1. I love what you are saying, Jeni. 2. Linda's points are absolutely valid, of course, and critical to the long-term success of higher ed in the US -- and are mostly ignored by 4-year institutions, especially those that are research-oriented, such as my alma mater, Harvard University. It may be that elite 4-year institutions are not as subject to failure by virtue of poor teaching, regardless of research success -- Gen Z will be the test of that. 3. I work at a community college, and we live or die by good teaching. You may note that community colleges saw an increase of 4.0% in Fall enrollment in 2025; 4-year public institutions nationwide saw a 1.9% increase; private 4-years 0.9%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Yes, this is partly because of more students realizing that some form of higher ed is needed to get a good job. That said, 80% of CC students intend to get a 4-year degree. Only 16% nationwide ultimately do so, although 40% transfer, because of money, work and other life issues, problems transferring credits, struggles when they do transfer, etc. Do 4-years focus on the success of CC transfer students, or are they stigmatized, or ignored as a group? I recently went to a nationwide convention of Caring Campus, a group that promotes college efforts to improve student feelings of belonging -- only ONE attendee was a 4-year institution -- University of Texas Lakeside -- all others were community colleges, which are working powerfully in exactly the areas you cite, and which are supporting faculty efforts by increasingly incentivizing teaching success and overall student success. By the way, in Texas the legislature has switched its funding model for CCs to one which is based on graduation rates of students.
I like what I see coming out of CC. At the same time, I see how it can impact the sustainability of 4-year teaching institutions. They will have to learn to work together.
One of my challenges has always been getting first year students to realize the importance of the skills you identify here so that they can use their time at the university. They ones who buy in early often turn into rockstars.
Jeni you are preaching to the choir here. I haven't been a teacher long. It will be a year this January and I often think about the things you stated above. 75% of employers is a lot. The thing that annoys me is that older generations a minority from what I've seen blames the students. If the system is set up to fail then how can we blame the students. That is why I started making skill videos and am working with our FBLA team to make case studies for competitions. Coming in as a teacher I had only one goal be the teacher I wanted in college. With hard work and collaboration I believe we can get our students to where they want to be.
I agree with almost all of your points. The missing link is that the reward structure for professors doesn't match up with these points. (There is also the disconnect between what students think they need for success - based on their life experiences - and what they actually need. This is a hard one to solve without denigrating the students' biases.)
(It's a long response, but you asked!!!) As you know, all university/college reward structures are different, and all accrediting agencies have some requirements for ongoing faculty credentialing impacting those reward structures. However, it seems to me that all reward structures are generally three-legged - scholarship, teaching and service. I've never heard of a faculty member being denied tenure or getting a really bad performance review for limited (or nonexistent) service. So this gets us to the thorny issue of content coupled with "soft skills" that are often NOT in the content of the course in question so the question becomes "is content more important or would the soft skills be most critical." Great faculty find a way to do this within the classroom but it is rarely rewarded - especially if the content is slighted. And in some disciplines the content can be slighted without harm to the students, but in others (ones that come to mind are nursing, math, accounting, pre-med - you get the picture) the content is considered a baseline for students being hired and the soft skills are simply the elements for success in the profession (which can be learned on the job by osmosis, if needed). Turn it around and look at from the position of an accounting student with great soft skills and very weak accounting skills that are hidden in the GPA because of the grading structure: long run implications are that employers are not going to be attracted to the students from this program because they are unable to sort the competent content students from the great soft skill student based on GPA. Back to reward structure: which faculty member does the program reward? The one who delivers content? Or the one who delivers soft skills? Ideally, all faculty deliver both - but we don't live in an ideal world. The stories I could tell of faculty winning teaching awards but the students gave him rave reviews while laughing at him because he buys their votes with easy classes/assignments/grades - and talks about how he is teaching them beyond the content (the students laughed and said "what content?"). And the faculty who spent inordinate amounts of time going above and beyond to get her students where they needed to be in content AND skills to the detriment of her scholarship such that she had to leave. IMHO, the best alignment comes in the hiring of faculty with the appropriate mindset - but that's a challenge, too because that's not the focus in graduate programs preparing their graduates for a life in academia!! It's important to keep this conversation going; I believe in a well-rounded educational model - it's harder to accomplish with all the variations of students and institutions.
Thank you, Linda. This is helpful for our discussion. I have been spending a lot of time in my day job as an admin, thinking about our evaluation structures and what we reward. If you have followed my work, then you know that I have spent a lot of time thinking about effective teaching.
While investing in students might be considered a service function, I put it in the teaching bucket. I have heard of faculty not getting tenure or being reappointed because of poor teaching. Therefore, the issue is in this statement "soft skills" that are often NOT in the content of the course in question, so the question becomes "is content more important or would the soft skills be most critical." "
The argument that content is more critical than skills nudged this post. Presenting them as substitutes is my concern, especially in a world where content is so readily available.
In your comment, you also reference another issue in academia that we must address. The perception that good teaching must come at the expense of good research. I understand that time is finite and that scarcity suggests trade-offs, but that ignores the complementary relationships between teaching and research that can be leveraged to improve both outcomes.
In short, how we teach, how we evaluate it, and how administrators develop structures and systems have to be reevaluated. The model is broken, and higher ed's unwillingness to adapt will expedite our demise.
Totally agree. Good luck with these issues; I grappled with them forever. I think that my ultimate response is "one size doesn't fit all" for these issues. When I look back on my educational journey, I remember those teachers that I adored or hated. They shaped me - not the middle-of-the-road teachers who are quickly forgotten.
1. I love what you are saying, Jeni. 2. Linda's points are absolutely valid, of course, and critical to the long-term success of higher ed in the US -- and are mostly ignored by 4-year institutions, especially those that are research-oriented, such as my alma mater, Harvard University. It may be that elite 4-year institutions are not as subject to failure by virtue of poor teaching, regardless of research success -- Gen Z will be the test of that. 3. I work at a community college, and we live or die by good teaching. You may note that community colleges saw an increase of 4.0% in Fall enrollment in 2025; 4-year public institutions nationwide saw a 1.9% increase; private 4-years 0.9%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Yes, this is partly because of more students realizing that some form of higher ed is needed to get a good job. That said, 80% of CC students intend to get a 4-year degree. Only 16% nationwide ultimately do so, although 40% transfer, because of money, work and other life issues, problems transferring credits, struggles when they do transfer, etc. Do 4-years focus on the success of CC transfer students, or are they stigmatized, or ignored as a group? I recently went to a nationwide convention of Caring Campus, a group that promotes college efforts to improve student feelings of belonging -- only ONE attendee was a 4-year institution -- University of Texas Lakeside -- all others were community colleges, which are working powerfully in exactly the areas you cite, and which are supporting faculty efforts by increasingly incentivizing teaching success and overall student success. By the way, in Texas the legislature has switched its funding model for CCs to one which is based on graduation rates of students.
I like what I see coming out of CC. At the same time, I see how it can impact the sustainability of 4-year teaching institutions. They will have to learn to work together.
One of my challenges has always been getting first year students to realize the importance of the skills you identify here so that they can use their time at the university. They ones who buy in early often turn into rockstars.
100% agree. The ones that don't invest are focused on "just getting the degree". This has diluted the value of education.
Jeni you are preaching to the choir here. I haven't been a teacher long. It will be a year this January and I often think about the things you stated above. 75% of employers is a lot. The thing that annoys me is that older generations a minority from what I've seen blames the students. If the system is set up to fail then how can we blame the students. That is why I started making skill videos and am working with our FBLA team to make case studies for competitions. Coming in as a teacher I had only one goal be the teacher I wanted in college. With hard work and collaboration I believe we can get our students to where they want to be.
I agree with almost all of your points. The missing link is that the reward structure for professors doesn't match up with these points. (There is also the disconnect between what students think they need for success - based on their life experiences - and what they actually need. This is a hard one to solve without denigrating the students' biases.)
Thanks Linda. Can you shed some light on what about the reward structure that doesn’t match up or how to better align incentive mechanisms?
(It's a long response, but you asked!!!) As you know, all university/college reward structures are different, and all accrediting agencies have some requirements for ongoing faculty credentialing impacting those reward structures. However, it seems to me that all reward structures are generally three-legged - scholarship, teaching and service. I've never heard of a faculty member being denied tenure or getting a really bad performance review for limited (or nonexistent) service. So this gets us to the thorny issue of content coupled with "soft skills" that are often NOT in the content of the course in question so the question becomes "is content more important or would the soft skills be most critical." Great faculty find a way to do this within the classroom but it is rarely rewarded - especially if the content is slighted. And in some disciplines the content can be slighted without harm to the students, but in others (ones that come to mind are nursing, math, accounting, pre-med - you get the picture) the content is considered a baseline for students being hired and the soft skills are simply the elements for success in the profession (which can be learned on the job by osmosis, if needed). Turn it around and look at from the position of an accounting student with great soft skills and very weak accounting skills that are hidden in the GPA because of the grading structure: long run implications are that employers are not going to be attracted to the students from this program because they are unable to sort the competent content students from the great soft skill student based on GPA. Back to reward structure: which faculty member does the program reward? The one who delivers content? Or the one who delivers soft skills? Ideally, all faculty deliver both - but we don't live in an ideal world. The stories I could tell of faculty winning teaching awards but the students gave him rave reviews while laughing at him because he buys their votes with easy classes/assignments/grades - and talks about how he is teaching them beyond the content (the students laughed and said "what content?"). And the faculty who spent inordinate amounts of time going above and beyond to get her students where they needed to be in content AND skills to the detriment of her scholarship such that she had to leave. IMHO, the best alignment comes in the hiring of faculty with the appropriate mindset - but that's a challenge, too because that's not the focus in graduate programs preparing their graduates for a life in academia!! It's important to keep this conversation going; I believe in a well-rounded educational model - it's harder to accomplish with all the variations of students and institutions.
Thank you, Linda. This is helpful for our discussion. I have been spending a lot of time in my day job as an admin, thinking about our evaluation structures and what we reward. If you have followed my work, then you know that I have spent a lot of time thinking about effective teaching.
While investing in students might be considered a service function, I put it in the teaching bucket. I have heard of faculty not getting tenure or being reappointed because of poor teaching. Therefore, the issue is in this statement "soft skills" that are often NOT in the content of the course in question, so the question becomes "is content more important or would the soft skills be most critical." "
The argument that content is more critical than skills nudged this post. Presenting them as substitutes is my concern, especially in a world where content is so readily available.
In your comment, you also reference another issue in academia that we must address. The perception that good teaching must come at the expense of good research. I understand that time is finite and that scarcity suggests trade-offs, but that ignores the complementary relationships between teaching and research that can be leveraged to improve both outcomes.
In short, how we teach, how we evaluate it, and how administrators develop structures and systems have to be reevaluated. The model is broken, and higher ed's unwillingness to adapt will expedite our demise.
Totally agree. Good luck with these issues; I grappled with them forever. I think that my ultimate response is "one size doesn't fit all" for these issues. When I look back on my educational journey, I remember those teachers that I adored or hated. They shaped me - not the middle-of-the-road teachers who are quickly forgotten.