Insisting on college for all won't help the next generation

This article was written by Kristen Lewis, director, and Johnathan Appel, program assistant at Measure of America.

In the past few decades, the college-for-all approach has dominated the education policy conversation in the US.

According to a paper from Temple University, the percentage of high-school 10-graders who expected to attain a bachelor’s degree skyrocketed from 43.3% in 1980 to 84.4% in 2002.

The Department of Education reports that the share of students enrolling into college straight out of high school has grown from 63% in 2000 to 70% in 2016.

Yet starting college is not the same thing as earning a degree; in 2017, just 36% of 25- to 29-year-olds held a bachelor’s degree, according to the National Centre For Education Statistics.

The college-for-all rhetoric often leaves behind those who start but don’t finish college, as well as high-schoolers who learn in non-traditional ways and are at serious risk of disconnection.

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The price of disconnecting

In 2018, according to Measure of America’s calculations, 11.7% of Americans aged 16 to 24 were disconnected — neither enrolled in school nor employed. That’s an estimated 4.6 million teenagers and young adults across the country.

Being disconnected during this critical window of development too often irreparably limits chances and opportunities later in life.

We found that, on average, people who were out of school and work in their late teens and early 20s earn about $31,000 less in their 30s than people who had been enrolled in school or in the labour force during those same years, even controlling for key demographic characteristics.

“The effects of disconnection also ripple across the economy through lost wages, lower tax revenue, higher healthcare, public assistance, criminal justice costs and a continuation of intergenerational poverty”

The effects of disconnection also ripple across the entire country’s economy through lost wages, lower tax revenue, higher healthcare, public assistance, criminal justice costs and a continuation of intergenerational poverty.

For many disconnected youth who have both the desire and aptitude to go to college, but lack the financial resources or academic guidance necessary, the college-for-all conversation is crucial — as long as it’s accompanied by sufficient political action.

But this approach leaves some young people without a viable path from high school to the working world. When teachers, guidance counsellors and others who work with teens and young adults see bachelor’s degrees as the only worthwhile goal, young people receive incomplete information.

It is true that many of the jobs of the future will require post-secondary education — but not necessarily a four-year college degree.

Indeed, jobs for two-year associate degree holders grew by 83% between 1991 and 2016, according to a Georgetown report.

A chance for all

The US needs to have a policy conversation about a key school-to-work alternative to college: robust career and technical education.

US vocational education was at its peak in 1982, when 22% of high-school seniors were enrolled in the vocational system, according to the National Centre for Education Statistics.

But Reagan-era reform efforts to elevate US academic performance internationally held up vocational education as an example of both accepting student mediocrity and wasting taxpayer money.

Around the same time, a democratising, egalitarian ethos was taking hold among educators — the idea that everyone should have a chance to go to college, as well as recognition that young people of colour and lower-income teens were disproportionately directed toward the vocational track.

“While the view that all young people should have access to higher education was a welcome development, the belief that anything but a four-year college degree was second-best stigmatised vocational education”

While the view that all young people should have access to higher education was a welcome development, the belief that anything but a four-year college degree was second-best stigmatised vocational education and hurt students who could thrive in that learning environment.

Career and technical paths that are linked to internships, job placements, life skills classes and a post-secondary certificate or associate degree program can create a necessary alternative pathway from school to work for young people whose needs are being left out of the conversation.

Expanding the conversation

Luckily, the US wouldn’t need to create a new vocational system out of whole cloth. We can look not only to the domestic models of the 1970s and early 1980s, but also to our peer nations in Europe that sport robust and well-regarded vocational systems.

In many European countries, 40% to 70% of students opt for a vocational track for secondary education; these countries have lower youth disconnection rates than the US as a result.

The German system of vocational training offers a useful model: it enrols more than half of all high-school students, offers 350 different occupational apprenticeship routes and partners with one quarter of German companies, who also finance half of the training expenses.

There are also domestic state-level programs linking academics and technical education that could be scaled across the US.

In California, Linked Learning programs, designed according to the needs of major California industries such as biomedicine, engineering and digital media arts, have improved high-school graduation rates and career-preparedness, providing technical training and hands-on job experience, as well as much-needed support services, such as counselling and tutoring.

On the other side of the country, Massachusetts has brought back its own vocational-technical education program, which culminates in a certificate Massachusetts industry professionals regard as a strong entry point into many fields, such as health services, hospitality and transportation.

Expanding the school-to-work conversation beyond the reductive solution of college-for-all will allow policymakers, advocates and educators to include the needs of young people who are dangerously close to disconnection by preparing them for a range of options, such as two-year college programs or technical apprenticeships.

— Kristen Lewis and Johnathan Appel

Picture credit: Vance Osterhout on Unsplash