Colleges should help students develop maturity, organizational skills and an ability to get along with others, and should provide specific skills, such as problem solving and communication.
People also have high expectations for the institutions themselves.
They want institutions to keep the costs down, but they also want to ensure quality by hiring good teachers and holding students to high standards. When we started our research on higher education in 1993, many of the people we spoke with were rather dismissive about what the college experience offered students aside from a degree. Although they spoke frequently about the importance of access to higher education, most took a utilitarian approach, viewing college as not much more than a ticket to a better job. In contrast, we now see a much greater emphasis on the less tangible qualities bestowed by a higher education, over and above the degree itself. This shift is evident when we compare the 1993 focus groups with the 1998 groups.