In the debate over higher education reforms, we seldom see any mention of the end product: the graduates. We argue about what we should be teaching, how much or how little time we should spend on each area, how long it should take students to finish, and to some extent what students ought to be learning, but not really about what students should actually know or be able to do once they’ve received their bachelor’s degree.

Yet that, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter: What should a college education signify to potential employers, to taxpayers who are largely footing the bill, to parents and other family members who may be footing the rest of the bill, and to society at large? I believe that if we can answer that one question, it will provide—or at least suggest—answers to all the others.

I’m going to offer my own list of what I think young people should know and be able to do after four years of college. It is naturally only a partial list, bounded by my space in this short essay as well as by the limitations of my imagination. Please feel free to add to the list or dispute any of these items in the comments section below. I would love to see this question—what should a college degree signify?—become the starting point for all our subsequent discussions of reform.

First of all, I believe a college degree should signify that the recipient has the ability to learn. As one of my professors once told me, the most important thing someone can learn in college is how to learn.

There’s no way students in any field can acquire, in four short years, more than a fraction of the knowledge they need to be successful in that field. Realistically, we’re talking about less than four years, when we factor in the core curriculum and possibly a minor. College graduates will spend the rest of their lives learning new things, adapting to new technologies, navigating changes in the cultural landscape, and evolving to meet new and unforeseen challenges. For that reason, it’s vital that students develop the ability to discover, comprehend, process, internalize, and synthesize information, make connections and logical deductions, and always keep an open mind.

In theory, at least, every college course should equip students with exactly these cognitive skills, provided students are held to a rigorous standard and not allowed to farm out intellectual labor to machines or other people. If I were hiring someone right out of college, I would assume a recent graduate actually knows very little about my field, and I’d be looking for evidence that the applicant has learned how to learn.

Second, someone who has spent four years in college and been awarded a degree should have a strong work ethic and exhibit virtuous character traits such as humility, honesty, and perseverance. It used to be that just getting through college with a decent GPA meant one was accustomed to hard work, but sadly, between endemic grade inflation and rampant cheating, that is no longer a given. Still, there are plenty of students who do work hard and in the process learn enough about themselves to develop the traits mentioned above. Those are certainly traits that, as a parent, I would expect professors to cultivate in my child and that, as a potential employer, I would specifically be looking for in new hires.

Third, someone with a college degree should have some facility with the language, both written and spoken. Graduates should be able to read and comprehend written instructions, professional publications, and informal communications (i.e., emails), understanding both text and subtext. Graduates should also be good listeners, with attention spans significantly longer than the 40 seconds that is typical of the latest generation. Graduates should be able to express themselves in writing and in speaking with clarity, precision, and professionalism. And graduates should be able to make eye contact and show interest when speaking to people, whether individually or in groups.

Fourth, someone with a college degree should have a good understanding of the world he or she lives in. This is probably more important than even a student’s grasp of the knowledge and skills specific to a major. They should know at least the basics of biology, psychology, and American and world history. They should know enough geography to find themselves on a map. They should have at least a general familiarity with political systems, enough to distinguish between a democracy and a constitutional republic and recognize the signs of incipient authoritarianism.

Finally, graduates should have developed specific knowledge and skills relevant to their field, whether engineering, accounting, nursing, information technology, or another discipline. Again, even a straight-A student will still have much to learn, knowledge that can be acquired only through years of experience and further study. But each graduate should at least have mastered the fundamentals of the chosen field. No one wants to hire an engineer who can’t do basic math, an accountant who doesn’t know tax law, or a nurse who can’t start an IV. Yes, that is the reason professional licensure exams exist, but not all fields have such exams. In any case, students should leave college knowing enough to pass those entry-level exams, or at least knowing how to prepare for them.

Do today’s college graduates, by and large, resemble the ideal graduate described above? Perhaps, but that is probably less true than it used to be. Increasingly, our graduates are unable to demonstrate competency for an entry-level job. They “know” many things that simply aren’t true but lack the knowledge and skills that will actually help them be successful.

It’s obvious that we aren’t always teaching the right things, but more to the point, our students leave us not knowing the right things. If we focus on addressing the latter problem, the first one will take care of itself.

Follow Rob Jenkins on X.