College Should Produce Triple-Threat Graduates

In basketball, it’s essential for every player to master what’s commonly called the triple-threat position. That’s when a player with the basketball squares their body to face the hoop, has the ball firmly in both hands, establishes their pivot foot, and crouches in a sort of tiger-ready-to-pounce stance. This position maximizes the player’s chance of either scoring, passing, or dribbling – hence making them a triple-threat. At a time when higher education is simultaneously more needed than ever while its value proposition is being more questioned than ever, this basketball analogy offers a compelling vision for how colleges can create their own version of triple-threat graduates.

So what’s a triple-threat graduate? It’s a graduate who leaves college with a broad education in the form of a bachelor’s degree which also includes three critical elements: 1. engagement in several long-term projects, 2. extensive work experience through an academically-linked internship, co-op or job, and 3. an industry-recognized credential. Here’s the key to the triple-threat: it has to be visible and tangible as opposed to simply conceptual; it has to show up on transcripts and on resumes, clearly visible to the graduate and potential employers. I’ve long been a fan of the conceptual framework of “T-shaped graduates” – those who are able to apply knowledge broadly across different situations in addition to having deep expertise in a particular skill or discipline. It makes a ton of sense. The question is how do you show tangible evidence that a graduate has achieved T-shaped status? That’s where the triple-threat graduate helps the conceptual T-shaped graduate become real and tangible.

Higher education has long relied on very inspiring and worthy promises for graduates such as creating engaged citizens, critical thinkers and life-long learners. Like T-shaped graduates, these are all exactly the kinds of aspirations higher education should aim for helping students achieve. The problem is that higher education has struggled mightily to produce the tangible evidence that these aspirations are being achieved – and at scale. A triple-threat graduate framework is simple to understand, highly measurable and tangible, and dovetails neatly with the conceptual goals of producing engaged citizens, critical thinkers, life-long learners and T-shaped individuals. It can become a solid three-legged stool on which higher education can clearly define its value-proposition to a world of increasingly ROI-demanding students, taxpayers and employers.

The Gallup-Purdue Index showed us the formula for producing engaged and thriving graduates. Those who worked on long-term projects that took a semester or more to complete and those who had a job or internship where they were able to apply what they learned in the classroom double their odds of being engaged in their work later in life. The trick is less than 1/3 of all U.S. college graduates hit the mark on these two critical aspects of college. Higher education simply cannot afford for these experiences to be optional for students; they must become integral to every graduate’s college experience. And so too should be the evidence that graduates leave with specific skills valued by employers. The way that is done is through a commonly-accepted validation process of passing an industry-recognized credentialing exam. This is not a new process; what is new is the idea of universities making it a part of the bachelor’s degree where students can leave with both a 4-year degree and a highly-valued industry credential.

What would be involved with colleges ensuring their graduates are triple-threats? First, internship, job and co-op requirements would be established as part of graduate requirements. Universities would need to have the proper infrastructure to support this – but once again, this isn’t new. Institutions such as Northeastern and Drexel University have managed to scale co-op programs for a century now. Second, universities will need to carefully audit all their courses to identify those that involve long-term projects as part of the class. Students should not be able to complete their major without taking at least one course that involves a signature or capstone long-term project. And then these projects need to be noted on student transcripts in addition to encouraging students to highlight them on resumes and in digital portfolios to employers. Finally, universities will need to add a menu of industry-recognized credentials students can achieve during the course of their bachelor’s degree pursuit. Whether done during J-terms, summer sessions or woven into existing courses, there are many opportunities to help students add this to their experience.

Think of both the real experiential value and the marketability of a graduate who leaves college with a degree plus demonstrable long-term projects, real work experience and an industry-recognized credential. It’s a serious triple-threat that will dramatically improve the real and perceived value proposition of higher education for students, parents, employers and taxpayers. It will go a long way toward eliminating the greatest critique of higher education today which is the belief that graduates are not well prepared for the workplace. Addressing this critique was important prior to the age of COVID-19 but it has become even more necessary and urgent as many colleges now face an existential threat. No better way for colleges to counter that threat than by producing triple-threat graduates.