General Education Employer Survey 10/25/99

Overview

Highlights/Summary

In general, it seemed that employers were satisfied with C.O.D. trained employees. For almost every question the combined percentage of "strongly agree" and "agree" responses was well over 70%. Especially high were the percentages for questions 4 (reading skills), 10 (team member), 11 (works well with people), and 13 (personal integrity).

Question 4 (reading skills) pertained to the reading skills of the C.O.D. trained employees. Ninety-two percent of the employers strongly agreed or agreed that their C.O.D. trained employees had demonstrated reading skills necessary for the job. This is interesting considering that in the General Education survey given to C.O.D. students, a relatively low percentage of students indicated that their reading skills had been improved at C.O.D. This contradiction may be explained when one examines the 1998-1999 College Assessment of Academic Proficiencies (CAAP) study. One finding of the study was that C.O.D. freshmen scores on the reading test were higher than the national norms for community colleges. Although the difference was not statistically significant, C.O.D. freshmen scored 1.3 points higher than the national norm. Therefore, one explanation for the contradiction between employers and C.O.D. students is that students enter C.O.D. with relatively good reading skills. With good reading skills, there may be little room for improvement. So, although students may feel that their experiences at C.O.D. have not significantly improved their reading skills, employers feel that their reading skills are adequate for the job.

Questions 10 (team member) and 11 (works well with people) also had a high percentage of respondents who selected "strongly agree" and "agree". Ninety-five percent of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that their C.O.D. trained employees have the ability to participate as team members. This is consistent with the finding for question 11 that 90% of the respondents "strongly agree" "agree" that C.O.D. trained employees work well with a variety of people. So apparently, employers are very satisfied with the people skills of C.O.D. trained employees.

Question 13 (personal integrity) also drew many positive responses. Ninety-five percent of the respondents selected "strongly agree" or "agree" to the question, "do your C.O.D. trained employees demonstrate personal integrity."

There were three questions on the survey, all pertaining to technology, which had a relatively low percentage of respondents who selected "strongly agree" or "agree."

For question 15 only 72% of the respondents strongly agreed or agreed that C.O.D. trained employees had the ability to use technological resources effectively. Employers also responded less favorably on questions 16 ("C.O.D. trained employees demonstrate computer literacy") and 17 ("C.O.D. trained employees demonstrate the ability to learn computer and technological skills'). Sixty-nine percent responded with "strongly agree" or "agree" for question 16 and 79% responded similarly for question 17.

There were three questions on the General Education survey given to students that correspond to questions 15, 16, and 17 on the employers' survey. On the students' survey the questions were: "C.O.D. has increased my awareness of the possible uses of computers and other technology, increased my willingness to learn and use computers and other technology, and improved my ability to use computers and other technology."  A relatively low percentage of students chose "strongly agree" or "agree" to these questions and a relatively high percentage of students chose "disagree" or "strongly disagree." Apparently then, students may feel that their computer and technological skills are not being developed enough at C.O.D., and correspondingly, employers feel that C.O.D. trained employees are not demonstrating computer and technological skills relative to other skills.

Another item of interest is how employers with 1-3 C.O.D. trained employees were more likely to select "strongly agree" than employers with 4-75 C.O.D. trained employees. It's possible that employers with fewer C.O.D. trained employees may know their employees better because there are fewer of them. Therefore, they may be more willing to give a favorable opinion of their skills.

The following results section provides a more detailed account of the analyses conducted on this survey.

Results

In the analysis for this survey the respondents were divided into two groups: those who had 1-3 C.O.D.trained employees and those who had 4-75 C.O.D. trained employees. The number of C.O.D. trained employees was crosstabulated with each one of the 17 survey questions. A-chi-square analysis was performed for each one of the 17 tables. Although the analyses yielded no statistically significant results, there were some definite trends across the tables.

As mentioned previously, respondents with 1-3 trained employees seemed to have a more favorable opinion than those with 4-75 C.O.D. trained employees. For 16 of the 17 tables, respondents with 1-3 C.O.D. trained employees were more likely than respondents with 4-75 C.O.D. trained employees to select "strongly agree."

The opposite was found for the selection, "agree". For 16 of the 17 tables, respondents with 4-75 C.O.D. trained employees were more likely than respondents with 1-3 C.O.D. trained employees to select "agree".

In terms of the selection "neutral," there was very little difference. For seven of the tables, respondents in the 1-3 group were more likely to select "neutral". For ten of the tables, respondents in the 4-75 C.O.D. group were more likely to select "neutral.

There were very few respondents who selected "disagree" or "strongly disagree".