as-technology-and-automation-replace-some-jobs-300779214.html; accessed on September 16, 2019)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Academic Freedom and the Corporate University. American Association of University Professors. January-February 2011. (https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-and-corporate-university; accessed on September 22, 2019)