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.