What Should Student Success Outcomes Mean to Us?

A few years ago, I read an article that stated, “only 27% percent of college graduates work in a field related to their major.” Initially, this seemed shockingly low, until I realized that I (and, actually, everyone on the EduCred Services team) is a part of that other group—the 73%. Emily earned a degree in English and Spanish, Andy has a Master of Divinity, and I have a law degree.

My pathway through higher education was non-traditional to say the least. While I understood that going to college was important, I lacked the resources and knowledge to navigate the system. I’m not unique in this way. There are, of course, some people who know from birth what they want to study, and this singular focus gives them a great advantage—time. While the rest of us are trying to “figure it out”, these rare people are taking all of their gen eds in high school, joining all the right extra-curricular groups, and figuring out how to secure access to necessary funding.

The rest of us aren’t lesser, we’re just explorers. We sample a little bit of everything searching for a field that we “click” with, hoping that it will all work out in the end. My higher education pursuits drifted from an associate degree in general studies, to an undergraduate and graduate degree in the humanities, before entering law school. Looking back, though, I am not sure I would change anything. Taking this meandering route through higher education provided me a different perspective on determining its value.

I will be one of the first ones to tell you that student outcomes matter but, with an increasingly narrow focus on them, is higher education missing the bigger picture in defining graduates’ success? Based on the 27/73% split in the statistic above and how institutions are required to report outcomes, I am not a “success.” I took much longer to complete my degrees than I probably should have, I did not enter the humanities field, and I am not a practicing lawyer. In an effort to demonstrate immediate value, the true benefits of higher education are being overshadowed and replaced with a skills-based emphasis and the definition of “success” being rigidly prescribed.

Too often, students follow an inaccurate road map to education. Obviously, I believe that higher education is a worthwhile pathway to a successful future, but it is frequently filled with unpredictable twists and turns. No one can perfectly predict the future of a particular field, job market, or economy. I was lucky. The degrees I earned provided me with interdisciplinary skills that were applicable across various industries. While reading works by famous philosophers and landmark legal cases, I honed critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills. I learned how to read and write carefully (and quickly). The research and self-reliance skills that I developed during my studies still help me navigate my chosen career every day. My ultimate outcome—the student outcome I value most—is not something that the institutions I attended could have anticipated, but it does not make the degrees I earned any less valuable. As institutions prepare to meet the increasing demands for accountability, I hope we do not sell our graduates short. Part of higher education’s purpose is to develop skills that promote the success of every individual, regardless of what they ultimately become when they grow up.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
—Immanuel Kant