From successful student to successful employee

How difficult can it be?

EAB has a report on a big survey by Gallup which measured how engaged nearly 30,000 US graduate respondents were in their work, as well as their community, physical, financial, and social well-being. The findings indicate that six college experiences are linked to graduates becoming more engaged employees.
The report says there are what they call these ‘big six’ experiences that turn successful students into successful employees. These look, on the face of it, to be quite unsurprising:

1. A professor who made them excited to learn;
2. A professor who cared about them as individuals;
3. A mentor who pushed students to reach their goals;
4. Working on a long-term project;
5. Completing a job or internship related to classroom lessons;
6. Being engaged in extracurricular activities and groups.

You would hope that many students would experience most of these and quite a decent proportion would enjoy all of the ‘big six’.

Looking for the ‘big six’

There is though a bit of a step between this observation and ‘engagement’ at work:

“Though we don’t know whether the big six college experiences cause graduates to be engaged, there is nonetheless a strong relationship between these experiences in college and workplace engagement after college,” Gallup’s Brandon Busteed and Sean Seymour write.

“It is possible that having experiential learning opportunities, mentor relationships, and internships enable students to get a better understanding of what they want to do professionally.”

Hmm. So the detail includes the following findings:

• Thirty-nine percent of college graduates are engaged at work.
• As many graduates from the Top 100 U.S. News & World Report schools are engaged in their work as graduates from other institutions.
• 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. Only 14% of graduates have had all three.
• 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.
• There is no distinction between graduates of public versus private colleges on well-being. However, there is a big difference on well-being for graduates of for-profit colleges.
• As many graduates from the Top 100-ranked schools in U.S. News & World Report are thriving in all elements of well-being as graduates from all other institutions.
• The higher the amount of school loans that graduates took out for their undergraduate education, the worse off their well-being is. Fourteen percent of graduates who did not take out any loans are thriving in their well-being, compared with 4% of graduates with $20,000 to $40,000 in loans — the current average loan debt.
• Graduates who felt “supported” during their time in college are six times more likely to be emotionally attached to their alma mater.
• Overall, only 29% of college graduates “strongly agree” that college prepared them well for life outside of college, but agreement raises the odds of graduates’ attachment nearly nine times.

There are some interesting points in here but the link to employee engagement and the definition of what it really means seems to me to be rather difficult to be clear on. What I find most surprising about the ‘big six’ is that only 3% of respondents said they had all six experiences—and one quarter reported having none at all. This just seems extraordinary. You would think that most students could not fail to have at least one of these experiences. Even if only by accident.

Still, plenty to think about in here.