What really matters in college: how students view & value liberal education

Liberal Education, Summer-Fall, 2005 by Debra Humphreys, Abigail Davenport

LIBERAL EDUCATION and America's Promise: Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College (LEAP), the decade-long campaign launched earlier this year by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC & U), rests on two fundamental premises. The first holds that there is an emerging, if hidden, consensus among business and civic leaders, professional accreditors, and college educators on the key outcomes of a quality undergraduate education. This consensus underlines the importance of an engaged and practical liberal education for all students, regardless of their chosen institution or field of study.

The LEAP campaign builds on the work of the AAC & U initiative Greater Expectations: The Commitment to Quality as a Nation Goes to College. In that project's influential report (2002), a national panel of leaders from a wide array of sectors both within and outside of the academy suggests that far more is, and should be, expected of today's students both in school and after they graduate. In order to ensure that all students meet these expectations, students themselves and their institutions must become far more intentional about preparing for and working toward a specific set of essential outcomes of college learning. This conclusion forms the second fundamental premise of the LEAP campaign.

Given this focus on key outcomes, these greater expectations for student learning and achievement, and the importance of intentionality, AAC & U has been exploring what different constituents know and think about the emerging consensus around outcomes, and whether different constituent groups--employers, students, faculty, accrediting agencies, recent graduates--see liberal education, as we do, as the most valuable form of education for our time. Through the Greater Expectations initiative and the Presidents' Campaign for Liberal Learning campus-community dialogues, AAC & U began this research by sponsoring conversations among business and academic leaders. The previous article in this series addressed some of the concerns of business leaders and why they are, indeed, so supportive of raising expectations and ensuring that all students receive an engaged and practical liberal education (see Jones 2005).

AAC & U also commissioned a series of student focus groups in four locations in different regions of the country. In each location, one discussion was held with public high school seniors or rising seniors who plan to pursue a baccalaureate degree, and a second discussion was held with advanced college students at both public and private colleges and universities. The eight focus groups explored the students' own hopes, concerns, expectations, and goals regarding college. We sought to understand their attitudes about and perceptions of liberal education, as well as the degree to which they recognize the value to their own futures of a liberal education and its key outcomes. The findings of these focus groups reveal that the learning outcomes business, civic, and academic leaders consider the most important either are not understood by, or are low priorities for, today's students.

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Findings

Professional success was identified by the participants in all eight focus group as the primary reason for pursuing a college degree, which students recognize as a basic requirement for success in today's competitive job marketplace. They understand, further, that college is important not only for obtaining a first job, but also for career advancement and success down the line. The current competitive and troubling economic environment seems to be driving students to focus only on narrow job categories and majors, however, rather than on the knowledge, skills, and capacities they actually will need in their working lives and in their lives as citizens, family members, and fulfilled human beings.

Students from both the college and the high school focus groups associated a wide array of positive emotions with college, but the high school students' anticipation about college was mixed with anxiety about making the transition to college life successfully. The college students reported high levels of stress related to the demands of college life and preparing for the job market, while the high school students expressed particular concern about the need for a very clear sense of their future employment goals and a specific choice of major to lead them to those goals. As one high school student in Indianapolis put it, "it's daunting to have to decide right now what I'm going to have to do with the rest of my life ... where I'm going to go to school, what I'm going to study, who I involve myself with. It is all encompassing about how I'm shaping my future, what I'm going to do with my life, how I'm going to make money for the rest of my life. It's just daunting."

In fact, when asked whether the degree is simply a "piece of paper" or credential, or if it represents significant achievement that will enable long-term success and fulfillment, the students were not in agreement. Some saw the degree as simply a "piece of paper"; others saw it as evidence of the attainment of knowledge, skills, and experience that enhance both professional and personal success. Two representative students articulated these different viewpoints. "I don't think it [the degree] means much of anything," said a college student in Alexandria, Virginia. "It's just a piece of paper. But that piece of paper will get you the interview at whatever job you want." A college student from Portland, Oregon, suggested that "college is about becoming a more well-rounded person--knowing, gaining ... getting a wide variety of facts and knowledge about the world to become a better individual and a better citizen.... I think it's valuable for being in the workforce," this student said, "but I think it's perhaps more valuable for personally gaining knowledge and understanding."