BY

Bob Yayac

President and CEO at Council for Aid to Education
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Bob Yayac has 30+ years’ experience in all aspects of designing, building, and growing technology-enabled businesses, most recently as co-founder of a simulation-based medical education company. As CEO & President, Bob sets the strategic direction for CAE and works closely with clients, partners, and the CAE team to ensure CAE delivers on its mission to improve student outcomes.

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  • In 2023, I believe we will see higher education institutions focused on identifying better ways to create and demonstrate value for their students–or risk losing enrollment. It is clear that higher education institutions can no longer only equip students with content knowledge. Employers are looking for essential skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication and have trouble finding them in recent graduates. However, institutions rarely explicitly teach these skills. Rather, they seem to assume that students will gain these skills from their general studies. According to CAE research, 47% of graduating higher education students, from a sample of over 120,000, are not proficient in these essential skills, indicating a need for further improvement. Our research also shows that students recognize the importance of these skills for academic and career success and expect to develop them during their academic journey. Institutions need to help students develop the essential skills that students and employers highly value. By regularly assessing these skills and providing deliberate instruction to further improve these skills, institutions can increase the value students receive from their education. The goal of higher education is to help students develop the skills they need for future career and life success. The essential skills of critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication will serve the students well no matter what path they take.

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