Employers dissatisfied with college graduates, a survey shows, who lack the skills that work experience brings.
By Eileen Griffin
Employers are frustrated with college-educated employees lacking skills, but full of angst and attitude.
A survey conducted by conservative private-sector companies RedBalloon and PublicSquare shows there is a skills mismatch between recent graduates with a four-year college degree and the needs of employers.
The October 2023 survey included 905 respondents, and had a 3 percent margin of error and 95 percent confidence level.
Small business owners surveyed said a college degree makes little or no difference in the quality of a candidate. With 83 percent finding a degree of little or no value, the employers said they would rather hire someone with four years of experience than four years of college.
Work experience is valued, and much can be learned through methods far less involved and expensive than college.
“This highlights the growing importance of on-the-job training,” writes Asher Dixon for RedBalloon.
One of the key findings addressed the critical thinking skills of college students. Of the employers surveyed, 89 percent responded with a “strong no” when asked if colleges foster free speech and debate, encouraging and developing critical thinking skills.
Results indicate that critical thinking skills are practically non-existent for college students.
A Gallup poll taken in July of this year offers similar results and concerns about the value of a college education.
The confidence Americans have in a college education has dropped to 36 percent, according to Gallup. In 2015, that number was 57 percent. When broken down by subgroup, the only group with more than 50 percent confidence in a college education was Democrats, at 59 percent.
While the reasons for the decline could partly be due to the increased costs, Michael T. Nietzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University, writes in an opinion for Forbes, it is likely not the only reason. Other potential reasons include the decline of enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns voiced by conservatives, and scandals occurring on campus.
“Finally, the perception that a college degree is no longer as essential for certain careers as it once was, has taken hold in the minds of many people, including employers,” Nietzel writes.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, an organization focused on advancing equity within higher education told US News that conservatives are voicing concerns that progressive ideology is undermining education, but also indoctrinating students into anti-American positions.
Pasquerella told the outlet that colleges need to focus on preparing students for a 2st century workforce.
An earlier 2017 Gallup survey indicated a strong divide between Republicans and Democrats on the declining confidence in a college education. Democrats cited the reason for the decline as the lack of support and the high cost, putting college out of reach for lower income students. Republicans said that colleges are too politically biased.
“Republicans with low levels of confidence in colleges are most likely to cite their belief that colleges and universities are too liberal and political, that colleges don’t allow students to think for themselves and are pushing their own agenda, or that students are not taught the right material or are poorly educated,” Frank Newport writes for Gallup.
“While the more recent Gallup poll did not ask respondents for their reasoning behind their confidence levels, it’s difficult to imagine this split has changed much,” writes Emma Camp for Reason.
Public distrust in the college system began after the 2008 recession, writes Douglas Belkin for The Wall Street Journal. The COVID-19 pandemic added to the drop in enrollment. In the last 10 years, college enrollment has dropped approximately 15 percent while student interest in other training and credentialing programs has increased dramatically.
A March 2023 WSJ poll showed that the only group who continued to value the four-year college program is Democrats.
“But 42 percent of people with college degrees said in the most recent survey that it wasn’t worth it, up more than 10 percentage points from the two polls last decade,” Belkin writes.
“Colleges have squandered a lot of good will by pushing a dogmatic left-wing religion,” Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University told the WSJ. “Normal people don’t have sympathy for that sort of thing, they find it very off-putting.”
Jack Elbaum, a 2023 fellow and contributor for the Washington Examiner, says the reason people have lost faith in college is because colleges have abandoned their mission in favor of leftist indoctrination.
“It is from the universities that the severe narrowing of the Overton window, or what is colloquially referred to as cancel culture, originated, where extreme political correctness took hold, where compelled speech in the form of DEI (Diversity, equity and inclusion) statements became normalized, and where freedom of thought was replaced with conformity of thought,” Elbaum writes.
“Giving into the demands of angry activists has become the forte of administrators,” Elbaum writes. “To see universities descend into the debased institutions they have become, too often beholden to consensus and liberal pieties, is a real issue and likely the root of declining trust. I don’t know why exactly universities went in this direction. But it is clear that they have.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Fox News commentator Maria Bartiromo that all major institutions have been taken over by the far left, with colleges and universities leading the way, The Gazette reports.
“I call universities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus,” Cruz told Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures November 12. “It’s where the virus was created, it’s where it mutated, it’s where it spread.”
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