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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


Last week, Gallup and Purdue University released a report, Great Jobs. Great Lives. It looked at “the relationship between the college experience and whether college graduates have great jobs and great lives.” The findings have created a bit of a stir because they seemed to run counter to the perceptions many hold of the college experience. In brief the big takeaways were as follows:

· “where graduates went to college--public or private, small or large, very selective or not selective--hardly matters at all to their current well-being and their work lives in comparison to their experiences in college”

· “if graduates had an internship or job where they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom, were actively involved in extracurricular activities and organizations, and worked on projects that took a semester or more to complete, their odds of being engaged at work doubled also.”

· “If employed graduates feel their college prepared them well for life outside of it, the odds that they are engaged at work increase nearly three times.”

· “If an employed graduate had a professor who cared about them as a person, one who made them excited about learning, and had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their dreams, the graduate’s odds of being engaged at work more than doubled.”

In other words, the most important factors in a graduate’s post-college success are not related to what most might expect: the prestige of the college the student attended, the cost of this education, or the loveliness of the campus. Rather, graduate’s post-college success is most closely related to 1) engaging in applied learning (whether undergraduate research, internship, co-op, or co-curricular); and 2) interacting with engaged faculty and staff.

These findings should strike a chord at MCC.

We have long valued student experiences that encourage them to apply their learning out of the classroom. We could each come up with long lists of examples: undergraduate research, service learning, co-ops, internships, performances, student clubs, athletics, and more. Our students ability to grow into confident scholars and leaders increases each time we provide them with opportunities to push themselves and demonstrate what they have learned.

We also have a long history of connecting students with faculty and staff members who care about their success in and out of the classroom; who want them to succeed in this term and in the long term. Our soon-to-be-released Inspiring Profiles publication highlights 11 faculty and staff who have been nominated by their peers, but this single booklet could easily expand to an encyclopedia if it were to include all worthy members of the MCC community. We know from experience how engaging and engaged faculty and staff can change the trajectory of a student’s future: our MCC community members are truly inspiring and instrumental to students’ accomplishments today and tomorrow.

So, the findings of the Gallup-Purdue report would likely not surprise any of us at MCC, but having said that, I am happy that these findings have been picked up so quickly by non-educational media outlets because they reinforce the importance of investing in public higher education—especially in community colleges that have long focused on applied learning in small classroom settings. The return on investing in our work yields a return that goes well beyond the economic: an MCC education provides graduates with the opportunity not just to get a great job but to have a great life. Please feel free to share your thoughts here.

Anne M. Kress
President
05/15/2014