The BA Graduate Remains Desired and Employable

Responses to two questions suggest that graduates who hold the BA as their highest credential are valued by employers in this sector. The first question, which was directed at respondents who said they had experience hiring entry-level employees (N = 155), asked them to indicate the desirability of various academic credentials. The BA ranked first (46%) among credentials ranked “highly desired” followed by the MA (31%). Even when the responses “highly desired” and “competitive” are combined, the BA(87%) remains almost tied with the MA (88%), far ahead of College Diplomas (44%) and Postgraduate College Diplomas (65%).Footnote ⁵ The desirability of the BA was also suggested by answers to a second question that asked respondents to give advice to a hypothetical student seeking an entry-level position in an organization like the one they work for. When asked about the importance of earning an MA (a credential typically added to the BA) only 16% indicated this was vital for getting a good job, while 50% said it was helpful but not essential, and 32% said it was neither helpful nor unhelpful.

Positive attitudes toward the BA are confirmed by respondents' accounts of their own educational backgrounds. One-third of all respondents indicated that they held the BA as their highest academic credential. This is not a relic from past hiring because an even higher percentage of respondents in their twenties indicated the BA as their highest academic credential (53%).

Skills Associated with the BA Are Valued in the NGO Workplace…

The survey results also affirm the workplace relevance of generic transferrable skills that are often associated with liberal education and the BA. For instance, one question asked respondents to rate the importance of the ability to exercise each of 27 skills or competencies to succeed in their present position.Footnote ⁶ If the 12 skills or competencies that at least 50% of the 186 respondents rated as “Essential” (table 1, row 1) are compared to those found in a typical statement of the skills associated with the BA degree (see Ontario Council of Academic Vice Presidents 2007), we find that half, including the top five competencies, are typically associated with the BA graduates: initiative/ability to work independently; ability to work with a team; interpersonal skills; written communication; ability to work with the unknown; oral communications and public speaking. Most of the other six are specialized or sector-specific skills that may be the subject of particular courses or programs: project management, strategic planning, nonprofit values; leadership; networking; and ability to hold effective meetings.

Table 1

Skills and Competencies That a Majority of Respondents Rated as Essential to Success in Their Position and Factors They Said Contributed Significantly Their Ability to Perform Them

Percentages do not add up to 100; respondents were permitted to check as many contributing influences as applied.

Responses to two other questions suggest the relevance to the NGO workplace of another quality typically associated with BA graduates: adaptability. First, in answer to open-ended questions about typical job applicant strengths and weaknesses, several respondents emphasized the practicality of generic skills compared to specialized knowledge: “In many workplaces, you can learn the hard skills needed to do well in the job. That's why it's important to work on your soft skills …”; “Knowledge can be learned much more easily than skills.” The value of adaptability can also be inferred from responses to a question that asked the percentage of an average week that respondents devoted to each of eleven functions.Footnote ⁷ The aggregate result—respondents perform an average of 7.5 of these functions in a typical week—suggests that many staff in this sector need to be flexible and adaptable multitaskers rather than narrow specialists.

… But Employers Are Not Convinced That BA Graduates Possess These Skills

Responses to three open-ended questions answered by 135 of the respondents who said they had participated as decision-makers in hiring entry-level employees reinforce the finding that skills typically associated with the BA are valued in the NGO workplace. Furthermore, they suggest that many in the sector doubt the reliability of the BA degree as an indication that graduates actually possess these skills. The three questions asked respondents to identify key strengths and weaknesses they have seen in the education and other experiences of job candidates as well as to note any other skill sets or knowledge bases that candidates typically lack. Responses to all three questions were combined, coded, and categorized; similar responses made by individuals to different questions were removed to avoid double-counting; and representative comments were selected to illustrate the concerns.

Communication: More than one-third (36%) of respondents to the open-ended questions noted the importance of communication in general, and writing and oral presentation in particular. The following typical comments illustrate both that these skills are valued but that employers lack confidence that holding a degree indicates that graduates possess them: “We always ask for samples of their work when hiring in order to assess writing skills and also professional presentation ability. They are often lacking the ability to well-design and professionally present their work”; “Having a degree does not mean good communication skills.”

Maturity and Independence: This category of comment, made by 30% of respondents, included such competencies as initiative/ability to work independently; flexibility and adaptability; planning, organization, and time management; and self-confidence and the ability to deal with ambiguity. The following comments were typical: “Not being able to see what needs to be done without being told, not being able to complete tasks”; “Unable to motivate themselves and learn independently, unable to figure out problems on their own (use Google, instruction manuals).” The relevance of these skills was stated forcefully in response to a separate open-ended question: “NGO staff have little time to spare so show that you will add to the solution not to the burden.”

Critical Thinking and Analysis: These skills were noted by 13% of respondents. Although most of the comments in this category simply stated “critical thinking,” some were more descriptive: “Understanding the context as a whole, i.e., synthesis of various themes into greater understanding of interrelated nature of broad social justice themes”; “failure to read and to do so in a critical spirit; gullibility, particularly with respect to human rights.”

Although passion and commitment is not a skill or competency per se, 13% respondents made comments that were collected in this category. Faculty in political science and other liberal arts and social sciences can find themselves advising students to follow their interests and passions when selecting programs and courses. Respondents' comments suggest that this advice has direct consequences for employment. This is powerfully illustrated in one respondent's account of a job candidate weakness: “no clear focus of what skills they want to build, or experience they want to have (i.e., they just WANT a job, any job).”

Thus, while the BA is desired, and people holding BAs are employed, in the NGO sector, those with experience hiring those with BAs suggest that job applicants who possess the credential do not always possess the associated skills. One strategy to enhance the workplace relevance of the BA degree, then, is to strengthen our efforts to encourage students to develop these skills and competencies by emphasizing to them that it is these skills, and not the credential, that employers seek. One way to do this is to explicitly draw the connection between course assignments and workplace-relevant skills by presenting students with comments from employers like the ones presented previously when explaining course assignments in class.

How Respondents Believe They Developed Their Skills

To understand how respondents believed they developed their skills, the survey asked them to indicate, by checking as many answers as applied, which of five experiences (Formal Education; Student Clubs & Volunteering; Formal Job Training (e.g., workshops); Self-Taught/On the Job; None of the Above) they believed contributed significantly to their ability to exercise these skills (table 1, rows 2–4 summarizes selected results). Three things stand out about their responses. First, respondents do not appear to strongly associate their formal education or experiences with students clubs and volunteering with the development of workplace-relevant skills; in fact, for 11 of the 12 most highly valued skills and competencies the highest percentage of respondents selected “Self-Taught/On the Job” as having significantly contributed to their ability to exercise them. Second, if focus is shifted to experiences that a majority (versus the highest percentage) of respondents rated as making a significant contribution, the results suggest that together, formal education and student clubs and volunteering (which we might call the “broader educational experience”) are perceived to have contributed significantly to the development of the ability to exercise six of the 12 skills. Finally, the skills and competencies that majorities of respondents associate with formal education and student clubs and volunteering appear to differ in kind: formal education is associated with what might be called individual skills (Written Communication; Oral Communications & Public Speaking; Initiative/Ability To Work Independently) while student clubs and volunteering with interpersonal skills (Leadership, Ability To Work With A Team, Interpersonal Skills). This association of volunteering with interpersonal skills is consistent with Canadian data that found that volunteers ranked interpersonal skills highest among the skills they thought they learned from volunteering (66%) (communication skills rated a distant second at 45%) (Hall et al. Reference Hall, Lasby, Ayer and Gibbons2009, 49). The next two sections review results that speak to the contribution of each of these experiences.

Formal Education

Further insight into respondents' perceptions of the contribution of formal education can be drawn from questions that asked respondents to rate the workplace relevance of various types and forms of academic assignment.

The percentage of respondents who rated various forms of academic assignments as “Extremely Useful” as preparation for their work is summarized in table 2. The fact that all of the forms of assignment that require students to interact with one another (team written work, team oral presentations, seminar discussions, and debates) ranked below the forms of assignment that are typically performed individually (individual oral presentation, service learning/internship with a NGO, individual written work, international education/volunteering/internships) supports the suggestion that respondents associate formal education with the development of individual skills and not with interpersonal skills. Given that “Ability to Work with a Team” was rated second as a skill essential to success in their positions (table 1, row 1), it is troubling that respondents give such low ratings to forms of assignment that appear to develop these skills.

Table 2

Value of Form of Assignments as General Preparation for Respondent's Work

Percentages do not add up to 100; respondents were permitted to check as many contributing influences as applied.

Table 3 summarizes the percentage of respondents who rated various types of academic assignment as “Extremely Useful” as preparation for their work. Although the pattern is less clear cut than was the case with table 2, table 3 suggests that, on the whole, those working in NGOs perceive less workplace relevance in traditional liberal arts assignments like traditional research essays, critiques, literature reviews, and book reviews than in assignments that emphasize application (grant application, policy paper, research proposal) and concise forms of writing (précis, press release, newspaper article). This finding must also be troubling for those who desire to enhance the workplace relevance of the BA degree without abandoning liberal education.

Table 3

Value of Types of Assignments as General Preparation for Respondent's Work

Percentages do not add up to 100; respondents were permitted to check as many contributing influences as applied.

Student Clubs and Volunteering

The first thing that can be observed from the survey questions concerning the significance of students clubs and volunteering is that respondents do perceive this experience to be workplace relevant. This is indicated in several ways. Most directly, when asked to give advice to a hypothetical student seeking an entry-level position in an organization like theirs, the greatest number of respondents rated “volunteer with any NGO”Footnote ⁸ as “Vital” (46%; N = 199). More indirectly, the majority of respondents (63%) indicated that they had belonged to a student organization (e.g., campus-based clubs, campus chapters of nonprofits/NGOs, and student government). This percentage seems quite high given that Hall et al. report a 58% rate for all forms of volunteering among Canadians aged 15 to 24 (Reference Hall, Lasby, Ayer and Gibbons2009, 38).Footnote ⁹ Further, respondents appear to have been active with 78% having belonged to two or more organizations and 66% served in an executive position. More directly again, and consistent with other findings (Sagen, Dallam, and Laverty Reference Sagen, Dallam and Laverty2000, 762; Hall, McKeown, and Roberts Reference Hall, McKeown and Roberts2001, 35), when those who had belonged to student organizations were asked if they felt this had helped them obtain their first job after graduating, 50% said they thought it had, including 6% who obtained their first full-time job with an organization they had belonged to as a student.

Although respondents were not asked why they thought this experience was valuable, some possibilities can be teased out of answers given to other questions. The importance of practical experience came through strongly in responses from people with hiring experience to the questions about job applicant strengths and weaknesses. This category, which included references to work and volunteer experience, life experience in general, and experience living and working in international settings, was volunteered by 65% of the 135 respondents, clearly making it the top category.

Because references to practical experience were made in answer to open-ended questions, respondents were not asked why they thought this was important. Nevertheless, many of their answers to these and other questions provide some insight into why this is important; faculty might consider sharing these answers with their students. One concern had to do with lack of familiarity with the workplace and of how to apply their academic knowledge: “unused to office environment,… deadlines, unrealistic expectations”; “Not knowing how to apply their education to the real world, having theory and limited practice”; “We tend to get very qualified applicants. Some just don't have much experience outside of a more structured academic setting, and only experience will remedy that.” A second concern identified by 13 respondents (10%) was described variously as “overconfidence” or being “preachy,” “arrogant,” or “judgmental.” This behavior is often worked out through experience. Finally, another benefit of practical experience is that it helps students develop a skill that Koc reports undergraduates typically lack (Reference Koc2010): networking. Networking was noted by six respondents to an open-ended question soliciting advice for a hypothetical student. For instance, one respondent wrote: “Do as much networking as you can in whatever shape that may take—volunteering, attending conferences/workshops, internships, work, etc. That is often how you hear of job or internship opportunities and how you can make your application stand out from the hundreds of others.” The value of networking and being “in the loop” was also suggested when respondents were asked where respondents' organizations tend to advertise jobs: although 87% said their own website and 86% said word-of-mouth/contacts/networks, only 18% said the media most accessible to outsiders: newspapers. The increasing importance of networking is suggested by comparing it to a study published in 2003 that reported that 80% of nonprofits use the newspaper to advertise job openings (Ban, Drahnak-Faller, and Towers Reference Ban, Drahnak-Faller and Towers2003, 138).

Regardless of how faculty think they are helping their students, discussion of the survey's results pertaining to the contribution of formal education and student clubs and volunteering to the development of workplace-relevant skills is sobering. Unlike the experience of student clubs and volunteering, which respondents perceived as contributing to workplace-relevant interpersonal skills, formal education, especially group work and traditional liberal arts assignments, was not seen as especially workplace relevant and, to the extent that it was, it was associated with individual skills like written communication.