Had a very interesting brown bag lunch with Bob Schwartz and Ron Ferguson, primary authors of Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century of HGSE this past week. The report, which you can find here, raises a crucial, but somewhat wince-inducing, question: "in 21st century America, education beyond high school is the passport to the American Dream. But how much and what kind of post-secondary is really needed to prosper in the new American economy?"
The essential problem highlighted is that there really is only one "acceptable" path to becoming highly-educated that the is recognized by the US job market. High school to college (selective, preferably) to career. And this path is rife with inefficiency and inequality.
There's a ton of data in the report that brings the inefficiencies and inequities to light. Roughly half of American kids not entering college, and then only about a third of those who enter higher ed get a degree within six years. And it's not even clear that bachelor degrees even prepare kids all that well for jobs in adult life. Many of the skills employers value are not at the core focus of traditional programs and, while BA candidates carry much of the student debt (student debt now accounting for more debt then held by credit card holders in aggregate), in some areas, kids with associate and professional degrees actually out earn their peers with bachelor degrees.
So why such the hard sell? Why does our society puts such an emphasis on the four-year degree? One thing Bob said, which resonated strongly with me, was that the "college for every kid" mantra that drives much of education reform today might just be our industry's version of "don't ask, don't tell." A cynic might wonder if our system is better designed to just insulate adolescents and young adults from the job market in order to avoid competition for jobs and work on industry's part to create meaningful opportunities that would allow kids to gain real skills and become stronger, smarter employees in the long term. Is there just a hidden agenda here?
As someone who believes in the power of public education to increase mobility as well as the fact that every kids has the potential to go just about anywhere with the right preparation, I'm not quite so cynical. I don't want to think that we shouldn't focus on college as the goal. Every kid should have the opportunity to choose traditional higher ed and many express the desire to do so. Part of this comes from my own feelings about what I got out of college and the fact that I want everyone to have that experience if they want it. Another part comes from my own fears that if college isn't the goal for all kids, we'll backslide to a state that makes college the goal for only some kids, reinforcing the social inequalities I fight to reduce every day.
But that's the crux of this issue, I guess. We ed reformers have to accept that fact that every kid having the choice to go and skills to succeed in college is different than forcing every kid to do so. In addition to building a educational system that actually gives kids the skills and competencies needed for college and the real world, there's also a broader job here of rethinking pathways to success. This rethinking needs to involve a lot of constituencies, including K-12 and higher ed, industry, parents, and, yes, kids.
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