Employers as the New Accreditor

At last week’s Parchment Summit on Innovating Academic Credentials, a panel in which I participated focused on the role of the employer in higher education. From the panel description: “While the debate over the role of accreditation in determining the value and quality of a degree rages on in Washington, employers are increasingly taking on a role in quality control through their work training and tuition-assistance programs. More and more employers want control over where their dollars are spent for education, and in doing so, are having an impact on the quality discussion in higher education.”

Is this a good thing?

Some—including my fellow panelist, Burck Smith of StraighterLine—would say that employers and industry have always informed quality standards in higher education, and that higher education has typically been open to considerations of industry. In the US, where an antipathy to elites and intellectuals has often informed public policy, government support of higher education has long been tied to economic and industrial development. The Morrill Land Grant Act, for example, passed by Congress in 1862, was intended to “provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts."

Certainly, higher ed would not play as important a part of the economic life of the country as it does unless it offered a curriculum and policies that promoted regional and national economic goals and needs. Sometimes this is industry-specific, as with the many hospitality management degrees offered in areas with large tourism sectors, or something like the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in an area where there is a need for research and learning for the mining industry (we don’t have one in New Jersey, though there is this).

Most individual employers recognize the effect of an educated workforce on their own success as well. Education is more than job training: employers understand that education can teach more than functional skills. One employer survey after another finds that most employers want employees with skills like critical thinking, communication in multiple settings and modes, information literacy—most of what goes into a college general education program. And employers know that a college education can provide these “soft skills”: a recent study by SHRM found that 54% of employers offered some sort of tuition reimbursement program for their employees. (These skills, by the way, are also part of what one needs in a labor-based participatory democracy—the foundations of good citizenship. Despite the concerns of some in the education sector, the goal of most employers is not to create docile workers. Certainly not those who send their employees to college. But I digress.)

With money and their long-term viability at stake, it is no surprise that employers and industry have an interest in the quality of the programs offered by their educational partners, This desire for quality assurance differs from the usual approach used in higher ed. The self-studies that many institutions use as a gauge of their effectiveness and quality are not often engaged with relationships with the outside world, nor with what new measures of effectiveness have been introduced recently. Self studies can be very self-referential: “how well are we fulfilling our mission compared to how well we did five years ago?”

Likewise, the regional accreditation system that dominates in the US plays an important role in maintaining the stability of the higher education sector and the institutions that are part of it, but this emphasis doesnot lend itself to fostering innovation or flexibility. You can have stability or innovation, but it’s hard to do both at once. As accreditors are increasingly pressured by the US Department of Education, their benchmarks and standards have become more prescriptive over time, focused not only on how well an institution compares with itself, but also on how institutions conform to standards having more to do with narrow ideas of institutional quality than with meaningful education achievement, and on inputs rather than outcomes. Regional accreditation may guarantee academic quality, but not relevance, which should be part of a broader definition of quality.

But innovation and continued relevance to keep up with a rapidly evolving world and marketplace is exactly what higher ed needs. This is where employers come into play.

Employers’ quality standards might define education goals in terms of their bottom line, but if a focus on the bottom line means remaining competitive over the long haul, that can mean a commitment to staying innovative and keeping an edge in their industries. This should also translate into a commitment to employee development: succession planning, promotability, growth, innovation. Such goals mean an approach to education that is outcomes-focused and competency-focused: it doesn’t matter where you acquired your knowledge and skills, as long as you have mastered them and can apply them.

While there is usually a convergence on standards in competitive industries, employers might differ from each other in their view of the place of higher education and how they value it. In this regard, one potential challenge for educators could arise when an employer is short-sighted about its goals and how to achieve them, or when it doesn’t see value in a broad-based education that trains employees to be leaders rather than cogs. It is probably up to each institution to decide how and whether to integrate employer needs and goals with its own values and mission. Fortunately, many of the employers currently exploring partnerships with higher ed do see the value of a liberal education and the goals of general education.

On the other hand, for educators, it is always valuable to explore different approaches to quality and standards. Why should our outcomes, in my case at Thomas Edison State University, a public institution focused on helping adult learners achieve their goals, be exactly the same as those of, say, Princeton University, a few miles up the road? Does anyone believe that they are now? Why should they never change? Our methods of instruction are not the same—we draw upon the learning that adult students acquire through work, military, and informal experiences and leverage them toward completing our curriculum and earning a meaningful credential. We serve different student populations from different backgrounds, who have different aspirations. Both populations and sets of goals are needed in our society and our economy, and so are others. Both Princeton and Thomas Edison State University serve social and economic ends. But are they currently validated in the same way, or should they be?

For the typical Thomas Edison student, whose stated goal is often to improve their work situation, an employer’s endorsement of their program of study and their approach is important and meaningful. In addition, our partner JetBlue not only endorses programs of study, they also provide crucial supplemental advising and coaching for their employees to help them navigate our systems and policies and minimize costs. This approach would probably work for most of our students.

This approach also works for the institution. JetBlue and other corporate partners have been diligent and thorough in reviewing and thinking through our approach, asking for logical consistency regarding residency requirements, transfer policies, things our regional accreditor, the Middle States Commission, wouldn’t be expected to do. JetBlue also gives us regular feedback on our programs and processes (though this feedback is never intrusive nor presented as an ultimatum). Essentially they have applied their corporate approach to a state institution’s policies. While sometimes we experience this as a culture clash, it has certainly given us opportunities to consider improvements and more effective practices that can better serve our adult learners. It has even led us to consider the development of new degree programs, though, despite our partners’ hopes, this is not an overnight process.