The Hottest Influencers on Campus are Faculty

A More Inclusive Approach to Career Support on Campus

In 1997, long before they became a global media enterprise, Netflix had a simple idea. Going to Blockbuster or the local video store had begun to lose its charm. Why get off the couch and travel to search for a movie that may or may not be in stock and then travel again to return it before incurring a late fee when consumers could have their favorite movies delivered and returned via their home mailbox? Convenience killed the video store and never looked back. In short order, a DVD player became a streaming device, and now people don’t even need to walk to their mailbox. Why, then, do higher education institutions still require students to go to a career center to gain the employability skills they need to successfully launch their careers when students could be exercising these valuable muscles from the comfort of their seats in the classroom?

“Meet them where they are” has long been the modus operandi for educators committed to empathy and equity for students who don’t benefit from socio-economic privilege and require extra support to reach their potential. With data showing that the top reason students pursue higher education is to “gain skills to be successful in work,” institutions need to update their approach to career services in a way that fits in with the culture of the day – providing not only convenience but also diversifying the knowledge base of employability throughout campus. Increased career readiness across the student body is best achieved not by simply hiring more career services staff but by empowering faculty to ensure their students are prepared for the world of work.

For hundreds of years, teaching faculty in higher education have been asked to teach, research, and publish. They have dedicated their lives to fulfilling this role in academic culture, in many cases expanding to sitting on campus committees or acting as faculty liaisons to clubs. In fact, most faculty have never left campus. They move from their own undergraduate degrees to graduate studies and immediately into a professional career as a faculty member. The system has, by and large, not provided opportunities for faculty members to gain work experience outside of higher education that they can share with students. This is not the case for every faculty member, of course, nor is it meant as a criticism of faculty themselves — it’s just reality. However, faculty members possess a critical connection with students that can and should be leveraged.

Faculty are the original influencers on campus. They may not all have TikTok accounts, but faculty see students regularly throughout their postsecondary careers, more than any touchpoint on campus. Investing in the professional development of teaching faculty to integrate Essential Employability Qualities (EEQs) into the academic curriculum will exponentially improve students’ post-completion outcomes.

We cannot assume that faculty know how to support students’ career pursuits. Academic and corporate cultures are distinctly different. While academia focuses on education, research, and the dissemination of knowledge, corporations are driven by profit maximization, growing market share, innovation and development, and customer satisfaction. Academic departments tend to require a vote of all faculty members to move forward with even the smallest of initiatives. Professors deal in CVs, often 27 pages long by the end of a career. In the world of work, a resume is a maximum of two pages – with only the most relevant and compelling information. In the business world, companies often make swift decisions to adapt to market changes, seize opportunities, and maintain competitive advantage.

The teaching faculty to career services staff ratio varies but often ranges from 200-300 to 1. The ratio of students to career services staff can also vary but often ranges from about 500:1 to 2000:1. This is not a lot of resources dedicated to the primary driver for attending college. Furthermore, a faculty-centric approach solves the equity problem by having career services sit outside of curricula. The students most in need of career support (first-generation, underserved students) can be the least likely to take advantage of these services. Lack of awareness of services, cultural barriers, and “imposter syndrome” play a role. Also, and very importantly, financial constraints come into play. First-generation and low-to-moderate-income students often prioritize meeting their basic needs and work part-time to support themselves financially. This leaves limited time and energy to seek out and engage with career services offerings. Let’s create fewer barriers for students and more opportunities for them to engage with faculty.

Connecting the dots between education and employability needn’t necessarily be that big a lift. In the five-plus years that QA Commons has been evaluating academic programs’ portfolios for “EEQ CERT,” a programmatic certification for student employability, we have found that many of the course exercises already develop workplace skills. However, it is not presented as such – with no mention of employability skills on the course syllabus or anywhere else. Thus, students don’t recognize and cannot articulate their value in the workplace. (Not a great situation when headed into an interview.) Further, minor tweaks and enhancements to curricular activities can be extremely powerful.

To be sure, there will be those who argue that it is not the place of faculty to deliver employability coaching. After all, it’s not written into contracts, and their time is already stretched thin. However, we know that faculty members care deeply about their students’ professional success after completing their degrees. Transformational change requires a shift away from existing systems. There will be a period of adjustment, but the opportunity for radical social mobility is too great to pass up. The evidence is clear that students need to be better prepared to meet the needs of employers, no matter the professional field.

Like HBO 25 years before them (it’s right there in the name: home box office), Netflix recognized that the current system was not working. There were too many barriers for consumers and too many unrealized opportunities for everyone not to make a change. So, too, higher education institutions must take career services into the 21st century. Let’s break down the silo of the career development office and spread employability skills into every classroom on campus. Let’s increase the lifelong benefits of each class — even underwater basket weaving. In the EEQ CERT program used by institutions such as Murray State University and the University of Kentucky, students gain Employability Badges facilitated by QA Commons’ collaboration with Credly that can be used to track progress and show employers what they’ve learned. The stakes are too high — and the DVDs are overdue.