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It's a tough job market out there for recent grads, and more young people in the U.S. are questioning the need for a college degree. That's putting liberal arts colleges under pressure to prove their value, like Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where educators are trying to reimagine the humanities. As member station GBH's Kirk Carapezza reports, Brandeis is focusing on building skills and giving students work experience before they graduate.
UNIDENTIFIED ADVISER: Have you learned anything that you didn't know before about publishing?
MIRIAM GRODIN: Definitely. I think just the whole kind of timeline of the process was really interesting to dive into a little bit more.
KIRK CARAPEZZA, BYLINE: Behind the stacks, tucked away in the Brandeis library, junior Miriam Grodin is job-shadowing at the university publishing company.
UNIDENTIFIED ADVISER: You can see the advantage of working at a small press because you can see how it all fits together.
GRODIN: Yeah. And, like, I - that's something I've talked about in, like, classes I'm taking too.
CARAPEZZA: The 20-year-old from Livingston, New Jersey, hopes to become an editor someday.
GRODIN: I love to read. I love to write. I know that I want to get into the world of book publishing, but I feel like it's something that's kind of mystical.
CARAPEZZA: This job-shadow program is part of Brandeis' plan to make the world of work a little less mystical. Starting next year, every student here will have the chance to take what they learn in class and apply it in real work settings. It's also adding more student support. Brandeis president Arthur Levine says as soon as they step on campus, every student will get two advisers - one academic, one career - and two transcripts.
ARTHUR LEVINE: One will have the grades and the course they took, and the other will be a record of what they know and what they can do.
CARAPEZZA: Levine says the economy is changing dramatically, so schools also have to evolve and make sure students are acquiring concrete skills like communication, digital literacy, critical thinking and adaptability. Brandeis, with its roughly $1.4 billion endowment, could've coasted along for years, but with fewer potential students, the school has been discounting more than 60% of its tuition just to fill its seats.
In any other industry, you'd go out of business.
LEVINE: Absolutely. What would people say about Tiffany's if tomorrow they announced, hey, we're having a half-price jewelry sale. It's not a markup quality to have to discount at that level.
CARAPEZZA: For the past year, Levine's been pitching his restructuring plan to improve the quality of a Brandeis education to professors, and it worked.
LINDA BUI: Eighty-eight percent of the faculty voted in favor. You never see that level of agreement on anything at a university.
CARAPEZZA: Linda Bui is dean of the new School of Business and Economics. It's a merger of what used to be the International Business School and the economics department. She says the two were already closely tied.
BUI: We share a building. We share seminars. We share all kinds of resources. So combining the two made a lot of sense.
CARAPEZZA: She says these changes will free up resources and help students gain the skills they actually need to land jobs. And Brandeis isn't alone. Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, the University of Arizona in Tucson and Georgia Tech in Atlanta have all recently restructured departments and revamped their liberal arts programs, emphasizing applied humanities that weave career preparation directly into the curriculum.
Brandon Busteed runs a company that provides industry experiences for students. He says other top-ranked schools should pay attention to what Brandeis and a handful of other schools are doing.
BRANDON BUSTEED: The No. 1 reason why students enroll in higher ed is to get a good or better job.
CARAPEZZA: And if families continue to feel graduates are leaving campuses unprepared for the workforce, Busteed predicts more colleges will soon follow Brandeis' lead.
For NPR News, I'm Kirk Carapezza in Boston. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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