Today, institutions primarily look at average salary data for graduates or whether or not students got a job after graduation. Executives want to be able to show student success over time–-especially important as students seek to better understand how schools can help change or advance their careers.
Understanding how their students fare in the workforce post-graduation allows program and marketing directors to tweak program content, improve messaging to prospective students, and make a stronger case to employers as higher education institutions compete for diminishing tuition reimbursement dollars.
“The survey results underscore the importance of preparing students for lifelong career success,” said Scott Fassbach, Chief Research Officer at EAB. “Institutions are clearly responding to contemporary learner demands for flexible, personalized, and effective education options.”
Additionally, short-format, alternative credentials for students changing careers, like certificates and digital badges, are garnering intense interest from senior executives—and the survey suggests a doubling of such offerings over the next five years.
Close to 50 percent of respondents plan to add customizable certificates to their portfolio in the next five years, compared to the 4 percent of respondents who currently offer this type of credential. Thirty percent of respondents plan to offer digital badges in the next five years.
“Millennials—poised to represent three-quarters of the workforce by 2025 and expected to average 20 jobs over the course of their lifetimes—are approaching professional education differently,” said Carla Hickman, Practice Manager at EAB. “They are seeking short-format courses and credentials for ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just enough’ education.”
For its annual Future of Online and Professional Education Survey, EAB surveyed 85 senior executives of continuing, online, and professional education in spring 2015. Survey questions are based on EAB’s thousands of annual research interviews with higher education executives and insights from more than 1,000 EAB members.
Material from a press release was used in this report.
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