June 8, 2023
As the cliché goes, “It’s not you, it’s me.” In this sense, education (you) is not what today’s students (me) need. What do I mean by this? It is time to talk about the challenges facing education today with regard to misalignment between what schools from 9-12 through higher education are teaching and what today’s students, and tomorrow’s adults, need. In one sense, I have to ask, are we being honest with our young people regarding education? Or, are we spinning a myth from the past that has lost its relevance? Worse yet, are we selling them a product in the form of higher education that has lost value? Are we having conversations with our students about multiple pathways to good-paying careers? Hey education, we need to talk.
History and economics are the driving factors in our educational system. From the creation of public schools in the late 19th century to the adoption of and continued use of the Carnegie Credit Hour, to the increasingly common question “Is college worth it?”, few people are able to see through the marketing and rhetoric and come to any logical conclusion. Our current view of the educational pipeline is driven by both a business model and a misplaced belief in a singular path to a “successful” life. To rectify the second, the “business” of education must be both acknowledged and forced to change. Unlike other nations, our education systems are a blended model of local public, non-profit, and for-profit. A national system does not exist. At the very center of this is the reality that even in the public and non-profit education sectors, money is the driver via taxes in the first and tuition in the second. This system, set up in the industrial era, served a purpose at a certain time but has not evolved with the rest of society, the economy, or culture and is thus missing the mark at great cost to our children and the future economy.
What is school for? What knowledge is necessary versus what knowledge is simply outdated and redundant? How are we defining knowledge? What do students need to know for the emerging future, and to be clear, a future that is hard to envision? How can we decouple the business of education from the need for knowledge? Tough questions to be sure, but ones that are going to be answered one way or another. Much like dealing with an aging neglected forest, you can either go in with a plan to address deadfall, invasives, and end-of-life trees or you can wait it out and let nature take its course. In this sense, educational change can either be driven via a planned approach or just be left to nature’s course. We seem to be doing the latter, in that any notion of a coherent proactive approach seems to be missing or at the very least, not well articulated. Is there space in the definition of education for a basic understanding of finance, how to change your oil, social and emotional learning, or the fundamentals of cooking?
As I have written before, many of the issues rest in economics. Changes on both the micro and macroeconomic levels mean schools and colleges are lagging behind and then must make hard choices with regard to how to retool and catch up. The economy of the 1950s dictated a certain need and schools and colleges met those needs with basic education, low or no costs at the university level, a focus on industry and national needs, and an understanding that technical and academic education both had value. The needs of the economy have changed significantly since then and education has failed to adequately adapt as the pace of change continues to speed up. Fifty-year cycles are now twenty-year cycles, and twenty-year cycles are now ten. The last meaningful shift occurred in the 1980s with the reduction of focus on career and technical education and the birth of the “college for all” movement. Bolstered by the words of President Obama, colleges have made themselves out to be indispensable. To make matters worse, all students come with the guarantee of Federal money in the form of Direct Student Loans and potentially Pell Grants. Colleges get paid up front and have little skin in the game should a student withdraw, fail out, or be unable to repay a loan. It is here that education continues to dwell even though the labor market and economy are redefining the very meaning of education and the nation is in dire need of both highly educated and highly trained workers.
A common retort when I bring up the value of a college education is that “a person with a college degree will out-earn a person with only a high school diploma significantly.” While this did hold true at one time, the data used is longitudinal and the current value of college in comparison to a HS diploma will not be known for decades. As well, the proliferation of micro-credentials and short-duration programs has scaled significantly, meaning people can get in-demand training in a short duration and at a lower cost. For parents of high school juniors and seniors, they must be educated on how much the system has changed. From selectivity to all of the types of “early decision” to cost, today’s parents are out of touch with the way today’s college process works. This translates to parents unintentionally misguiding their children due to their own ingrained understanding of college and the college process.
So where does that leave independent schools? In short, many schools would benefit from a shift away from “college for all” and to a model that reflects the multiple pathways graduates may take. Yes, many, even most students, will likely enroll in a four-year college or university, but increasingly large numbers of graduates are looking at other options. These can range from a gap year to going directly to work to taking credential courses ranging from phlebotomy to coding to enrolling in a trade school. Currently, there is a better-projected ROI in becoming an electrician than getting a “business degree” from a tier 3 school and the cost is lower. As well, unlike college, most trade programs have students working while taking classes thus not reducing earnings while in school. The essential question is why do we now see college and university as career training and NOT academia?
The answer is a resounding one, it’s about the money. With the slowing of growth in trade and manufacturing in the 1980s college became the default path to a white-collar job. With this transition came significant growth for colleges and universities in terms of enrollment. Coupled with this growth came the expansion of majors, significant capital projects, and the ballooning of “administration” or non-teaching roles. Until the last twenty years, costs remained fairly low, or at least tethered to reality, and students could graduate in four years with a reasonable amount of loan debt. This is no longer true and when overlapped with changes in the labor market and overall economy, the shift can be seen more clearly.
Most independent schools make their money as being a better alternative to the free options on offer. Better facilities, better academics, better social structure, etc. Much of this hinges on the “100% College Attendance” brag and this is something that we are seeing shift. Yes, it is in the early stage but it is occurring. With the labor market and higher education so out of sync, independent schools have a real opportunity to begin the cultivation of a new value proposition. In this sense, independent schools can innovate and grow by targeting what public schools and colleges are missing, a diverse array of post-secondary options. Yes, some “elite” schools will continue to send 99%+ of their graduates to college, but most schools should at least acknowledge that this notion of every graduate attending college is both unrealistic and not serving some portion of the student population. Think of a recent graduate who would clearly benefit from an alternative post-secondary option. Service learning? Gap years? Skills training? Culinary school? Licensure or credentials? It is worth noting that the average age of an undergraduate student in 2022 was twenty-five so there is ample time between secondary graduation and college to do, learn, and experience a variety of things that would be of great benefit to a large number of students.
Change starts with open and honest conversation coupled with introspection. Schools, and school leaders, tend to fear upsetting a “standard” or “tradition” that might lead to a decline in applicants or a downturn in alumni activity. While this fear is grounded in care and wholly warranted in some cases, the truth is that schools need to offer more options to their graduates and not simply send them on a path that is no longer as effective as it once may have been. This can start with being clear with parents about pathways after secondary school. Yes, there will be pushback but my sense is the rising generation of parents see things a bit differently than Gen X and Boomer parents, thus being more open to changing the conversation about post-secondary plans. As well, schools need to redefine curriculum away from the rigid silos of departments and subjects and towards a more integrated model that mirrors the real world. Creating new programs and courses should be the norm and something that is both exciting and celebrated. SEL must find a space at the table outside of one-off “programs” as collaboration and cultural fluency are must-haves in any endeavor today. Transferable skills will define the marketability of anyone in the coming years, as technology (AI) will likely perform most repetitive tasks within the next decade. Finally, academic snobbery needs to be quashed, as intelligence takes many forms and we need to start valuing both university-level skills and trade skills on the same level. Hey education, we need to talk.
You may also be interested in reading more articles written by Greg Martin for Intrepid Ed News.
