“What’s Job Number 1?”

McDaniel College, a liberal arts institution on a scenic hilltop in Westminster, Maryland, has long prided itself on opening doors for its graduates, many the first in their family to earn a college diploma. It was one of the first coeducational colleges in America when it opened after the Civil War. It merited a place in education author Loren Pope’s pantheon of Colleges That Change Lives. But even with generous financial aid, McDaniel grapples with keeping tuition affordable and making it possible for graduates to pay off debt they accumulate.

That’s why the college undertook a year-long, systematic review that resulted in the elimination of five majors: art history, religious studies, music, French, and German—and several minors, as well as the introduction of a dozen new majors including actuarial science, applied mathematics, biochemistry, biomedical science, criminal justice, health sciences, marketing, and writing and publishing, all with an eye toward preparing students for careers in growing fields.

“We knew at the very beginning we wanted to make sure to maintain the integrity of liberal arts education but focus our reinvestments on majors that spoke to the kinds of careers students could have,” says President Julia Jasken, who was then the executive vice president and provost.

“She really opened our eyes to that,” says Marty Hill, a real estate developer and longtime trustee who was then chair of the board. “What we quickly learned was we had courses where we had five or six students. They weren’t attractive to incoming students, and they were costing us a lot of money.”

At the same time, it created what it calls the McDaniel Commitment, which guarantees that every student, guided by a team of mentors, can tailor and personalize their own path through college, with an emphasis on experiential learning and alumni connections.

The overhaul quickly yielded positive results. McDaniel attracted its largest first-year class and saw total undergraduate enrollment top 1,800 in fall 2020, even while the COVID-19 pandemic was cutting into enrollments nationally.

Hill, a real estate developer, said the board approved the program changes by unanimous vote. In his 28 years of service—he got to hand his daughter her diploma in 1993 right after joining the board—there “has never been any decision as consequential as this.”

Jasken says, “The board’s involvement was one of the critical pieces that enabled this to be successful.”

“One of the things we face in higher education right now is the students’ desire to be able to see what it is that awaits them after graduation,” says the president, who joined the McDaniel faculty as an English professor in 2003. “I am a strong proponent of the liberal arts…. But market pressures require that we think about how we develop our programs and curriculum in a way that enables students to launch in a more concrete way.”

Other institutions, whether public or private, two years or four, confront the same calculus that McDaniel made and are seeking to balance the liberal arts with more offerings that offer a direct path to jobs and careers, some with certificates instead of diplomas.

That’s evident, too, at Ocean County College (OCC), a bustling community college in Toms River, New Jersey, that traditionally attracts students of traditional college age (18–24), with 70 percent of graduates transferring to four-year colleges. Students actually don’t need to leave the scenic campus to earn a BA since Kean University has its own branch there. The enterprising OCC also partners with Kean and several Egyptian universities to offer degrees to students in the Middle East through online courses.

Under longtime President Jon Larson, the college is now expanding its efforts to attract students of all ages, including older workers interested in switching careers with training and credentials that can help them move straight into jobs.

This effort got a major boost recently when OCC was selected by Intel Corporation, the semi-conductor chip manufacturer, as one of 17 community colleges across the country to join its Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Workforce Program after a successful launch at Maricopa College in Arizona. This spring OCC will offer its first course leading to a certificate in artificial intelligence, a field that is already growing rapidly and is forecast to bring big changes to all sorts of industries.

“We had a small, right-into-the workforce curriculum. This push to get skill training and stackable credential is a new development,” says Larson. Still, he and his team needed little convincing. Larson meets monthly with the presidents and board chairs of all 18 New Jersey community colleges and “everybody is into the world of workforce programming, and particularly technology workforce preparation, whether it’s getting a badge or getting a degree. No one needs persuasion. They are all in favor of it.”

Larson also enjoyed enthusiastic support from his board of trustees.

The Intel AI program “is a tremendous opportunity,” says trustee Joseph Teichman, who is general counsel for a multibillion-dollar real estate conglomerate. He’s been struck by how AI is touching even the practice of law, with predictive coding streamlining laborious searches through mountains of documents.

“You can’t ignore it,” says Teichman. Even with entry-level AI courses, students will be “gaining a basic understanding of something that’s going to take over the world. At the very least, you’ll have a leg up on many people (in the job market).”

Intel has provided extensive curriculum and training. “What’s great about the curriculum is that it comes in at multiple levels, not just if you want to be a programmer one day, but if you’re working in a (nontechnical job) and want to understand what AI is and how it could eventually affect your business, we have a program for you as well,” says Vice President of Academic Affairs Joseph Konopka.

The college has hired faculty from industry who bring practical experience and can offer firsthand advice. Among them is Kenneth Michalek, who worked for AT&T for more than 30 years in software development and management. “I can speak to students with experience—‘Hey, I was there,’” says Howard, who will teach the first AI course in the spring.

“The students who come to a community college want to get a good job. We’re able to say to them now, ‘Here are some options you might not have been thinking about before.’ We think this is going to be a big draw,” says Larson.

“We constantly are looking to expand the opportunities for students,” says trustee Stephan Leone. “It takes time to build the success of the program and students’ awareness of it. It may take several years to make the student population aware of it and realize they can come to our campus to get that kind of (high-tech) education.”

The region around the nation’s capital is not yet Silicon Valley East, but it has become fertile ground for high-tech companies, including Amazon’s HQ2 second headquarters [See “Winning HQ2,” Trusteeship July/August 2021]. Universities in Virginia, Maryland, and the nation’s capital are all scrambling to meet the need for talent, from entry-level jobs to PhD computer scientists and data analysts.

To expand the pool of new college graduates capable of filling those jobs, the Greater Washington Partnership’s Capital Collaborative of Leaders in Academia and Business (CoLAB), representing 20 universities and 15 major employers, has developed several digital technology credentials and urged member schools to offer it to their students, whether they are majoring in computer science or the liberal arts. It isn’t one size fits all. Instead, the universities can modify existing courses or add new ones to impart the skills companies were looking for in new hires.

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond and George Mason University in Fairfax were first out of the gate to offer the Digital Tech Credential, with both their engineering colleges and offices of continuing and professional education involved. Each required five courses to earn the digital badges. Some students would have taken these or similar courses anyway for their majors, but they were add-ons for non-STEM majors.

At VCU, in addition to three existing “Fundamentals of Computing” classes, students had to take an additional software engineering and web development course to learn the basics of programming, data science, and cybersecurity. All the courses were taught online and open to non-VCU students, working professionals, and others preparing to enter the job market. Four students earned the first credentials in June 2020.

At George Mason, Virginia’s largest public university, 266 students registered for the digital credential and a dozen so far have obtained it. Mason requires courses in statistics, data analytics and visualization, and cybersecurity. Most of the 12 credentialed students were already STEM majors but 4 were graduating with degrees in economics, politics, public health, and economics.

“The students who have elected to do this are positioning themselves to be very competitive in the job market,” says Liza Wilson Durant, an associate provost and engineering professor. Students recognize that knowing how to work with and visualize data as well as protecting data from hackers is critical “no matter what your work is.”

“I don’t think it’s beyond the reach of anyone in the liberal arts, especially in the social sciences,” says Mark Austin, Mason’s executive director for professional education and academic ventures. “This is really focused on making the nonengineer ready to talk tech and be able to speak digitally. Employers really care about those things.”

One selling point for the credential is that companies in the region, including Northrop Grumman and Capital One, agreed to give preference for internships to students with the credentials.

It was not a big reach for Mason senior Radhika Laddha, 21, a computer data sciences major with minors in piano performance and data analysis. Both her parents work in the tech industry and she expects to be crunching data after graduation for one of the big companies that sponsor the Capital CoLAB. Even if it is more difficult for liberal arts majors to earn the credential, “they really need more STEM-related courses,” especially in cybersecurity, she says.

Horace Blackman, vice rector of the George Mason Board of Trustees, says George Mason “does a phenomenal job attracting first-generation college students…. The digital certificates are an extension of [its] efforts to provide access to opportunities and excellence, whether that means achieving a traditional degree or getting a certificate to be able to get a job.” Blackman, a senior executive in the health technology industry, majored in American studies and English at George Mason. (“You’d be shocked how many chief information officers were English majors,” he quipped.)

Deb Hodge, Capital CoLAB’s acting managing director, says the credential for generalists signals employers “that you have those basic digital literacy skills they are looking for across nontechnical roles,” including marketing and human resources, where being able to understand and harvest data can allow for better hiring decisions.

CoLAB has designed more advanced digital credentials for specialists in cybersecurity, machine learning, and data analytics. And the Greater Washington Partnership’s member corporations and universities have set a lofty target for themselves: creating the most diverse digital tech workforce in the country. They hope by 2025 to engage 45,000 students and adult learners in these digital tech pathways, and to ensure that at least half are from underserved populations.

The University System of Maryland takes pride in the strides its institutions have made on the diversity front. The Business Higher Education Forum (BHEF)—composed of Fortune 500 CEOs and college and university presidents—spotlighted those efforts in a case study on “Building a Diverse Cybersecurity Talent Ecosystem to Address National Security Needs.” It pointed to efforts not only at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park, but other institutions, including Towson University and historically Black Bowie State University.

The University System of Maryland “is surrounded by a network of businesses and government agencies that urgently need access to a larger pool of highly skilled cybersecurity professionals,” with more than 40,000 unfilled jobs in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area alone, the case study says. Most of those jobs required at least a bachelor’s degree and three years of experience.

The Maryland system created “new undergraduate pathways into cybersecurity that attract students with diverse backgrounds and interests, engage them in meaningful learning experiences that reflect the cutting edge of the field, and encourage them to stay in the region to build their careers,” the study says.

In College Park, a $1-million gift from the Northrop Grumman Foundation enabled the College Park campus to create a living-learning Advanced Cybersecurity Experience program for first- and second-year students in its residential honors college, which also houses a Northrop Grumman cybersecurity lab. In a male-dominated field, a third were women and nearly a quarter of participants went on to earn minors in cybersecurity.

Bowie State boasts a cybersecurity track in its computer science major and a network security track in its computer technology major. Graduates are in high demand, with many “offered jobs a year before they graduate,” the study says. Its programs include workshops for African American middle and high school girls and a five-week summer program for Baltimore youth.

Towson University has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency for its courses in cybersecurity, both for credit and for certificates that stand students in good stead when they apply for jobs. The university offers “CyberCorps” scholarships for students focusing on cybersecurity and it is creating a Cyber4All research center that aims to become “a global leader in interdisciplinary and inclusive cybersecurity education.”

David Vanko, dean of the Fisher College of Science and Mathematics at Towson University, takes special pride in the emphasis on diversity. “Cybersecurity is something everybody’s got to do, everybody who owns a cell phone or Alexa or an Amazon Ring,” he says.

“Digital natives, kids who grow up understanding digital technologies, may not include everyone of that age who didn’t have the computers and broadband at home. There are real social justice issues that technical fields can help address,” he adds.

The emphasis on preparation for careers does not mean colleges and universities have to forsake the liberal arts. They can do both, University of Maryland System Chancellor Jay A. Perman believes.

“We believe our undergrads are getting the best of both worlds: an affordable, public university experience that covers the diverse disciplines traditionally associated with a liberal arts education, and critical job preparation experiences that position them for success on the next leg of their journey—whether that means a job or an advanced degree,” Perman said in written replies to questions from Trusteeship. He noted the Maryland Board of Regents emphasized economic development when it approved the system’s current strategic plan back in 2010. (It is midway through preparation of a new one.)

New York State recently launched the second round of a competition for $175 million in workforce development grants that includes support for expanding workforce training programs at its public colleges and universities. State University of New York Chancellor Jim Malatras says the state’s big investment means “we can continue to align the advanced training offered at our colleges with the evolving needs of the workforce—a synergy that benefits students, businesses, and the economy as a whole.”

The tilt toward preparation for careers is hardly a new phenomenon. Students have always had their eyes on jobs. Business has long been the most popular major on American campuses. Almost 900,000 of the 2 million bachelor’s degrees colleges awarded in 2018–19 were in business, health professions, engineering, and biological and biomedical sciences, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.¹

Notwithstanding that trend, a 2020 study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce concluded that liberal arts colleges offer a greater return on investment in the long term. It is looking at earnings data for graduates from 200 liberal arts colleges decades after graduation. Their return on investment was 40 percent below average after a decade, but 25 percent higher after 40 years.

A recent Brookings Institution report suggests the pandemic, which has cut into college enrollments, could pose a double whammy for higher education and the economy. “The pandemic has made the need for better worker training and protection more urgent and apparent…. (It) will accelerate trends toward automation, putting some skills in high demand and others in low demand, making the recovery in the labor market more difficult,” says the report, Preparing U.S. Workers for the Post-COVID Economy.²

The Presidents Forum, a nonprofit that promotes online education and other efforts to reinvent higher education, contends that there “is a growing disconnect between the skills that graduates possess and those that employers need.” In a report, Transforming Together: Aligning Higher Education to the Changing World of Work, it urges colleges to create opportunities for lifelong

learning beyond a degree, partner with employers, and “focus on pathways that offer on- and off-ramps, allowing learners to earn short-term credentials” that enhance their employability.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers, which links college career counselors with human resources and staffing professionals in the business world, lists technology as a core competency for success in the working world, but other such competencies include critical thinking and communication skill, both hallmarks of a liberal arts education. (See https://bit.ly/3nyLGPF)

In an era of declining enrollments and increased skepticism about the worth of a college degree, the Association of Public & Land Grant Universities (APLU) insists, “Broader education and employment preparation are not mutually exclusive goals.”

“A college degree means more than ever before…. Education for employment upon graduation is important, but a four-year degree should also put graduates in a better position to adapt as employment requirements change throughout their careers,” an APLU report, Ready for Jobs, Careers, and a Lifetime: Public Research Universities and Credentials that Count, emphasized.

Christopher Connell is an independent journalist and former education writer for the Associated Press. He is the author of AGB’s Top Strategic Issues for Boards 2020–2021.

1. See https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta
2. Brookings Institution, Preparing U.S. Workers for the Post-COVID Economy: Higher education, Workforce Training, and Labor Unions, online at https://www.brookings. edu/research/preparing-u-s-workers-for-the-post-covid-economy-higher-education- workforce-training-and-labor-unions/, December 16, 2020.