MCCCD named one of America’s best employers by Forbes
Marcus Campbell
Mesa Legend
Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has been named to the 2017 Forbes list of best employers. MCCCD ranked 44th out of 300 mid-sized employers. MCCCD was one of only two Arizona based companies to make the list this year.
MCCCD was also the only Arizona organization based in education to be mentioned. Of the 800 large and mid-sized employers surveyed 60 education based employers were mentioned.
Along with the help of Statista, an online statistics provider, Forbes surveyed 30,000 employees across 25 different industries. Retail industries, auto companies, biotech firms and banking industries were all among the major industries included in the list.
Employees were asked to rate their willingness to recommend the company they worked for to a friend or family member on a scale of zero to ten.
Employees were also asked to recommend other companies. However, the willingness of an employee to recommend their own company was the most important factor.
Forbes considered a mid-sized business to be between 1,000 and 5,000 employees. While a large business was over 5000 employees.
MCCCD employed over 11,200 people as of 2015-2016. The study conducted by Statista and Forbes only included full-time employees of which MCCCD had 4,443 in 2015.
In a press release, MCCCD Chancellor Maria Harper-Marinick stated, “Maricopa is proud to be recognized as one of America’s top employers.”
Marinick went on to say that, “This is a reflection of the caliber of faculty and staff we have across the system and their collective commitment to serving our students and communities.” MCCCD enrolls a diverse cohort of 200,000 students across 10 different schools. MCCCD has a strong standing in diversity and as of 2016 the campuses combined for 56% female students, 45% non-Anglo students, and 34% of students over 25 years old.
Matt Hasson, communications director for MCCCD spoke about the importance of that diversity, “More than what we do for the employees it is… the collective mission.
The mission of Maricopa District in providing access to higher education for a diverse community.
It is an inspiring mission and the people here take it very seriously.” The district serves this mission and received over $8 million in state aid and over $481 million in tax levies in 2012. MCCCD puts these funds to work paying salaries, supporting general operations and capital needs. MCCCD stated they were not contacted prior to the conduction of the study and employees were contacted without their knowledge.
When talking about the importance of that factor in composing the list Hasson said, “It’s the unmitigated feedback from employees and I think that says a lot about the credibility of the list, number one, and also the credibility of the fact that were on the list as the only institution of higher education in the state of Arizona.”
Of the 800 companies mentioned on both the mid-sized employers list and the large employers list a total of only seven Arizona companies made the list. MCCCD was still the only Arizona education based company placed on the list.
All other mid-sized education based companies in Arizona failed to make the list this year. The highest rated education based company was the mid-sized Georgetown University.
When asked about moving forward after the list Hasson said, “Making this list while it is definitely an honor and definitely something we’re proud of it’s not going to change or drive what we do day to day…our focus is on student achievement and student success and we’ll continue to do that…we’re proud of it but it certainly isn’t going to change our commitment to the students what so ever.”
