Who feels taught to lead? Assessing collegiate leadership skill development

Introduction

While relatively young as a scholarly discipline (House & Aditya, 1997), leadership principles and theories abound: situational leadership (e.g. Blanchard, Hzigarmi, & Nelson, 1993), Fieldler’s contingency leadership (1967), path-goal theory of leadership effectiveness (House, 1971), transactional and transformational leadership (Bass, 1997), authentic leadership (George, Sims, McClean, & Mayer, 2007), leader–member exchange (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), etc. In fact, it has been presumed there are likely as many definitions, theories (or conceptualizations) and principles of leadership as there are people who have studied it, including academic scholars, practitioners and laypersons. In turn, there are likely as many approaches to teaching leadership as there are individuals engaged in this work (e.g. Sinclair, 2007; Wren, 1994).

Given the vast body of leadership literature, those who teach leadership, whether in the classroom or a practical setting, must decide which theories/principles to cover in the allotted timeframe and which pedagogical method to employ in an effort to affect learning and develop critical leadership skills (e.g. Escamilla & Fraccastoro, 2018; McCarron, Zhou, Campbell, Muscente, & Schierbeek, 2022; Stetch, 2008; Yip & Raelin, 2011). This has become increasingly relevant as many, if not most, academic institutions posit as part of their respective missions to prepare holistic leaders who will impact the world (e.g. DeRue, Sitkin, & Podolny, 2011; Rosch, Collier, & Thompson, 2015). Business entities, government agencies and communities also spend billions annually on leadership development activities (Avolio & Hannah, 2008) to provide specific training for their organization, sector or community and/or to fill the knowledge gaps that may not have been filled previously (Sowcik & Allen, 2013). Avery and Thomas (2004) challenge facilitators of knowledge relative to diversity management competency to consider what specific topics should be included when determining course content, what specific pedagogies should be employed and what, if any, biases may be at play in making such a determination. Similarly, these questions must be considered within the teaching of leadership domain given the various delivery methodologies that could be employed and the role that the leadership educator plays in the development of future leaders (Guthrie & Jenkins, 2018; Wiborg, 2022). Additionally, consideration should be given to the leaders or leaders-in-training, who will be engaged in the learning process: what prior knowledge and/or experiences do they bring with them (e.g. McCarron et al., 2022)? What is their perspective on leadership and the role of leaders?

Philosophical differences on which epistemological and pedagogical approach to take in the teaching of leadership exists (Yip & Raelin, 2011). For example, Parks (2005) posits that education is fundamental to leadership development, while Robinson and Wick (1992) contends that formal training and educational setting have little to do with leadership development and it depends more on practical, first-hand experiences. Further, as described in greater detail below, the Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, & Being (hereinafter referred to as The Handbook; Snook, Khurana, & Nohria, 2011) offers many different best practices and approaches. These differences may exist given personal experiences, academic disciplines, whether the instructor believes leaders are born or made, as well as many other significant factors. Some believe that a theoretical approach should be taken to teaching leadership, while others prefer a more practical, hands-on approach with experiential learning, project-based work projects, etc. Empirical research is still needed to assess which is more effective in preparing the next generation of leaders. Does the approach depend on the particular students one is trying to impart such wisdom? The professor or trainer facilitating the leadership content either in a collegiate classroom or applied setting (e.g. Escamilla & Fraccastoro, 2018)? Or, should one approach fit all?

In 2009, Harvard University hosted a conference, “How Can Leadership Be Taught,” where they convened professors to grapple with these questions and share best practices. The Handbook (Snook et al., 2011) was one outcome of the conference and is now a useful compendium of information for instructors to reference. Thematically, The Handbook is divided into three sections: knowing, being and doing. These are helpful in framing the ways by which faculty may approach teaching leadership, linking “knowing” with the theoretical aspects of the course content, the “doing” focusing on the application in practical settings or through course active learning and “being” by actually assuming the roles and integrating it into their person. In a critique of The Handbook, Clawson (2011) concurs with the authors of The Handbook in that it provides “a single eclectic reference point for educators who are responding to the burgeoning demand for courses on leadership” (p. 535) and attempts to present a framework for the contributors (and readers) to structure the content, which was not easily implemented.

In a special issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education journal, DeRue et al. (2011, p. 369) present a follow up to the conference which focuses on the “scarcity of rigorous theoretical and empirical research on the design and delivery of leadership teaching and education.” The contributors employ various research designs and methods to examine the learning and educational implications of different philosophies, designs and approaches to teaching leadership. This special issue is a more manageable set of papers compared to The Handbook, yet does not really address teaching leadership to undergraduates and answer some basic questions that professors tend to grapple with when tasked with teaching leadership. One objective of the present research is to fill that gap.

Focusing on undergraduate students, our research questions are fourfold. First, as viewed by the students themselves, how much change in leadership ability is taking place during one’s college tenure? The answer to this question will help inform if higher education is serving one of its purposes: developing the next generation of leaders (DeRue et al., 2011). Second, how much does the answer to our first question vary across student demographics, institution type and program of study (or major)? With this information in hand we may judge, among other things, which (if any) students are being “left behind” in terms of the acquisition of these skills. Third, do students who matriculate with lower leadership abilities increase them the most during their college tenure or is the opposite true? Asked differently, does higher education impart leadership skills broadly or does it instead only enhance the skills of those who are already natural leaders or had previous experiences that propel them into leadership positions or to take leadership courses in college? Lastly, after controlling for a host of relevant variables, we estimate which college experiences and courses of study most affect changes in these abilities. The answer to this last question may inform educational policy, particularly at colleges and universities where instilling leadership is a stated institutional goal or part of their mission. For example, if there is a particular college experience that is found to greatly enrich leadership abilities, then colleges wanting to instill these skills could benefit through policy which increases its prevalence on campus.

More recently, McCarron et al. (2022) posit leadership educators are not working with blank slates when it comes to the students being engaged in leadership education. Many students have pre-college leadership experiences that affect their college-based leader emergence and leader self-efficacy. Using a sample of students from one large, public Mid-Atlantic university, they found pre-college engagement with sports team positional leadership, extracurriculars and community service, among other things, predicted leader self-efficacy. Further, leader emergence was predicted by community service, peer tutoring and extracurriculars before entering college. Our study extends this research by including a panel of respondents across more than 600 colleges and universities rather than focusing on a single institution.

While the focus of Escamilla and Fraccastoro’s (2018) research is on leadership offerings in MBA programs and professional leadership programs, the question of content is essential. These authors compare topics and content covered in workshops and seminars offered by top professional entities with that of subjects addressed in university courses. This comparison is important in better preparing graduates to meet the needs of organizations. Our research seeks to contribute to the leadership education literature by assessing which students feel most prepared to lead by assessing participation in a broader range of activities than prior studies. These activities reflect various types of leadership education pedagogies which focus on knowing (the more traditional approach through classroom lectures) or being and doing (the more contemporary approach with experiential learning and work projects) (Anderson, Hibbert, Mason, & Rivers, 2018; Hawkins & Edwards, 2015; Jenkins, 2012; McCarron et al., 2022; Yip & Raelin, 2011). Grunberg, Barry, Callahan, Kleber, McManigle and Schoomaker (2019) provide a conceptual framework to guide curriculum content development and serve as a basis for assessment. This aligns with the present research in that it is important to understand who feels prepared to lead based on the pedagogical methodologies employed, given there may be perceived differences of skill development and enhancement. Further, the research sheds light on whether or not varied approaches to leadership development affect categories of students differently and if theories of adult learning are perceived as being employed (Allen, Rosch, & Riggio, 2022; Reyes et al., 2019).

As a preview of our results, we find that 49% of students in the sample attending 619 different American colleges and universities report their leadership skills have grown somewhat stronger during their college tenure. Additionally, approximately 25% believe these skills have become much stronger, 2% feel their leadership abilities have declined during college, and the remaining 24% report they have been unchanged in this way. Male students, African-American students, those attending private institutions, those attending institutions which focus on undergraduate programs, those with higher grade point averages and (unsurprisingly) those who took leadership courses or training are more likely to report greater skills development than their counterparts. Interestingly, differences across international and domestic students, across first-generation student status and across geography are all very small. Large differences across programs of study are apparent, with business students feeling the most prepared to lead and those with a physical science degree feeling the least ready. The stronger a student feels their leadership skills are at matriculation, the more likely they are to report at graduation that these skills have been enhanced because of their higher education. We find evidence that several college experiences and majors directly impact changes in this skill. The following section begins with a description of our data source. Following that, we present our results and discuss the implications of the findings, limitations and suggestions for future research.

Surveys of leadership skill change. Data used in this analysis come from the Higher Education Research Institute, which runs the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) housed at The University of California, Los Angeles. Among others, the CIRP administers two surveys known as The Freshman Survey (TFS) and the College Senior Survey (CSS). The TFS is administered very near a student’s matriculation, most often as an entrance survey, while the CSS is administered very near graduation, most often as an exit survey as part of the student’s exit exams. We collect, merge and make use of all freely available data at the time of writing on students who took both surveys. This merged data set includes a large number of American undergraduate students of higher education who earned their bachelor’s degree between 1994 and 2006.

Specifically, our final data set is comprised of 433,758 students from 619 different institutions of higher education in the United States of America and includes a broad range of variables not usually included in a single study. One hundred percent of these students are college graduates, otherwise they would not have been administered the CSS. While rich, this data set is not without limitations. Notably, only 24% of the students in the sample attended a university (an institution which additionally grants graduate degrees), while the remainder attended a college (those which only grant bachelor’s [four-year] degrees). More importantly, 79% attended a private institution, as these colleges and universities more often participate in the CIRP than do public institutions. Thus, while our sample is quite large, it cannot be thought nationally representative in this regard, and the generalizability of our results may be somewhat limited. Lastly, we note that, by design, these surveys capture no post-graduation information, and as in most any multivariate data sets, we can think of additional variables that would have warranted examination had they been available through further survey. Regarding the age of the data, this means results are indicative of persons who graduated college and are currently mid-career, quite possibly serving in leadership roles today. However, as higher education persistently attempts to adapt to a changing world, and for other reasons, the same results may not fully represent what is occurring at colleges and universities at present. We advise the reader to remain cognizant of the data’s age when interpreting our findings, while keeping in mind many tried-and-true pedagogical practices remain as leadership education continues to evolve.

This research responds to calls to assist leadership educators and practitioners in better understanding how leadership capacities and engagement emerges (e.g. Dugan, 2011). Of primary interest here is a question asked of students on the CSS, that is, very near their graduation date: How do you feel your leadership skills have changed during your college tenure? Students could respond to this question with one of five options: Much Weaker, Weaker, No Change, Stronger or Much Stronger. Figure 1 presents the proportions of students who chose each option for our full sample. At almost 49%, the most common response was “stronger.” At 24.9 versus 24.4, the percent of students who chose “much stronger” was only marginally larger than those choosing “no change.” Only two percent of students reported their leadership skills declined during college tenure, with over five times as many students responding they grew “weaker” compared to “much weaker.” Still, educators wishing to enhance the leadership skills of students may find it somewhat disheartening that over one fourth of graduating students report they have gained no such skills or (much less likely) that these skills have declined during college tenure.

The statistics in Figure 1 answer our first research question: as viewed by the students themselves, how much change in leadership ability is taking place during college tenure? Approximately half of students believe they experienced some increase in these skills, one fourth feel these skills have been enhanced significantly, almost one fourth feel unaffected in this way, and one in fifty college students believe their leadership abilities have declined during their college years. These estimates beg the question of which students more often fall in each of these categories, our second research question. Table 1 presents responses to this survey question across several student subsamples. For ease of comparison, both proportions and means are displayed. For the means, survey responses were first transformed into a five-point ordinal scale, where “much weaker” equals one and “much stronger” equals five.

A review of Table 1, the data suggest that the subjective view of leadership skill change is minimal when comparing most of the groups. For instance, the mean comparison of females and males show 3.94 and 4.01, respectively, with both having over 70% saying that their skills are stronger or much stronger than when they entered college. Similarly, the racio-ethinic groups are similar when comparing means across White, African American and Hispanics, with African Americans having a higher percentage (77.4%) saying their skills were stronger or much stronger as compared to Whites, Hispanics and other racial identities (72.0%, 71.7% and 68.5%, respectively). As leadership class(es) and training may be the most relevant subsampling we examine, these responses are also presented in Figure 2 for ease of reference.

We are also interested in which majors of study are associated with the most leadership ability change, as judged by the students themselves. Table 2 presents the responses to our key survey question across this variable. Looking to mean values from the ordinal scale, business majors report the highest average skill level increase, while those studying a physical science have the lowest average value. While business majors are also the least likely to report “no change,” they rank 3rd in being the most likely to report a “much stronger” skill increase, after the humanities and history/political science majors.

Statistical hypothesis tests were also conducted on all student categories presented in Tables 1 and 2. For each of the six binary pairs in Table 1 (male vs female, first-generation vs not first-generation, etc.) a test of equality across the two groups was performed. For the four available racial categories, six total tests were run so that each category could be independently compared to each of the other three. Similarly, six tests were performed across the four geographic regions. For GPA, where there are 6 available categories, this required 15 total tests. Finally, for Table 2, each of the 15 aggregate major categories were compared to the average of all other students in each case, for a total of 15 tests related to Table 2. In all, 48 statistical hypothesis tests of equality were performed around the statistics presented in Tables 1 and 2. Since the leadership skill change variable in these tables is categorical (specifically, ordinal) in nature, chi-square tests were used. The p-value in the test that compared students with a graduating GPA of 3.25–3.74 to those with one 3.75+ was 0.233, the p-value in the test that compared social science majors to the average of all other students was 0.013 and in all other 46 cases the p-value was less than 0.010. That is, students who earn a GPA of 3.25–3.74 are statistically similar to those with a GPA of 3.75+, we are only 95% confident social science majors are statistically different than the aggregate group of all other majors, but in every other possible comparison, we are 99% confident the group is statistically different than its opposite category (or categories) in terms of self-reported leadership skill change during collegiate tenure.

On the TFS, that is, very near matriculation, students were asked to rate their current level of leadership abilities. Thus, we know how students felt about these skills before their college experience. Students could respond to this survey question by rating their matriculating leadership skills being: in the lowest 10% of individuals, below average, average, above average or in the highest 10% of individuals. Figure 3 presents the proportions of students reporting each case for our full sample. About 41% of college students rated themselves as having above average leadership skills at matriculation, the most common response. About 21% felt they belonged to the 90th percentile in this distribution. It is interesting to note that over 60% of college students believe they would be better leaders than the average person in the general population at the time of matriculation. At 6.8 and 0.6%, respectively, few students rated themselves as having below average or belonging to the 10th percentile in terms of leadership. The remaining 31% of students reported their skills were “average.”

The statistics presented in Figure 3 are interesting in their own right, but here we are particularly curious as to how they relate to reported changes in leadership abilities at graduation. Therefore, we reexamine responses to the leadership change survey question within each of the matriculating leadership ability categories in Figure 3. These new proportions are presented in Figure 4. This figure constitutes a visual answer to our third research question: do students who matriculate with lower leadership abilities increase them the most during their college tenure or is the opposite true? We see a clear, monotonic pattern. The higher a student rated their leadership abilities at matriculation, the more likely they were to report at graduation that their skills in this area grew during college tenure. For those in the 10th percentile, exactly 44% reported these skills grew, with less than 10% feeling they grew significantly. At the 90th percentile, however, exactly 80% reported their leadership skills grew, with 37% feeling they grew significantly. On the other end of the continuum, those in the lowest 10^th percentile had almost 60% state their leadership skills did not change or were weaker following their college tenure. These are important differences that warrant the attention of those engaged in leadership development programming to better understand what can be done to engage those who subjectively view their leadership skills to be in the lowest 10% or below average as there may be special programming that might benefit these students. This may be a matter of low self-esteem or feelings of inadequacy given they have not had prior experience in leadership roles. This may also be an opportunity for those students who perceive their leadership skills to be above average or in the highest 10% to serve as mentors and/or role models to the other students, which would further strengthen their leadership skills while helping their peers.

Collegiate experiences, major of study and leadership skill change. Our fourth and final research question regards the estimation of which college experiences and majors of study most contribute, on average, to changes in leadership ability. To this end, we turn to multivariate techniques. Specifically, we estimate models of the form

The inclusion of time fixed effects allows us to control for any time-specific unobserved heterogeneity, such as any national trends in education during the sample period. School fixed effects allow us to control for unobserved heterogeneity at the institution level. While we consider this a very important dimension of control, the inclusion of school fixed effects disallows the estimation of institutional characteristics on leadership ability change. Therefore, we estimate this model both with and without Ss such that the impacts of institutional characteristics may be examined. That is, in the model with Ss excluded, indicators for private and university institutions are added to Ci. Perhaps our most important dimension of control is yi,t−4, for multiple reasons, including the fact we have here uncovered evidence that students matriculating with different skill levels change them at different rates.

Summary statistics for the relevant collegiate experiences captured by the CSS, the variables we include in Ci, are presented in Table 3. By relevant collegiate experiences, we are referring to all college experiences that may reasonably impact a student’s leadership abilities in addition to choice of major and institutional characteristics. These include Greek (fraternity or sorority) membership; intercollegiate sports participation; intramural sports participation; academic achievement (as measured by GPA); typical hours per week devoted to student clubs; and indicators for students who frequently studied with others, tutored others, frequently encountered in-class group assignments, held a student office of any rank (e.g. served as president of a student club or student government), completed a leadership course(s) and/or training offered by the institution and participated in a college internship. There are other college experiences that would warrant investigation in this context, but we must of course work within the confines of what was made available through these national surveys. For each of these occurrences, many more than a requisite number of students participated for multivariate analysis to be utilized. For example, the least frequent occurrence in Ci was internship participation (2.8% of students), but due to the size of our working panel this activity was still completed by 12,145 students among those sampled.

Thompson (2006) notes that most often student leadership research on collegiate is centered on those with a propensity for leadership, based on prior experience. The present research seeks to determine if this is warranted or if a broader lens is necessary to better understand who benefits from leadership training and applied opportunities. Based on the extant literature (e.g. Kezar & Moriarty, 2000; Posner & Brodsky, 1992, Smart, Felman, Ethington, & Thompson, 2000), we include variables purported by student affairs professionals as having an impact. In general, these experiences afford the student an opportunity to interact and collaborate with diverse students of varying backgrounds, experiences, values, beliefs and mental models that may differ from their own. These experiential experiences also offer an array of learning opportunities to students, regardless of prior history of leadership.

In the interest of data disclosure, we also present summary statistics for our control variables in vectors Xi and yi,t−4 in Table 4, alongside our two institutional characteristics. These control variables were determined based on our review of existing literature and their relevance on affecting leadership skill development. Again, these are factors that prior research suggests can affect one’s perceptions and experiences relative to leadership.

Table 5 presents the results of the ordered logit models. Values in this table are odds ratios, with standard errors in parentheses. For those unfamiliar with this type of statistics, we briefly mention how odds ratios are interpreted in this context. Here, values greater than (less than) one imply the variable increases (decreases) the student’s probability of reporting a larger change in leadership ability. The “distance” from one discloses the odds, the magnitude of the impact. For example, the odds ratio of 1.19 attached to fraternity/sorority membership in Model 1 implies that, all else equal, a student who joined such an organization is 19% (1.19–1.00 = 0.19 = 19%) more likely to report a higher leadership ability gain than other students, on average. As another example, the odds ratio of 0.75 attached to biological science majors in Model 1 implies that, all else equal, a student with this major is 25% (1.00–0.75 = 0.25 = 25%) less likely to report a higher leadership ability gain than other students, on average.

There are two models summarized in Table 5. Model 1 has the advantage of being able to additionally estimate the impact of institutional characteristics (college/university and public/private) on leadership ability change. Model 2 has the advantage of controlling for all unobserved heterogeneity at the institution level (a college’s mission, culture, specific geography, relative size, prestige, etc.). As discussed previously, it is mathematically impossible to do both simultaneously. Results are similar across the two models. In Model 1, where there are no school fixed effects, those who reported taking a leadership class(es) or training are 199% more likely to report a leadership ability gain than other students. This is by far the largest difference of the variables included in the model. The five other variables showing the largest increase in leadership ability are: student office (85% more likely), internship participant (75% more likely), tutored other students (43% more likely), frequently studied with others (34% more likely) and played intercollegiate sports (31% more likely). The factors that were likely to lead to less likely reporting a higher leadership ability gain were associated with specific majors and attending a University.

Most results remain similar in Model 2, that is, after controlling for unobserved institution-level heterogeneity. While the order and effect change slightly, the top five factors are the same: leadership class(es) or training (200%), student office (85%), internship participant (76%), frequently studied with others (37%) and tutored other students (35%). A similar pattern exists in terms of the factor that reduces the likelihood of being less likely of reporting a higher leadership ability gain being associated with certain majors.

As previously shown in Table 5, one unsurprising result is that the variable with the largest impact on self-perceived leadership skill change is whether students have participated in leadership training during college. It may be of similar interest to estimate if this kind of training impacts other collegiate outcomes. Within the data available here, there are two other such outcomes worthy of examination, graduating GPA and an indicator for students who report, at the time of undergraduate graduation, wishing to pursue graduate school. To test leadership training’s potential relationships with these two outcomes, additional regressions are estimated with them incorporated as the dependent variables, with all other previously used control variables remaining as such. The estimated marginal effect of leadership training in the ordinary least squares regression for GPA shows that participating students graduate with 0.098 additional GPA points, on the typical 0.0–4.0 scale, on average and all else equal (standard error = 0.002; p-value < 1.0e⁻¹⁵). In a logit model for graduate school desires, the estimated marginal effect is 0.103, implying students who received leadership training are an impressive 10.3% points more likely to report wanting to enroll in graduate school at undergraduate graduation, on average and all else equal (standard error = 0.001; p-value < 1.0e⁻¹⁵). In short, leadership training during undergraduate tenure appears to be strongly positively related to academic success and continued education.

Discussion and conclusions

Using a large sample of students from 619 institutions of higher education in the USA, we set out to answer four questions related to leadership skill change during college tenure. First, as reported by the students themselves, how much change in leadership ability is taking place during college tenure? Second, how much does the answer to this first question vary across student demographics, institution type and major of study? Third, do students who matriculate with lower leadership abilities increase them the most during their college tenure or is the opposite true? Finally, after controlling for relevant factors, which college experiences and majors of study most affect changes in these abilities, by how much and in which direction?

The present research supports the extant literature and conventional wisdom of academic and student affairs professionals with regards to engagement in leadership classes or training where students have an opportunity to increase their knowledge bases through course content and when there are opportunities for them to apply leadership principles, the students are more likely to report an increase in leadership capacity upon completion of their collegiate degree. If colleges and universities are serious about fulfilling their espoused visions, then it is essential that awareness of leadership courses and applied opportunities is heightened and made a strategic priority to ensure resources are allocated in appropriate places to support these key efforts. It also suggests greater collaboration between academic and student affairs, as well as other departments (e.g. athletics, centers), is needed, as well as prioritizing experiential learning. Further, additional research is needed to better understand the dynamics associated with various majors and students who come from disadvantaged situations to determine what can be done to level the playing field and encourage them to engage more fully. While our findings seem consistent with aspects of McCarron et al. (2022) in that leadership educators are not dealing with blank states and should identify strategies which continue to bolster learning and development for those who enter college with certain leadership experiences, while also ensuring those who do not are afforded opportunities to enhance their motivation to lead, increase their leadership self-efficacy and emerge as leaders.

As leadership education continues to evolve, future research should continue to examine whether certain modalities produce different results. Guthrie, Batchelder, Hu and Purita (2022) explore how changes in technology have impacted leadership program offerings online and additional research should be conducted to assess implications of online approaches. If holistic leadership development is an expected outcome for graduates to be prepared to contribute in an ever changing, global world, curriculum development discussions around difficult concepts are essential to determine what omitted content must be embedded in leadership education (e.g. Irwin & Posselt, 2022; Sugiyama, Cavanagh, van Esch, Bilimoria, & Brown, 2016; Wiborg, 2022).

Educators and education policymakers striving to enhance the leadership abilities of students may find our estimates of most use. However, as mentioned earlier, students wanting to advance their own leadership skills can also benefit from knowledge of our findings. More research is needed before a clearer picture of the relationship between higher education and leadership ability may be obtained. Post-graduation information would likely prove particularly useful. How much do collegiate changes in this skill alter labor market outcomes such as the occupation obtained, wages earned and the speed of advancement? Do changes in this skill affect students’ post-graduation goals? These questions can be best addressed through longitudinal research designs that follow individuals from college matriculation through their professional careers. It may prove insightful for leadership educators to compare whether pedagogies categorized as knowing, being and doing yield differential outcomes over time.

Though true leadership ability is by no means an easy attribute to quantify, objective measures of this skill would allow one to examine how much student assessments of changes in their ability match reality. The primary limitation of the current study is the age of the data. Results here are more indicative of individuals who are currently mid-career and/or serving in leadership positions today, be those in business, politics or some other arena. These results may not still be indicative of what is occurring in higher education today, however, and as an avenue of future research, we suggest a similar study be conducted with more recent data. Given the present data set focuses on institutions in the United States, future research should also include institutions beyond the USA or include comparative analyses across countries to understand those realities. We leave these tasks for future research.