Perceptions of elitism

I like to think that I’m committed to educational opportunity and equality. That everybody should have a real chance at pursuing life goals with as few barriers as possible. I like to think that I’m committed to a cause of social justice, that equality of opportunity is the heart of any successful democracy. BUT, sometimes I step back and think “what are colleges creating?” I’m committed to getting more folks to college, but for what? A picture says a thousand words. Yeah, it’ s a bit unfair because for every “elitist” college grad I’ve met, I’ve also met about 20 “non-elitist” college grads. And I can point out a lot of non-college grads who match the elitist profile. The knife cuts both ways. But the food for thought that this picture makes my mind chew on is that colleges have a lot of ground to make up in terms of redefining higher education’s role in society. Colleges could do much more in terms of preparing students to be world citizens, to be engaged citizens, and to work towards improving the human condition.

Unemployment and educational opportunity

A new report from researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research show that welfare reform of the 1990’s has decreased (rather than increased) college participation rates for low-income mothers. This study gives a perfect example of how counter-intuitive some of our national social policies are impacting individuals. Investing in “human capital” is the most successful way to grow an economy in the long-run, but reform efforts are actually inhibiting indivuals from investing in human capital. That makes no sense to me. Look, unemployment claims have been skyrocketing during the current economic recession…yet, there’s no strategic plan that is getting unemployed folks to pursue formal training or credentialling.

What if the feds provided incentives for unemployed workers to enroll in college while they’re laid off? Or what if the feds counted college enrollment as a “job” so that welfare recipients would have an incentive to transition from welfare to “work”?  Currently, neither of these options are in play. Instead, we’re missing opportunity after opportunity to invest in human capital and it’s only going to hurt us more in the long-run. We’re living in an era where our youngsters are less educated than our adults and other countries are zipping past us in terms of college attainment rates. Tragedy of the commons or the road to serfdom? I’m not sure which, but neither is a rosy scenario for our future.

Podcasts on enrollment management

Check out these podcasts by the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice if you’re interested in enrollment management, college finance, or college access. They’re interviewing some of the nation’s experts on these topics, so hopefully these podcasts will have some nuggets of wisdom for folks to think about. Just passing it along.

Educational attainment

The US is one of only 2 industrialized countries in the world where the younger generation (blue) is less-educated than the older generation (red). In other words, the whole idea of leaving the next generation “better off” is really at risk here. And that doesn’t bode well for international economic competitiveness…time to invest in higher education.
Source: NCHEMS, www.nchems.org

The left axis is “percent of adult with an Associate’s Degree or higher.” Data is from 2004, the most recent available from OECD.

Educational inequality

This chart, from Postsecondary Education Opportunity, is one of the many pieces of data that I look to for inspiration and to help me keep things in perspective. This income inequality follows the same pattern as the class polarization we see in our labor market where there is a wide (and growing) gap between the rich and the poor. Since the late 1970’s and early 80’s, poor kids have been making the slowest gains in college participation.

But what I find to be more compelling (and more worrisome) is found in the chart below from the Education Trust. It comes as no surprise — Kati Haycock shows us that the nation’s “dumbest” rich kids go to college at the same rate as the nation’s “smartest” poor kids. Goes to show how colleges are serving as agents of social stratification and keeping class barriers neatly in tact, rather than acting as agents of social change…something ain’t right here.

Return on investment

I’ll eventually start writing more about my actual dissertation topic, but I came across this story and video in the Wall Street Journal today and wanted to share it. In a nutshell, WSJ is explaining one of the realities that exists within higher education today…that is, a college degree no longer guarantees someone with a “good” wage upon graduation. We’ve all heard stories about the English major now waiting tables at a local diner, right? Well that story can be applied to a whole bunch of different college majors today. However, when we continue to talk about college diplomas and salaries we tend to lose sight of some other important realities that go along with educational attainment…