Have Employers Forgiven Colleges?

What is the primary driving force behind a student’s decision to attend college or university? Presumably, many would say the obvious: Young people pursue higher education for better job opportunities, higher wages, and an improved quality of life. This means, of course, that employers hiring new graduates need to believe in the American higher-education system just as strongly as do the students who enroll. Surprising though it may seem given the last few years’ headlines, that may be the case. A recent poll from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) suggests that the vast majority of employers are happy with higher ed’s current performance.

AAC&U released a report in December entitled “The Agility Imperative: How Employers View Preparation for an Uncertain Future,” based on the findings of a survey conducted by Morning Consult in August 2025. The survey found that more than seven in 10 employers believe higher education is worth the financial investment. Moreover, “seventy percent of employers have either ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in U.S. higher education.”

If one were to look only at this report, one might decide that employers have no or very few concerns about higher education. The survey found additionally that 85 percent of employers believe higher education is doing a good job of preparing students for the workforce. While 81 percent of employers are more likely to consider hiring graduates who have an internship under their belt, a startling portion have faith in higher ed’s more abstract work, with 80 percent reporting confidence that “colleges and universities are helping students develop skills that support constructive dialogue across disagreement in the workplace.”

Representatives from major corporations are more likely to give polite survey answers than are small-business owners. If one were to look only at this report, one might decide that employers have no or very few concerns about higher education. A quick Google search, however, reveals that the answer is not so simple.

A recent example of a competing finding is the Cengage Group’s 2025 Graduate Employability Report. Cengage found that 2025 was the toughest entry-level job market in the last five years, with not quite one-third of graduates landing jobs in their intended fields and almost half feeling unprepared for the job market. Hiring power has begun shifting away from graduates and to employers, it seems. If the latter were really happy with higher education and college graduates, surely students would be having an easier time finding full-time work.

Another survey, by RedBalloon and PublicSquare, found in October 2023 that 83 percent of small-business owners believe that college degrees offer little or no value for a job candidate. 89 percent of respondents believe that colleges do not foster free speech and debate or develop critical-thinking skills.

As with any research conducted via surveys, clearly, there is a great deal of uncertainty. While Morning Consult’s survey seems to demonstrate that employers have high confidence in universities, others argue the opposite. Interestingly, Cengage’s survey found that college professors believe students need soft skills such as critical thinking most crucially, but employers rank job-specific skills as most important, while professors rank those last.

As previously mentioned, Cengage also found that the job market is tightening, with the majority of employers hiring the same or fewer entry-level workers. The percentage of 2025 graduates who secured full-time jobs related to the degree they received is down, dropping from 41 percent in 2024 to only 30 percent in 2025.

What might be the cause of this conflicting information? One thing that comes to mind is that representatives from major corporations are more likely to give polite survey answers than are small-business owners, who have less incentive to dress up a hard truth. It is also possible that employer confidence really has soared in the last two or three years. In any case, the AAC&U survey is not unfounded, but it is important to consider multiple sources and not simply one. Colleges and universities have room for improvement and should continue to enhance students’ lives by raising their employability.

Grace Hall is a communications assistant at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. She works and lives in Georgia.