The End of the “College for All” Debate

A new paper from Bellwether Education Partners argues that the “college for all” debate is beside the point because students are already flocking to colleges. The real question, they say, is how to find low-income students with high potential and how to better inform students so that they’re “smart shoppers” when choosing among colleges. The new report, Smart Shoppers: The End of the “College for All” Debate?, by J.B. Schramm, Chad Aldeman, Andrew Rotherham and Rachael Brown suggests that the debate over college versus career is misguided.

The following is from the executive summary:

The authors point out that, thirty years ago, half of all U.S. high school graduates went to college (meaning any form of postsecondary education that leads to a degree or credential), and the other half went directly into the workforce. But today, seven out of ten high school graduates head to college, while only three enter the workforce.

Over time, as more students have attended and completed higher education, experts have repeatedly predicted this would create an over-abundance of college-educated workers. Under this theory, a glut of over-educated workers would struggle to find jobs and depress wages for everybody else. But the exact opposite has happened. Even in the recent recession, employers have voted with their payrolls and are more likely to hire college-educated workers, offer them full-time employment and benefits, and pay them more money than non-college- educated workers.

Beginning in the early 1980s, college-educated workers experienced a dramatic increase in their demand, and the college wage premium rose from 40 percent in the 1970s to upwards of 70 percent by the mid-1990s, and reached bit more than 80 percent in 2012.

The economic insurance that higher education bestows is not some kind of magic shield against job loss or hardship. But, through economic upturns and downturns, including the recent Great Recession, a college education remains the best insurance policy against shifting labor markets, unemployment, and under-employment.

The authors argue we face two real challenges looming in the future: 1) Schools must do a better job identifying those students who are not realizing their promise, a disproportionate number of whom are low-income; and 2) Schools, colleges, nonprofits, and businesses need to do a better job of educating students about their options on which college they should attend, which degrees they should pursue, and how they should pay for it. These aren’t arguments against college writ large but rather for thinking differently about college and preparing students to be smart about selecting the right institutions, taking on a manageable debt burden, and finishing their degree.

The report concludes with an analysis of the risks of college as an economic mobility strategy and a set of recommendations for K-12 schools, colleges and universities, state and federal policymakers, and business leaders. It recommends supporting students to become smart, discerning shoppers of higher education information rather than assuming that the college experience is inevitable or interchangeable.

So, for the authors at Bellwether Education, college is certainly still to be encouraged for most students because of how employers view college graduates, but education officials must be wiser in the way that they educate students about their college options.

For more information, please visit: http://bellwethereducation.org/smart-shoppers-the-end-of-the-college-for-all-debate/