CLAIM Our economy will suffer unless we have the highest college graduation rate in the world.
REALITY There is no evidence for this claim.
Since World War II, the United States has steadily expanded access to higher education on the assumption that an educated populace would benefit individuals, society, and the economy. Widespread higher education, it was generally believed, would elevate the knowledge and wisdom of the populace and spur technological innovation. Investing in education was, most policy makers believed, a good bet for the nation.
These days, our policy makers tend to see investment in higher education strictly as preparation for the workforce, for career readiness and global competition. If another nation has more college graduates, they fear, then it might beat us in the global competition for markets and technological innovation. But we should not lose sight of other ways of thinking about higher education. Going to a college or university is about more than acquiring job skills. It is a time to study different subjects and fields in depth; to explore one’s interests and to give full range to one’s curiosity about ideas; to study under the tutelage of scholars who have devoted their lives to their field. It is a time to develop one’s intellectual and cultural life. It is a time in which to gain the political, historical, and economic understanding that was not contained in high school textbooks, to explore issues that were once thought settled, to acquire and exercise the critical perspective that prepares people to become actively involved in civic life and democratic politics.
In recent decades, the utilitarian argument for higher education has nearly supplanted understanding of the role of higher education in developing intellectual, cultural, political, and aesthetic judgments. Yet even those who go to college to study business may find time in their schedule to read literature and history, to learn about philosophy, music, and art. They may, for the first time in their lives, have the opportunity to think critically about society. These are the fruits of higher education, as distinct from vocational education. It may be a vain hope, but we should continue to urge our policy makers not to lose sight of the intangible values of higher education as they promote higher college graduation rates.
The great expansion of higher education began when veterans of World War II returned home. As a reward for their service, Congress passed the GI Bill of Rights. Among its many benefits were subsidies for tuition, books, and fees of those who wanted more education. More than two million veterans took advantage of the offer and enrolled in institutions of higher education. Unfortunately, the GI Bill occurred in the context of racial segregation, and most African American veterans were unable to gain admission to most institutions of higher education; instead, they used their benefits for trade schools. While the GI Bill did nothing to end racial segregation, it largely severed the connection between income and higher education by providing access to many who otherwise would not have been able to afford it, and American higher education was transformed. Higher education was no longer seen as a privilege of the privileged. State universities expanded, and community colleges opened and grew to meet a variety of needs, not only academic, but technical and vocational as well.
The college-going rate has increased at a phenomenal pace over the past century. In 1900, only 2 percent of those in the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old group were enrolled in college. By 1930, it was 7 percent. By 1949, it was 15 percent. By 1969, the college-going rate among that age group was 35 percent. The increased availability of public higher education made college more affordable and accessible to large numbers of students. To bolster enrollments, many states made a point of underwriting the cost of public higher education.1
At present, higher education is the pathway to every profession and to technical careers that require at least two years of postsecondary study. College graduates on average earn more money than high school graduates, and high school graduates earn more money than high school dropouts. College graduates have a lower unemployment rate than those with less education. Thus, it is reasonable to encourage more individuals to acquire more education to improve their knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, many states have increasingly shifted the cost of higher education to students, raising tuition and making higher education an expensive investment. Many students leave college burdened by debt and spend years paying off their student loans. As public subsidies are replaced by student loans, college and university education becomes too expensive and out of reach for many students. Many decide to take their degrees online, hoping that they can get a degree faster and at less cost. For those who want a four-year degree, this is not a good decision. For-profit online universities have extremely low graduation rates.2
Reformers complain that students in the United States are falling behind those in other nations because the college completion rate in this country is flat, while it is rising elsewhere. The college completion rate for older Americans (fifty-five to sixty-four) is the same as for younger Americans (twenty-five to thirty-four). Reformers cite an OECD chart showing that the United States ranked sixteenth in the world in its graduation rate, as compared with other OECD nations. The implication is that our nation is losing the international race to create brainpower and educated talent and is therefore careening into economic decline. President Obama is convinced that the United States must increase the number of college graduates and has pledged that by the year 2020 “America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”
Should we aspire to have the highest college graduation rate in the world? What will happen if we don’t?
These are issues that need to be deconstructed.
The OECD chart shows fifteen nations with a higher postsecondary graduation rate than ours. Nations are ranked by the percent of their population aged twenty-five to thirty-four that completed either an associate’s degree or a higher degree by 2009. The completion rate for the United States is 41 percent. The nation with the highest completion rate is South Korea, where 63 percent of the age group has earned a postsecondary degree. About 55 percent of the cohort has received degrees in Canada, Japan, and the Russian Federation. The rates are in the mid-to-high 40s in Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Luxembourg, the U.K., Australia, and Denmark. Such nations as France, Israel, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland have rates within a point or two of the United States.3 (See graphs 38 and 39.)
On the surface, this appears to be a terrible indictment of American education.
However, there is one curious fact about the OECD rankings: while the United States is in the middle of the pack, only a few points above the average for the OECD nations as a whole, Germany is near the bottom. This is odd; it doesn’t fit the conventional wisdom of our time. Germany has a degree completion rate of 26 percent among the younger cohort, yet Germany is the dominant economic engine of Europe. The degree completion rate of its older population is the same as that of the youngest cohort, just like in the United States, but at a much lower level. Germany is renowned for its high technology, its sophisticated industries, and its productivity. Yet only 26 percent of its population aged twenty-five to thirty-four received a degree from a postsecondary institution. Germany has succeeded economically by having a strong educational system and a strong apprenticeship system. It has also taken care not to outsource its major industries to low-wage nations.
The bearers of doom and gloom try to convince the public that there has been stagnation in the college-degree completion rate of Americans, but this is not true. Consider the changes over time in the proportion of those in the age group from twenty-five to twenty-nine who have earned a bachelor’s degree. Among those in this age group, 22 percent had earned a BA in 1980; by 2011, it was up to 32 percent. Among whites, the proportion grew from 25 percent to 39 percent. Among blacks, it nearly doubled, from 11 percent to 20 percent. Among Hispanics, it grew from 8 percent to 13 percent. Among Asian Americans, it increased from 42 percent (in 1990) to 56 percent.4
Be that as it may, our leaders agree that we must aim for a higher degree completion rate. The College Board gathered a commission of education leaders, who declared this goal: “Increase the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who hold an associate degree or higher to 55 percent by the year 2025 in order to make America the leader in educational attainment in the world.”5
So now there are two goals: President Obama says we must be first in the world by 2020, and the College Board commission says we must raise the completion rate to 55 percent by 2025 to become “the leader in educational attainment in the world.” The unasked question is this: Will the degrees obtained under pressure to reach a target represent real learning, or will they be reached by credential inflation, credit recovery, and other schemes that devalue the meaning of the diploma?
The commission made some impressive recommendations about improving preschool education, reducing dropouts, and making college more affordable. Taking these steps will surely raise the proportion of students who are ready and able to complete a college degree.
But America won’t be the world leader by raising degree completion to 55 percent. South Korea was the world leader in 2009 with a rate of 63 percent and is not standing still. The question is whether we can increase degree completion from 41 percent to more than 65 percent by 2025, and even that may not be enough to pass South Korea.
Is it possible? Could we become the world leader? The College Board’s commission thought so, but getting there would require significant new investments in precollegiate education, and that is not happening. Instead, we are seeing budget cuts in many states, increased class sizes, and reductions in funding for everything the College Board commission recommended. Without additional investments in preschool education, dropout prevention, counseling, and other strategies to keep students on track to high school graduation, it is unlikely that more students will stay in school and enroll in postsecondary education. Unless the federal government or states help students pay for college, we are not likely to see big increases in the number of those enrolling in postsecondary institutions.
As we saw in an earlier chapter, high school graduation rates are now about 90 percent—not in four years, but in five or six years after students start high school. And more high school graduates enroll in college right after graduation. In 1975, about half of all high school graduates enrolled in college right after graduation. By 2009, the rate had increased to 70 percent. For students from high-income families, 84 percent entered college right after high school; from middle-income families, it was 67 percent; from low-income families, it was 55 percent. Two-thirds of males and three-quarters of females enroll in college after finishing high school. In terms of access, we have made impressive progress since 1975. But to push it even higher would mean concentrating new resources on low-income students and students of color. Those investments are not being made.6
Perhaps we should feel ashamed that the youngest group in the United States is earning about the same number of bachelor’s degrees as the oldest group and that we are not producing more and more bachelor’s degrees. We like to think that we are number one in everything, so why are we not producing more and more bachelor’s degrees?
Here are the likely reasons: People won’t spend the time and money to get a college degree—either two-year or four-year—unless they think it will help them get a better job or career; and people won’t pursue more education unless they can afford it. As I noted earlier, college graduates earn more on average than those with only a high school diploma, and those with a high school diploma earn more than those who never finished high school. But the job prospects for everyone are uncertain in a rapidly changing economy, and everyone has heard stories of college graduates working as retail clerks or in other jobs that pay low wages.
How do people know what they need in the future? One clue is to see what is happening right now. The advance of technology and globalization has led to the outsourcing of many kinds of jobs, not only factory jobs, but white-collar jobs. As the economist Paul Krugman points out, “Since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by ‘hollowing out’: both high-wage and low-wage employment has grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs—the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class—have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.” The jobs that are growing are those that can’t be outsourced, such as truck drivers and janitors. High-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are even easier to outsource to other nations, he wrote, than low-wage jobs. Yes, Krugman argues, we should remove the inequalities in American education, but we should stop pretending that “putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have.” Having a college degree is no longer a guarantee of getting a good job, and it will be even less true in the future. Many of the jobs that cannot be outsourced do not require so much as a high school diploma, other than as an entry-level credential providing evidence of persistence.7
Krugman concludes: “So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer—we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.” College degrees won’t take us where we want to go; they may be “no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.” The political prospects for Krugman’s vision—which requires shared sacrifice and higher tax rates—seem to be as remote as the likelihood of boosting the college graduation rate to first in the world by 2020.
Krugman’s analysis was supported by a report that large numbers of recent college graduates were unemployed or underemployed. A 2012 study of census data by researchers at Northeastern University, Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute found that about 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of people under the age of twenty-five with a bachelor’s degree were jobless or underemployed. “Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less. In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000).” Some economists suggested that most of the jobs lost in the recession of 2008 were middle-class jobs, like bank tellers, that were automated and would never return. More college graduates were working in “office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).” Further, only three of the thirty occupations (teachers, college professors, and accountants) with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 would require a bachelor’s degree or higher. “Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren’t easily replaced by computers.”8
The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast that two-thirds of the jobs available between 2008 and 2018 would not need any postsecondary education. Most would require on-the-job training. Jobs will open for 175,000 computer engineers and 600,000 nurses, which require postsecondary degrees. But the economy is likely to offer jobs for 460,000 home health aides, 400,000 customer service agents, 400,000 fast-food workers, 375,000 retail salesclerks, 255,000 construction workers, and other occupations that require on-the-job training, not degrees. Unless there are unexpected changes in the economic outlook, many of the young people who graduate from two- and four-year colleges will not find jobs that require the education they have purchased at a high price. But the demand for college degrees will continue because many employers will hire only college graduates, even for jobs that don’t require a college education.9
What is painfully obvious is that the policy makers’ discussion of college completion rates hinges completely on the economic gains of getting a college degree. The purpose of going to college, they constantly reiterate, is to get a better job and to make more money. Many who accept this as their goal will be disappointed. They will not get the job or the income that they hoped for. They will get a degree and be burdened by debt without getting a job commensurate with their time or investment or aspirations. We would do well to think of college not as an economic activity (which it may or may not be, depending on the individual and the economy) but as an opportunity to develop one’s knowledge, to encounter new ideas, to deepen one’s appreciation of the arts, and to emerge with a wider understanding of the world. Perhaps our policy makers have oversold the economic returns of higher education and lost sight of the value of education for personal, civic, aesthetic, and social purposes.
If we expect to increase the rate of degree completion, we must invest in early childhood education and enhance the quality of precollegiate education, especially for students who are African American, Hispanic, and low income. These are the groups with the lowest degree completion rates. We should do this on grounds of equity, not international competition. If we are serious about increasing the number of students who complete postsecondary education, then states and the federal government must reduce the cost of public higher education so that it is affordable to more students. Students should not leave college burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of debt.10
If college completion is important as an investment in the knowledge and skills of our population (and not just as a credential), then we must encourage and enable students to persist. If we treated education as both an economic good for the ongoing development of our nation and a basic human right, then public higher education would be subsidized by the state and freely available to all who choose to pursue a degree. That’s about as likely to happen as becoming first in the world in degree completion by 2020, but it would move us closer to the latter goal.
It would be a good idea if elected officials stopped selling the goal of college completion as a form of international competition. Because postsecondary education is not compulsory, the decision to pursue it is up to the individual. Individuals must determine for themselves that a commitment of two or four or more years of their lives and a great deal of money is a worthy investment in their future.
Even if a college degree does not necessarily lead to a high-paying job or career or profession, it is still worth pursuing. A better-educated populace is a wise investment in the future of our society. We should cultivate an educated citizenry who are informed and knowledgeable about mathematics, science, history, technology, and world cultures. We should recognize the importance of preparing more people with the skills and knowledge to be leaders in science, technology, and the arts. We should willingly invest in the growth of the historical, civic, political, and economic knowledge of our people, as well as their readiness to earn a living.
Learning is never finished and complete. It does not end with the attainment of a degree, not at age eighteen or age twenty-one or any other age. The opportunity to enlarge one’s education should be available at reasonable cost for people of all ages, whether on campus, online, or elsewhere. Knowledge continues to grow, and our ability to understand it and use it well should grow too.