Plenty of alternatives can prepare young people to enter
the workforce.
By Jeffewy J. Selingo
May 26, 2016
During this particularly rancorous election season, at
least one bipartisan consensus persists: More Americans, we are told, need to
earn undergraduate degrees. The political debate tends to focus on the best way
to graduate more people with less debt. But it makes little sense to send more
students to college
when nearly half of new graduates are working jobs that
don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to a 2014 report
from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
It would be better to reconsider the entire issue. There’s
a disconnect between supply (what the education system produces) and demand
(what employers seek). Rather than trying to shuffle young people off to
college three months after they graduate from high school, policy makers should
support alternative routes to the education and training required for
high-quality jobs. Plenty of successful examples have sprung up around the
country.
Siemans and other manufacturers, for example, developed a high-school apprenticeship
program in North Carolina when they couldn’t find enough workers with advanced
skills. After completing a three-year apprenticeship, the students leave with
an associate degree and a $55,000 starting salary.
John Deere runs a similar program at Walla Walla Community
College in Washington state. Students are trained to fix million-dollar farm
equipment, which allows them to use their hands and advanced math and
mechanical skills. High-school guidance counselors, who are evaluated on the
proportion of students they send to four-year universities, may discourage such
choices.
It might also be helpful if more high-school graduates took
a “gap year” before heading off to college. Too often they pick a field of
study based on what’s familiar, with little exposure to many of the jobs that
exist today. Having high-school graduates take time to explore careers before
college—through internships or national service—gives them a sense of focus and
purpose. It likely saves money in the long run too.
While not a traditional gap year, a program in Baltimore
called BridgeEdU bills itself as a reinvention of the freshman experience. It
offers college credits, internships and coaching for under $8,000.
The number of teenagers who have some sort of job while in
school has dropped to 20% in 2013 from about 45% in 1998, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Once in college, students need to combine education
with relevant work experience. Otherwise, they know little about the workplace
before they land their first full-time job after graduation.
More colleges should embrace the idea of cooperative
education. At universities such as Northeastern and Drexel, students alternate
between the classroom and the job. Co-ops are part of the undergraduate
experience at these institutions, and paid work makes up anywhere from
one-third to almost half of the time a student spends in school. Co-op
education helps students develop a tolerance for ambiguity in their work, which
so many employers say today’s college graduates lack.
Many who earn a bachelor’s degree are not prepared to enter
the workforce. A new learning ecosystem is emerging outside of traditional
higher education to assist them. General Assembly offers courses on topics like
Web design, and Koru teaches practical business skills. Students can also use
free or inexpensive online courses from edX and Lynda.com to build skills that
can help them get that first job.
There is no silver bullet for reducing unemployment and
reversing wage stagnation. Sending more high-school graduates to get
traditional bachelor’s degrees, free or not, isn’t the answer. Embracing some
of these locally tested ideas on a national scale would be a good start.
Mr.
Selingo, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, is the author of
“There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About
Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow” (William Morrow, 2016).
