As millions of students suffer from the student loan debt crisis, and countless college graduates are having trouble climbing the career ladder, many university professors need to consider their duty in helping students find post-college employment.
Data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) shows that it is now the case that when faculty are asked if preparing students for employment after college is an essential or important goal, the number of those who believe that it is has jumped 23 points in the past 27 years from 62% to 82% by 2014.
This is a positive development among faculty, and is in line with the 2016 HERI data on first year college students which reveal that getting a job after college is one of the top reasons why students want to attend college today.
The problem is this: not all professors understand that post-graduate employment must be more than important, it must be an essential consideration along with the teaching of ideas. Today’s liberal leaning faculty are not concerned enough about the eventual financial needs of their own students.
In early 2017, I conducted a survey of more than nine hundred faculty members around the country and asked professors how important it is to prepare students for employment after college. I gave the professors a four-point set of responses where the two positive categories add up to the 85% figure and is in line with the 2014 HERI data.
Breaking down the responses to the employment question further and considering the top category – essential to help students on the job market – I found no real differences between elite and non-elite institutions or distinctions between large research-based universities and small, teaching-focused liberal arts colleges in terms of attitudes toward preparing students for employment after college. Although it could be presumed that liberal arts colleges are more concerned with humanistic and purely scholarly, ivory-tower, pursuits compared to the many professional and pre-professional offerings offered at larger universities, this is simply not the case.
A difference in outlook toward student careers only emerged when ideology is factored into the mix.
Professors on the left were far less concerned with the students’ economic futures compared to those on the right and center. Fifty-nine percent of faculty who identify as politically “moderate” and “right-of-center” believed that it is essential to help prepare their students for post-baccalaureate employment. Only 40% of “liberal” professors believed that helping students with their careers is essential. The liberal-conservative gap widened even further when those on the far left and right are examined: only 35% of self-identified “very liberal” faculty believe career assistance is essential compared to 63% of those on the “far right.”
When I looked at various disciplines across higher education, a similar ideologically-based pattern emerged depending on the fields of study. Those dominated by left-leaning professors were less worried about their student’s economic futures. Only 35% of faculty in the history, area studies, and humanities departments seemed to care about student life post-college. By comparison, two-thirds of faculty in the business, engineering, and health related fields — which have higher numbers of conservative professors — were concerned about post-collegiate employment.
In terms of political discourse, faculty in more “liberal” departments were far more likely to believe that engaging students in discussions of controversial issues of the day is an essential education goal for undergraduate students. Forty percent of those in English departments and 50% of those in history and politics departments maintain that focusing on the vicissitudes of our polarized and divisive political world is essential compared to 20% of those in business-related fields. Only 11% in engineering and related areas agreed.
Though the belief that trade-based departments, which are less involved in politics and deal with more essential skills and methodologies, are more important than those involved in humanities is wrong.
This line of thinking diminishes the import and real rigor of humanistic inquiry and the fact that the market-based value of liberal arts and its importance in business and the tech world has been demonstrated time and again in scores of stories and books.
As a professor, I regularly struggle with the question of how to balance my goals of helping teach students the importance of humanistic pursuits with the realities of their post-graduate lives. I encourage students to learn how to think, and do so with an eye toward life after college: to explicitly think about how certain ideas and coursework intersect with the real world and various careers. But sadly, it is clear that real world considerations are far less important to my liberal colleagues.
Liberal professors who are more concerned with social change and political questions without a deep interest in the post-collegiate lives of their students are doing our younger generations a huge disservice. The data make it very clear that those on the left are out of sync with the needs of our students. Students must demand more.
Samuel J. Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.