Youth and employers want to know more about non-degree education pathways

Report: Agreement that there should be more non-degree hiring but concerns about the impact of lacking a college degree

August 9, 2022

If you are in high school and unsure about your postsecondary plans, you are not alone. A new report from American Student Assistance and Jobs for the Future (JFF) indicates “a shift taking place among Gen Z youth, who are skeptical of the well-trodden high school-to-college route, but are unsure how to navigate the growing array of postsecondary education paths.”

Degrees of Risk: What Gen Z and Employers Think About Education-to-Career Pathways…and How Those Views are Changing surveyed more than 1,500 Gen Z youth – ages 14 to 19 – and 600 employers between January and March of this year.

Findings indicate employers and Gen Z youth are dealing with stigma that might be attached to non-degree educational options.

65% of Gen Z youth are worried about choosing the wrong education pathway
58% of the surveyed youth believe that companies should hire more high school graduates who have pursued non-degree education pathways
But 37% of Gen Z youth perceive employers favor job applicants with college degrees
81% of employers believe that hiring should be based on skills
68% of employers agree that applicants from non-degree pathways should be proactively hired
But 54% of employers indicate it is “less risky to hire someone with a college degree”

As young people navigate their next steps, 71% “agree high schools should do more to help students understand the non-degree education pathways available.” The report indicates, “Most employers now say that organizations need more information on how non-degree pathways differ.”

A variety of calls to action are suggested. Among them:

Continued research into the quality, efficacy, and value of a wide variety of education-to-career opportunities
A change in the messaging around how options are presented to young people and to the workforce
The creation of tools that can help students, families, and counselors navigate options; and change management resources for employers
Commitment to equity

You can read the full report here.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.