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June 6, 2018
 
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Higher Education & Employability: The Series ...
Career Opportunities
 
Welcome back to our series on the recommendations of NEBHE's Commission on Higher Education & Employability and its report Learning for Life and Work.

This week, we pick up with the Commission's recommendations on
"Planning, Advising and Career Services." 
   
About 85% of U.S. college freshmen said getting a better job was a major reason for going to college--and six in 10 considered a college's ability to help its graduates get good jobs when deciding where to attend, according to a recent survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.
 
Career services offices can play vital roles in helping students develop education and career plans and prepare for the world of work. Yet in a separate survey, Gallup reports that while almost 50% of students say academic advisors provide help in choosing courses, only 28% of students say that academic advisors are very helpful in identifying or evaluating career options.
 
The pertinent recommendations (as numbered in the Learning for Life and W ork report):
 
­­­ 7. New England higher education institutions should invest in, and elevate--on campus, and through New England higher education accreditation standards--advising and career services as key priorities that improve not only graduate employability but also enrollment, retention and completion.

8. New England higher education institutions should better engage each student in clearer goal-setting processes, career-planning engagements and career-related assessments. They should actively expand students' access to: job search and job-getting skills; career management skills; readiness for lifelong learning; and a knowledge of the future of work and skills--preparing them to navigate the changing world of work.
 
9. The New England states should launch a New England Planning, Advising and Career Services Network--a collaborative community of practice to drive innovation, provide shared services and increase the availability of cutting-edge and best-in-class resources across all types of higher education institutions.

Among stakeholder actions, the Commission calls on higher ed institutions to view career services as a key part of a larger "ecosystem" of improved student employability that includes administrators, faculty, staff, employers and alumni and to appoint the senior career services leader to an assistant or associate provost level to better integrate with academic affairs and to support planning, advising and career services in serving the institution's business model, students' needs and employer partners. And the institutions should require that the career planning and advising process begin early in students' postsecondary experiences and include development of résumés and LinkedIn profiles and a knowledge of internship and job search skills, interview preparation, the ability to articulate skills and knowledge of employers and industries.
 
The Commission recommends that NEBHE catalyze stakeholders to collaboratively build institutional capacity across the region for planning, advising and career services. This should include communities of practice and shared resources driven by model innovation, emerging technologies and best practices. The Commission urges NEBHE to work with employers and higher education institutions to form a regional student advisory committee to inform issues related to employability.
 
Watch  NEJHE NewsBlast and www.nebhe.org for more ways to help lead in learning for life and work.  

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NEJHE   

Check out our newest commentary and analysis from New England's higher education leaders
Tweets, despite their limited characters, can offer some pretty telling narratives, notes NEJHE Executive Editor John O. Harney. The narrative this time, for better or worse, centers on austerity: the tension over efforts to make higher ed more relevant and also cheaper. Austerity can come too late for institutions such as Mount Ida College, which announced this spring with hardly any warning that it will close for good at the end of the semester. Immediate concerns ran to: why didn't Mount Ida let its students, faculty and staff know earlier about the college's vulnerabilities ... especially since it was laying on the positive marketing right till the end? Also, why would UMass Amherst emerge as the savior of the jilted students, rather than the closer-by, but perennially neglected, UMass Boston? And do the recent travails of Wheelock College, Atlantic Union College and perhaps the College of St. Joseph in Vermont make the case for a re-envisioned NEBHE look at ways to help institutions adapt models to rein in costs, pass savings onto students and--given projections of lagging enrollment--avoid closure?

 A New Way to Rank Colleges: What Percentage of Students Vote?

F ormer Southern Vermont College President Karen Gross,  now a consultant, saw two big problems in higher education. Problem #1 was that college students, despite their impressive activism, especially around the issue of guns, were too apolitical, especially when it came to voting: less than 50% voted in the 2016 election. Problem #2 was that the ubiquitous college rankings that guide prospective students' views of colleges and universities carry a range of perverse incentives such as rewarding institutions that look more selective because they reject as many students as possible and those that reap advantages on measures of retention and alumni giving by avoiding nontraditional students. For Gross, who is also the author of Breakaway Learners: Strategies for Post-Secondary Success with At-Risk Students, the two problems begged for one solution: Why not rank colleges and universities based on the percentage of their students who vote? That would send a message about how activism and political activity will be received and supported, writes Gross. "In today's world, that's a pretty good reflection of citizenship and the role of educational institutions in preparing the leaders of tomorrow."
News Around NEBHEnews

See what our other programs are up to at nebhe.org
  
NEBHE has joined the Midwestern Higher Education Commission's MHECTECH program, allowing significant savings on tech purchasing by public and nonprofit colleges, K-12 districts and schools, cities, counties, towns and state governments in New England. For more, please view MHEC's contract listing here or contact NEBHE CFO Genevieve Davis at gdavis@nebhe.org.   

Reports & Analysis from NEBHE's Policy & Research Team

NEBHE has published an annual directory of New England colleges and universities for a half-century as a special issue of its New England Journal of Higher Education. In 2011, NEBHE formed a partnership with Boston magazine to jointly publish the Guide based on a NEBHE survey of campuses.

NEBHE's 2018 Guide to New England Colleges & Universities lists key data for public and independent, degree-granting colleges and universities based in New England, such as: admissions application deadlines and acceptance rates; faculty-student ratio; enrollment totals and breakdowns for part-time, commuting, female, international and minority students; cost of attendance; and degrees offered.
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View constantly updated higher education job listings at Joblink, NEBHE's collaboration with New England HERC.
NEJHE NewsBlast  is a summary of NEJHE  content and other news around NEBHE prepared weekly by NEJHE  Executive Editor John O. Harney  and emailed every Wednesday to opinion leaders and practitioners. When responding to NEJHE content, please make sure that your remarks are relevant, courteous and engaging. Individuals are responsible for their comments, which do not represent the opinions of the New England Board of Higher Education. We urge commenters to briefly note their occupational or other interest in the topic at hand. Please refrain from offensive language, personal attacks and distasteful comments or they may be deleted. Comments may not appear immediately. Thank you for staying engaged. Join Our Mailing List!