Kettering University is unlike most universities in the U.S today. President Robert McMahan believes its century-old academic model is what many experts envision universities will look like in 10 to 20 years.
The draw: radical commitment to providing students with work-based learning opportunities.
“If higher education trained musicians like we train engineers, we would make students take 12 years of music theory before we ever let them touch a piano,” McMahan said, reciting a famous quote from university founder Charles Kettering.
From their first year until they graduate, students only spend half of each academic term in the traditional classroom setting. The rest is spent immersed in a job site, whether in private industry or a federal laboratory. Students earn two and a half years of on-the-job training by graduation.
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“They have to produce like any other employee, except they’re mentored as well,” McMahan says. “They’re not trying to figure out how companies work. They know how they work because they’ve been part of them.”
With a student job placement rate hovering around 98%, Kettering’s integration of work-based learning opportunities stands in its own league. Nearly half of graduates in the U.S. with a bachelor’s degree are underemployed a decade after completing college, and souring employer sentiment is leading more executives to drop degree requirements in favor of certifications or relevant work experience.
Some leaders blame today’s ineffective internship and work-based learning models on graduates’ lack of workforce readiness, considering how inaccessible they are to low-income students.
How President McMahan is now steering Kettering
McMahan recently expanded Kettering’s work-based learning model to keep pace with a rapidly changing and converging workforce.
“If you look at these lists of the top 10 most popular careers right now, probably two-thirds of them didn’t exist 10 years ago,” he says. “If anything, that’s only going to continue to accelerate.”
In June, Kettering re-launched academic offerings in two major engineering fields to reflect the growing importance of computer and material sciences in today’s STEM workforce.
“You can’t graduate a mechanical engineering student anymore who doesn’t have strong programming skills,” McMahan says. “Ten years ago, that wasn’t the case.”
The university is also unveiling an accelerated three-year bachelor’s degree this fall to funnel new employees into the county’s growing semiconductor manufacturing industry.
It took four years for McMahan and his task force to move from market analysis and research to academic redesign. But students returning to campus from their work-based learning opportunities also proved to be an equally valuable resource in building Kettering’s relevant curriculum. Here’s why:
Why work-based learning can’t replace the liberal arts
Kettering’s new liberal arts school focuses on critical thinking, ethics-based decision-making and cross-sector collaboration.
The School of Foundational Studies represents one of Kettering’s initial steps to break down higher ed’s notorious silos.
“If we teach the foundational subjects, such as math and physics, in an integrated sense, we take advantage of the intersections across those different domains,” McMahan says.
The 14-year president also believes that the new school will equip students with the durable skills to adapt to transformation throughout their careers.
More on President McMahan’s perspective on lifelong learning.
