No Credential Left Behind
A group in North Carolina is finding the path forward through the storm clouds of higher education (Photo by Raychel Banner for Unsplash)
There’s plenty of sturm and drang clouding over the field of higher education these days. On one side you’ll hear that higher education – education that happens after people graduate from high school -- costs too much, takes too long, teaches people irrelevant stuff and converts innocent students into liberals. We need to stop putting so much emphasis on 4-year degrees, they argue.
On the other side you’ll hear that higher ed is basically fine the way it is, takes as long as it takes and has a great ROI -- just send more money and everything will be fine. We need even more people graduating with 4-year degrees, they argue.
The truth, as with most public policy issues, is much more nuanced than the soundbites, and doing the right thing requires somebody to figure out how to sort through the details.
Earlier this week a group of 100 or so people from North Carolina -- K-12, community college and university folks along with a few elected officials and folks from nonprofits -- got together in Greensboro, NC to try to answer a few key elements of the higher education problem: how many people need higher education, what form should that education take, and how do we make that happen?
The organization charged with coordinating North Carolina’s attainment efforts
North Carolina is one of 45 states that have set “attainment goals” – attempts to ensure that the state has people with the right levels of education to meet projected future workforce demand. In North Carolina’s case, the work brings together businesses, nonprofits, K-12 players, community colleges and university researchers, organized around a nonprofit, myFutureNC. Their goal: by 2030, make sure the state has 2 million (actually 2,031,465) people with some sort of meaningful education credential beyond high school. So far, some good things have happened, but not enough: current projections show that without additional changes (through graduation and inmigration), the state will fall 80,000 short of that goal.
The approach the group is taking goes well beyond “just get a bunch more people a bunch more education.”
In North Carolina, folks are working on a much more granular level, focusing on being intentional about the mix of degrees and certifications people get, and looking at groups of people that are currently less likely to get the education beyond high school that they need.
Efforts to get the “mix” of credentials right:
Employers don’t want just people with “a degree beyond high school.” For particular jobs they want people with particular levels of credentials. The myFutureNC crowd is targeting its efforts to meet those specific needs. For example:
· Currently only 6.9% of people who get a credential beyond high school are getting a “certification” – think IT credentialing or project management or a skilled trade. By 2030, 11.5% of the 2 million jobs with a post-high school credential will require that. The group is looking at strategies to increase the kind of specific certifications it appears workers will need.
· And despite the arguments to the contrary, the data suggests the state is still not producing as many folks with bachelor’s degrees as employers are looking for – currently 36% of workers in NC with education beyond high school have a bachelor’s degree or more; by 2030 employers say 48% of the 2 million workers needed will require at least a bachelor’s. Increasing that percentage means, among other things, putting more emphasis on helping students transfer from community college to four-year degree programs.
Efforts to increase credentials among particular groups:
Rather than focus on all groups of people, myFutureNC is paying particular attention to some specific groups that currently don’t get postsecondary credentials at the same rate.
North Carolina’s attainment movement recognizes that not all groups are attaining education at the same level.
· The fastest-growing population in North Carolina is LatinX, but only 26% of North Carolina LatinX adults have a 2-year degree or more (compared to 50% of whites). To reach the goal of 2 million by 2030, the group is devoting special attention to improving LatinX attainment.
· And there is a boatload of NC adults (roughly 333,000 between the ages of 25-44, so maybe several boatloads) who started college, then dropped out for one reason or another. myFutureNC calls this group “partway home,” and is mounting a range of strategies to convince that group to come back to complete a degree or credential.
There are areas I wish the NC attainment group would focus on more.
· Increasing explicit attention to the kinds of degrees people are getting. myFutureNC highlights the importance of a meaningful credential beyond high school — and that means students need to have readily available access to information about where job growth is and what credentials qualify them for those jobs. Some of this is obvious — radiation technologists need to know about radiation technology — and some isn’t — large percentages of graduates don’t go to work in their specific field of study. Developing a system to help them understand how degrees and credentials connect to jobs and make decisions accordingly is both complicated and essential.
· Addressing the growing male achievement gap (see previous posts here and here). Men are more likely to drop out of high school than women. They are less likely to get two-year, four-year and advanced degrees than women and the education gap between men and women continues to widen. It may be politically tricky to talk about paying special attention to men, but if we are going to hit attainment goals, we can’t ignore that men are floundering educationally.
That said, I left this week’s gathering excited by the passion, persistence and commitment of the people in the room. Across the nation there are a bunch of groups working on addressing public policy in a bunch of areas, but this one is pretty unusual in at least three ways:
· They’re committing to a long-term goal – in this era of two-year election cycle perspectives, anyone willing to take on and stick with a problem over ten years has my respect. This longer-term approach is largely possible by an unusual funding source. A group called the John M. Belk Endowment has been remarkably creative and generous in coalescing, energizing and supporting the effort, and has made clear the support will continue over the life of the project.
· They’re driving off data – most policy initiatives these days start with a political opinion, then scramble to find data to support it. This one started with data and looked for policy to fix the problem.
· They’re willing to change based on new data or changing conditions – in a world where anyone who abandons a strategy gets trashed for “inconsistency,” the group has been impressively willing to develop new strategies when old ones aren’t working.
In his inspirational 1994 book Built to Last, Jim Collins described a concept organizations could use if they want to accomplish great things. He named it BHAG – the idea of setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals – and showed how the best companies, or nonprofits or government agencies could use BHAGs to get hard things done. Figuring out how much and what kind of higher education 10.6 million people need surely qualifies as a Big Hairy Audacious problem, and 2 million by 2030 qualifies as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. I’m impressed with the progress that’s been made so far on this one and I think the effort is built to last.
-Leslie
References:
US states that have set attainment goals: https://www.luminafoundation.org/stronger-nation/report/static/States_with_Higher_Education_Attainment_Goals.pdmyFutureNC information: https://www.myfuturenc.org
The arguments for certifications: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/what-is-a-certificate-program https://fortune.com/recommends/banking/skill-that-can-boost-your-salary/
NC Latino achievement rates: https://www.edexcelencia.org/research/latino-college-completion/north-carolina