Despite the rise in scrutiny of bachelor’s degrees, research shows that having access to college is a key indicator of future economic and financial success as well as physical and emotional well-being.

Studies show that people with bachelor's degrees have 57% more job opportunities than people with high school diplomas, and 60% of workers with bachelor’s degrees reported being highly satisfied at work, while only 38% of workers without college degrees reported being highly satisfied.

If a degree can play such a pivotal role in someone’s overall future success, how can access to college be expanded so that students can not just get in but thrive while they’re in school and graduate? Tara Hardison, assistant dean for undergraduate programs at the David Eccles School of Business, works on that question every day.

She joins host Frances Johnson to chat about the real-world impacts a college degree can have on someone’s life, the ways Eccles is helping first-generation and low-income students, and why that support doesn’t end after students have been handed a degree.

Eccles Business Buzz is a production of the David Eccles School of Business and is produced by University FM.

Access critical to business education

[08:32]: Access is so critical for what we do here, and when we talk about a business education, we've got a large chunk of business-specific courses, but it's nestled in a broader liberal arts education, which does a lot for our students in everything that they'll do. We are teaching them about business fundamentals and practices in a series of topical areas. Finance, accounting, operations, right? We've got a series of majors. But the liberal arts piece is incredibly helpful, too. We absolutely teach critical thinking in our business education, but they learn these valuable skills in other aspects of humanities and social sciences, as well as their business-specific curriculum.

What got Tara into academic advising?

[24:06]: This is a 100 percent why I got into student affairs and why I started in academic advising. Because when I thought about what I wanted to be or, like, what I could do and how I could make an impact, I was like, "Oh, advising. Like that is the single most important impactful thing." And so I am incredibly passionate about our students' experiences, and I'm incredibly passionate also about our staff experiences, right? Because I don't think we can have good student experiences if we don't have good staff experiences and faculty experiences, right? We really think about the ecosystem, not these sort of different groups of what makes our ecosystem in silos necessarily.

What makes David Eccles Business school unique?

[12:48]: I think one of the things that makes us the strongest in the David Eccles School of Business is our ecosystem, in that it does not just include staff, faculty, and students; it really is a much broader ecosystem of our alum and the broader business community, which is something that makes us unique.

• Eccles Basic Needs Initiative
• First Ascent Scholars Program
• Opportunity Scholars Program
• Tara Hardison | David Eccles School of Business