Part of the issue is that jobs aren't what drive academics at the 4-year research university level, theory and research are. While some departments are more receptive than others to responding to market needs, many are not as oriented to teaching as they are to research, and it takes years to change faculty appointments; it may take more than a year just to change a course description or get a new course approved. The 4-year institutions need to take a page from the 2-year book and become more nimble and faster in their course approval process, but even so, the reward system for faculty is unlikely to respond quickly to job market needs.

The pace of change in the labor market over the past 10-15 years has challenged institutions of all kinds to keep up. Academia is not alone. However, for examples of success stories, it helps to look at cases where the private sector has helped to finance changes in the curriculum - innovation is not free.

I suggest that student demand is an intermediate factor between labour force demand and college enrolments. That is, college places respond to student demand which in turn responds to (prospective students' perceptions of) labor force demand.

The researchers miss the point. They begin with the assumption that because there are "calls to more closely link higher education with job needs in the United States" the colleges and universities will respond to such calls or even have a responsibility to respond to such calls. That has never been the purpose of four-year colleges and universities, however, so such an assumption is flawed. For-profit training schools, some programs in community colleges, trade schools, and even some non-profit colleges offer short-term programs specifically geared towards job preparation, but most colleges and universities have a mission to provide broader skills that enable the graduate to learn how to learn, not to learn a specific set of steps to perform one job well. The latter is the purpose of employer-based training. Moreover, as the researchers point out, there is a four to seven year delay between the demand for a skill and the time a university could possibly provide the first graduate for that job. That's the nature of the requirements that draw the distinction between a college degree and job training. One is for the long term and one is for the short term. Mixing the missions confuses the research outcomes.

It is interesting how often medicine, which is a very special case in this context, keeps getting mentioned in this article. It is a special case because the AMA successfully lobbies Congress to explicitly limit entry into the field. So of course universities aren't responsive to changing demand because they are legally constrained from doing so. The OP barely mentions that situation but fails to point out that the regulation is so extreme as to render medicine irrelevant to the apparent point of the rest of the study (which would seem to be about decision-making at higher ed institutions). The fact that they nevertheless keep bringing it up makes me wonder if the rest of the article isn't in fact camouflage for an attempt by the author to make the readers aware of the over-regulated market problem in medicine specifically.

I have to wonder... How many people are like me--doing a job that didn't even exist when I graduated from college? I expect even more of today's grads will be in the same situation in less time than I was. So where is there an emphasis on ability to learn and adapt in higher education?

Having worked in the proprietary sector for many years, and now working in the public sector, I have to differ from some of your comments. Top proprietary schools are not only giving job skills but training students to become lifelong learners and adaptable to change. Many of the industry sectors they provide training for are constantly changing and adapting. Students are prepared for continual training and "lifelong learning". No one (4 yr. college grad, 2 year training program) can expect to take that education with no additional training and skills and endure the labor/job market for a lifetime.

It is very difficult for colleges and universities to respond to labor market demand for employees with certain skills and knowledge. That demand is always "now," while the training required often takes a significant amount of time, during which the demand either goes away or is exported or changes dramatically. IT is a good example. There is also a lot of difference between a demand for, say, "phlebotomists" and "engineers." The general knowledge base one needs to become a phlebotomist is relatively small, and the training focuses on very specific skills. Not so with engineering, even if the specialization is identified. Also, as someone noted above, it is not quite clear what it means to prepare someone for a certain occupation unless it is as specific a phlebotomy. In talking with a broad based group of employers (mostly not in technical fields) a couple years ago, they told me with one voice that "we hire for soft skills and train for hard skills." The soft skills, of course, are those the are usually the focus of general education--communication, critical thinking, quantitative savvy, social skills, etc.

It is true the traditional empahsis of 4-year education has been to prepare students for life and not as much for making a living.

However, whether 2-year or 4-year the implied promise remains a better life and greater earning power through higher level employment. While enhancing one's intellectual status remains of particular value the glaring relality remains one of ultimate employment.

As state dollars shrink to support public higher education and costs coninue to rise for both public and private colleges, students fall deeper in debt the need for wages high enough to cover debt burden becomes imperative and so does matching employment.

If you have served on a job search committee lately you will note the number of applicants who possess advanced degrees has increased significantly. The 10+ percent of unemployed are not all high school drop-outs. There are a significant number of seasoned college graduates as well as those with newly minted advanced degrees who frankly can't find jobs in the current market.

We ignore the link between learning and workforce at our own peril. Yes, we prepare our citizens for life but we as educators do our students a great diservice if we dismiss responsibility to provide an industry matched highly skilled workforce.

With a country in the worst financial condition of our lifetime being pompus about who owns the problem is a luxery we and our American society cannot afford.

Yes and when our graduates fail to find the implied promise of high paying work, who do you suppose they are going to blame?
The recent adminstrative challenge to our acrediting agencies is one of many examples of not only a call for greater accountability but a public expectation of educations promise for a better life continuing to deliver.

Our one great hope in the present economic crisis will be predicated on as many people as possible working who can outthink, outinvent and out produce the rest of the world which represents higher education's calling. The link between learning and work is one we should be paying very close attention to.

We are not the only game in town anymore and one we may someday lose if we don't keep the ball moving forward.

As long as our graduate training programs in the sciences and medicine in our research universities consist of a few overview courses followed by lab rotations and a research apprenticeship under a research mentor, our universities will continue to turn out scholars who are offshoots of their mentors, basically doing the same types of work their mentor did. Unfortunately for the graduates, there are not unlimited academic positions to allow the exponential expansion of this research model, and the graduates need to find something practical to do in order to earn a living (other than becoming perpetual postdocs). This system is a self-absorbed, closed system that has little or nothing to do with societal needs and changing economic conditions. The academics' solution is to ask for yet more research money from the tax payers to permit the continued expansion of their system, rather than to fundamentally change the educational structure of how they educate graduate students. Graduate students need to have both breadth and depth to their education (as is the case with M.D.-Ph.D. graduates). The model of a few survey courses followed by lab rotations and a dissertation produces graduates whose knowledge is so narrow that they often find themselves needing to start all over in their acquisition of knowledge in order to earn a living.

There is an assumption in most of these comments that it is self-evident how to match higher education with workforce demand. I'm not sure that is true. There are some kinds of professional jobs whose entry qualifications are controlled and more or less stable and for which the demand is likely to be perpetual. As I noted above, it is easy to train a phlebotomist. The set of skills is focused, and the necessary foundational knowledge base is small. We are pretty good at trainng nurses and nutritionists. It takes a while, but the profession is defined, there are consistent licensure requirements and exams, and the curriculum is pretty well set and yet responsive to changes in the profession. Despite a lot of whining to the contrary, we have consistent approaches to preparing K-12 teachers that have in recent years, particularly, become responsive to needed change. I could go on through the various professional schools in this way, arguing that, in general, we are responsive where the profession is well defined and organized to ensure that graduates have certain skills and knowledge.

But, in fact, most jobs are not in these organized professions. Manufacturing jobs are almost gone, and most that are left require on the job training. Almost all construction workers, except those in the skilled trades (electricians, plumbers, etc.--although these trades are being de-skilled) are trained on the job or can be trained quickly because the foundational knowledge base is small. Our largest employers are in retail, sales, and food service. What is the training for these positions? We have enormous business schools pumping out graduates, but there is no clear target for training business grads--especially since English majors often do as well in business as business students.

Just what is this demand that we are not meeting? What jobs are these? Are we just talking about high end jobs and not the kind that will address wide-spread unemployment nowadays? Are those who are demanding more appropriately trained employees going to be there to hire when they show up? Are we asked to produce an over-supply so as to drive down salaries to levels that are competitive with India or China? Are we really talking about full professional training or about the need to this or that course or bundle of knowledge/skill? What do entrepreneurs need to know?

This is one of those subject where we need to get down to cases. In the process of developing a new university campus with an applied learning orienttion, I went over the whole Bureau of Labor Statistics 10 year demand projections (both national and regional)to see if I could identify some areas where we could start new programs or revise existing curriculum (including general studies) to be responsive to anticipated demand. It was a frustrating exercise, even when I tried to bundle similar jobs into a single "demand" cateory. The specific areas that traditionally required a college education (sometimes graduate education) were already well covered. Other places with high demand did not pay the salaries that would justify either a 2 or 4 year post secondary education nor did they require that level of education. In other areas, the demand wasn't there. And so it went.

So what demand are we not meeting? Is it jobs in certain areas? Is it certain sets of skills, maybe those "soft" skills? Is it certain attitudes toward work? Do we need new higher ed "products," mainly smallish non-degree bundles of customized learning to respond to an immediate need or adjustment in the nature of work in a particular area? What?

Most universities are not willing to retrain their faculty to learn new skills. Most faculty will use their own time to learn a new software or work with equipment. I beg with many of my students to learn additional skills beside engineering such as pluming and auto mechanics.