Library: Attributing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism: Final Draft

A Word about the sources ...

The sources consulted for this essay were found in a search of EBSCO Education Research Complete for the subject terms "higher education" AND ("employability" OR "college graduates --employment").

Most citations on "employability" in higher education relate to the United Kingdom, European, and British Commonwealth countries.

Charles Dorn (Ph.D. in Education) is associate professor of Education at Bowdoin College (Maine). Dr. Jan McArthur (Ph.D. in Education) is a lecturer in Education at University of Edinburgh (U.K.). Denise Jackson (Ph.D. in Education) is a lecturer on the Faculty of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.

Attribution Exercise: Sample Essay in Final Draft

Paragraph	So, What is College For?
1	What social and economic conditions influence students' motivations to attend college? Which factors make it possible for them to persist and thrive as alumni? Is the purpose of higher education to serve the public good, or to enable graduates to realize individual success and personal wealth? This essay cites three diverse approaches to inquiry: a case study on the history of higher education in the United States (Dorn), a position paper grounded in European critical theory (McArthur), and survey research on employability skill sets of of undergraduate business majors in Australia (Jackson, 2012).
2	In comparing the 1802 opening of Bowdoin College with the late 19th century origins of Stanford University, Dorn notes that younger sons of New England farmers sought qualification in what were known to Bowdoin's first president, Joseph McKeen as "liberal professions:" as doctors, teachers, lawyers and statesmen. When personal wealth was held in land by primogeniture, these landless graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth and Bowdoin enjoyed incomes modestly higher than those of the laboring class, and attained abundant self-fulfillment and social status while serving the common good -- a core value of "republicanism" in the generation following the American Revolution. "Numerous scholars have noted how Thomas Jefferson (who was serving in his first term of office as U.S. president at the time of McKeen's inauguration) conceived of educational institutions as central to ensuring the republic's survival" (Dorn, p. 1573).
3	"In emphasizing graduates' responsibility to promote the common good, McKeen hardly proposed a new role for the American college. Instead, he drew on a general social ethos that assigned priority to social responsibility over individuals' self indulgence" (Dorn, p. 1573; attributed by Dorn to Bowen et al., 2005). "No phrase except 'liberty' was invoked more frequently by the revolutionaries than the 'public good'" (Quoted by Dorn from Gordon S. Wood (1969)).
4	Archival records listing professions of graduates from the classes of 1810 and 1813 (Dorn, p. 1574 ) show that Bowdoin's exclusively male and mostly white students sought both stable income and civic responsibilities. The majority could not afford to attend college without financial assistance. Sixty-four of 114 students at Bowdoin College in 1829 relied on scholarships, and/or taught school over the winter break, and even during college terms (Dorn, p. 1575).
5	Turning to Stanford, Dorn describes how, on welcoming its first class in 1885, the university emerged in a substantially different social and economic era. Funded by Leland and Jane Stanford with a $30 million endowment -- fruits of a merchandizing and railroad fortune earned in the California Gold Rush -- the co-educational and multi-ethnic institution admitted students with limited resources (notably future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover), then celebrated its graduates' accumulation of personal wealth. Early presidents of the university, informed by politics of the Progressive Era, emphasized unique social and civic responsibilities of alumni who achieved elite status in the newly urbanized and stratified society of industrial America. Student writings from the early years of Stanford's history reveal however that financial advancement was central to their ambitions (Dorn, p. 1586).
6	Dorn suggests that Leland and Jane Stanford would have been happy to know that their fortune funded Herbert Hoover's college education. A young engineer of modest origins who became rich through his occupation, and later dedicated himself to public service through relief work in Belgium during World War I, Hoover fulfilled Stanford's purpose in promoting both personal success and public welfare. We might assume, with Dorn, that the Standords would be sad to learn of views held by some 21st century students enrolled in or preparing for college. In recent focus groups conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities students rated material wealth in a well paid profession as their top reason for wanting to attend college, and "civic responsibility" as the least important and least interesting outcome of a higher education (Dorn, p. 1590-1591).
7	McArthur (2011) addresses the enduring economic, social and cultural purposes of higher education in the wake of the worldwide recession that began in 2008. Deploring commoditization and compartmentalization of curriculum, and "functionalist" and "employability" initiatives the economic collapse inspired in agencies responsible for higher education funding in the U.K., McArthur argues for "a higher education that helps to make us all happier, more virtuous, more creative and more human (McArthur, 2011, p. 747; emphasis in original)."
8	Higher education should enable students to develop and celebrate their own identities. … The sounds of higher education should therefore be a cacophony of different voices. There should be shouting. Higher education should challenge, provoke and inspire. It should look messy. It should not fit neatly within the lines of an accountant's ledger. It should look rather like the world in which it exits and which it partly serves (McArthur, p. 746).
9	McArthur's commitment to expansive, loosely structured learning environments (no modules!) and inclusion of multiple viewpoints on curriculum development contrasts with the approach of many professional undergraduate programs in the U.S. and U.K.. Perhaps the greater volume of literature on "employability" by academics in the U.K. relates to direct government involvement in higher education curricula. Accreditation of colleges and universities in the United States is managed in a peer review process by regional agencies that focus on assessment of student learning rather than what and how students should be taught.
10	Jackson (2012) reports on self-assessment research with 1,024 business undergraduates on capabilities valued by employers in developed economies. Of particular interest to our discussion are the employability characteristics identified for the project, "based on Jackson and Chapman's (2011) framework of 20 competencies considered critical in business undergraduates" (Jackson, 2012, p. 347). They reveal businesses as social institutions that seek self-aware colleagues with initiative and enterprise, who are socially responsible and accountable, can think critically, and can develop professionally.
11	Jackson (2012, p. 346) acknowledges both the impetus of the global financial crisis and the controversy among academics that discussion of employability and skill sets has engendered. Readers will benefit from a close analysis of her research team's methodology and results, as well as Jackson's extensive literature search and caution regarding limitations of the study.
12	Behaviour and composite skill ratings both indicated that students perceive that they have strong capabilities in the 'social responsibility and accountability', 'working effectively with others' and 'developing professionalism' skill sets, broadly aligning with the results from other, industry-based studies. The weakest mean ratings for 'thinking critically', 'developing initiative and enterprise' and 'self-awareness,' relative to other skill sets, are also consistent with employer perceptions; but student ratings are inflated, suggesting that they believe themselves to be reasonably capable in these ares, whereas in contrast the evidence from industry suggests skill deficiencies (Jackson, 2011, p. 352).
13	Jackson (2012) proposes using rubrics to address disparities in workplace experience and employer satisfaction that over confidence of new hires may create. Students can be introduced to detailed expectations for each skill sets through the use of rubrics specifying behaviors and levels of attainment in the discipline and in the workplace. This approach would go a long way to coordinate student preparation with employer expectations.
14	Employability is not a trivial matter. Income is essential for graduates to meet fundamental needs, establishing relationships and families, and experiencing cultural benefits of a higher education. When corporate, economically driven approaches to curriculum value technical skills over communication, socialization and independent thought, graduates risk a lifetime of dependency on job-skill matches as followers rather than leaders in a volatile economy. Students who engage actively in a liberal arts curriculum learn how to create and define roles that meet current and future economic needs. They gain confidence to negotiate productive and healthy relationships, and acquire new knowledge and skills to meet the evolving needs of their employers, families and communities.
15	Freshmen entering in the class of 2021 will be among the most economically challenged and thoroughly assessed in human history. Their social and intellectual responses and inclinations have been charted from birth. (Who knows what Herbert Hoover was really thinking on his first day at Stanford?) Perhaps students in 2017 share views no more or less naive or selfish than those of previous generations, one difference being their access to and affinity for social media. We can, I believe, be confident that though they are motivated in large part by economic anxiety, attentive scholars fortified by their dreams will learn and grow together, guided by lessons of literature, history and science that illustrate rewards for individual effort and shared responsibility for social consequences.
	References Dorn, C. (2011). From "Liberal professions" to "lucrative professions": Bowdoin College, Stanford University, and the civic functions of higher education. Teachers College Record. 113(7), 1566-1596. Jackson, D. (2012). Business undergraduates' perceptions of their capabilities in employability skills: implications for industry and higher education. Industry and Higher Education, 26(5), 345-356. Jackson, D., and Chapman, E. (2011). Non-technical competencies in undergraduate business degree programmes: Australian and UK perspectives. Studies in Higher Education. 37(5) 541-567. McArthur, J. (2011). Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 30(6), 737-749.