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2001 Employer Follow-up Survey

Introduction

A central measure of institutional effectiveness is how well graduates perform in the work place. Are graduates and former students meeting or exceeding employer expectations? In what areas are our former students best prepared and in what areas are they least prepared? Answers to such questions provide an excellent basis for educational improvement.

A survey was mailed to employers who register to recruit from DCCCD campuses. The purpose of this survey was to address the following questions:

A summary of the major findings of the study and recommendation for future research follows. Individual survey questions are accompanied by tables of responses. The appendix contains the survey instrument
 

Research Methodology
 
In 1999, a similar study of employers was conducted. A list of companies with posted job-openings on DCCCD campuses was compiled and surveyed. In 2001, colleges were given the opportunity to augment this same list with companies actively recruiting on their respective campuses (not already on the list). From this, a more comprehensive sampling frame was drawn. Employers were asked to respond to the survey based on their experiences with former DCCCD students in their employ. While this approach does not permit the tracking of specific students (but rather asks the employer to assess all former DCCCD students they have employed), it provides meaningful assessment of former students without fatal selection bias. Conventional methods of employer follow-up surveys have required student permission to interview employers; subsequently, the sampling frame was reduced to those employers whom students wished to be interviewed. This tends to lead to a systematically positive bias in employee attitudes and opinions, since students who have had negative experiences are less likely to participate. The approach used in this study blindly surveyed all employers who may have hired former DCCCD students, permitting free response. Since the employer was not tied to a particular student, they were given the freedom to evaluate as many students as they have employed. The limitation to this approach is that employers may be evaluating individuals from other colleges, under the incorrect assumption that they are DCCCD graduates.

A total of 643 employers were mailed the survey (see Appendix) in April, 2001. There were 96 surveys returned non-deliverable and 64 useable surveys returned. Since the adjusted response rate of 11.7% was not deemed acceptable, a second mailing was done in June. Of the 483 surveys mailed, 12 were returned non-deliverable and 33 were completed as of July 20, 2001. This brought the total adjusted response rate to 18.1%.
 

Companies Recruiting DCCCD Students

Students were employed by a broad spectrum of companies. These companies did not necessarily fall into conventional manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing and service categories, but fell into very specific lines of business. Given a set of sixteen lines of business, employers classified themselves as follows:
 

Line of Business
Number
Other
30
Retailing
12
Veterinary services
10
Medical/health care services
8
Government
6
Banking/financial services
5
Education/learning
5
Food service
3
Real estate services
3
Recruitment/staffing
3
Manufacturing
2
Legal services
2
Insurance
2
Telecommunications
2
Computer/networking
2
Travel and tourism
1
Heating and refrigeration
1
 
Those who were categorized as "other" lines of business were given the opportunity to specify their line of business. The results were quite diverse. The following is a list of those responses: The employers were given the option of specifying their company's name. Most employers responded, giving the following list:  
Colleges Students Attended
 
Most of the employers noted that they employed students from more than one campus. It was not uncommon to find employers who hired from adjacent colleges (e.g., Brookhaven and Richland, or Brookhaven, Richland and Eastfield). This leads us to an evaluation of no less than 131 students in the following breakdown:
 
College
Number
Brookhaven College
39
Cedar Valley College
25
Eastfield College
19
El Centro College
22
Mountain View College
12
North Lake College
10
Richland College
20
Unspecified DCCCD college
8
Don't know
5
None of the above
5

It is worth noting that relatively few responses dealt with unspecified DCCCD colleges, while even fewer dealt with unknown colleges. This suggests that most employers had clear ideas of which DCCCD institutions their students attended.
 

Employer Assessments of DCCCD Students
 
Employers were given the opportunity to make assessments about the performance of DCCCD students, based on a fixed set of attributes. They were also given the opportunity to list any other skills/requisites which they felt were important for their specific business. In addition to specific assessments of performance, employers were also asked if they felt students were adequately prepared for the business world. Furthermore, they were asked if they believed a 2-year degree or certificate increases the employee's chance for advancement in the company.

Importance/Performance Ratings
(1-5 scale, 1 is least important/favorable, 5 is most important/favorable, "unsure" responses omitted)

 
Attribute
Average 
Importance
Rank 
(Import)
Average 
Performance
Rank 
(Perform)
Attendance/dependability
4.90
1
4.06
3
Listening
4.83
2
3.90
6
Ability to work with others
4.81
3
4.15
1
Verbal communication
4.81
4
3.93
5
Ability to work independently
4.62
5
4.04
4
Reading
4.62
6
4.09
2
Initiative
4.56
7
3.89
9
Problem solving
4.51
8
3.69
11
Writing
4.45
9
3.89
9
Resourcefulness
4.40
10
3.90
7
Leadership
4.10
11
3.67
12
Computer/technical
3.99
12
3.90
8
Mathematical
3.91
13
3.64
13

Agreement between importance measures and performance scores is good (correlation coefficient = .69), which suggests that students are performing best in areas that employers deem most important.

Note that importance and performance were both scaled from one (low importance/performance) to five (high importance/performance). Using this convention, we can see that all skills were of considerable importance. Alternatively, performances were not rated as highly on an equal five point scale; however, all attributes were rated above the mid-point, suggesting that students are performing in a satisfactory fashion.

Are Students Successfully Prepared for the Workplace?

Most employers believed that DCCCD students are well prepared for the workforce (94%), while few (6%) believed that they were not prepared. This does corroborate the performance ratings conclusion that former DCCCD students are performing satisfactorily in areas which employers deem most important.

Other Skills/Competencies Listed by Employers

When asked to list other skills important for their employees, employers provided a very diverse list of skills. Most dealt with specific skills for the line of business. The most commonly cited included:

The complete list of skills cited (verbatim) by employers is as follows: Does a 2-yr Degree or Certificate Increase Chance for Advancement?

To get a complete picture of employee performance and potential, employers were asked if an associate degree or certificate increases an employee's chance for advancement in their organization. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with approximately 78% indicating that the degree/certificate increases advancement opportunity, and only 15% indicating that the degree/ certificate doesn't increase advancement opportunity. A breakdown of responses is as follows:
 

Response
Number
Definitely yes
38
Probably yes
35
Uncertain
6
Probably not
14
Definitely not
1

Summary and Conclusions

Overall employer response was very encouraging. Most employers expressed satisfaction with the performance of former DCCCD students, in general and in terms of specific skills. The employers captured a broad cross-section of the regional business environment, and recruited a good balance of students from the seven district colleges.

Employer Survey Questionaire (in pdf format)

Prepared by District Office of Research, July 2001

Internal Reports & Summaries