Jonathan reminded us of how starkly different the realities were in two different high schools. At his high school in a wealthy suburb of New York, “Something like 95 percent of the kids went to four-year colleges,” he says. “And there’s a reason for that. There’s a whole infrastructure built up to make it happen. There are counselors who are dedicated. English classes are focused on writing essays … All of a sudden, you’re aware of how many resources you have.”
Contrast this with Tyler, who saw his high school counselor only once and was told not to strive for anything beyond high school. The counselor’s advice may have seemed cruel at the time, but he understood something many do not: Not every high school senior is college material, and neither academic counseling nor basic remedial courses in a college environment can compensate for a lifetime of little guidance or skill building. It’s also important to recognize that not everyone is truly ready for college at age eighteen. If we are to be frank with kids about their futures and their performance, we must offer realistic and equally valuable alternatives to four-year degrees. Tyler’s counselor told him to not bother with college, but he didn’t tell Tyler what to do instead. Young adults like Tyler need alternatives to the college path.
Some training beyond high school is necessary today. But “training” should not always be equated with a four-year college degree, at least straight out of high school. For some youths, other, less direct routes may be more fruitful, effective, and profitable. A gap year between high school and college might be just the thing for students who lack direction, giving them time to explore their interests and mature. Service opportunities like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps can be invaluable in connecting young people with mentors and expanding their horizons. Other teens should be afforded clear paths from high school to work via a stop in some well-directed training program. To make these paths “real” for them we must give them clear ideas about what it means to “go into computers,” for example: what jobs are available in “computers,” what it takes to get those jobs, and what kinds of training they need.
We certainly should not lose sight of how to equip as many children as possible with the skills they need to be successful in higher education. But with the dropout rates in college as high as they are, and fewer than half of community college students ever making it to a four-year school, it is important to create valuable and productive alternatives. Educators and parents must provide more comprehensive guidance to young people so that they can more easily discover what they’re best matched for, what steps they need to take to get there, and find the best options that are out there for them. This is particularly important for our treaders, but also for many of our swimmers, who—despite being highly skilled—are often wandering through college without direction. We outline some of these alternatives below, but there are many possibilities that need to be explored in order for us to secure these young people’s futures.
Some young people also simply need more time to find their way. Whether we like to admit it or not, social class has a stronghold on the destinies of young Americans. We have seen its legacy time and time again in our analyses and interviews. We must therefore allow for the possibility that some very capable young people from disadvantaged backgrounds will need a little extra time to catch up. Giving up on them too soon would be tragic. These students need programs that lessen the risks of trying and failing. Promising ideas include “freshman forgiveness” policies that reduce the toll of poor grades in the first year on academic standing or financial assistance, loan forgiveness or reduction to ease the burden of those who try but fail early on in college, or other plans that stagger risks and costs to acknowledge the fact that some students have serious vulnerabilities coming into college.
Most universities are also now offering comprehensive and extended orientation to incoming students to help them make the transition into college. This isn’t just about introducing new students to the college; it’s about acquainting them with a wide range of support services on campus that are meant to foster their success. It is also about teaching students how to be successful in their courses, how to manage their time, and how to make social connections but also manage social life alongside their academic demands. These things are particularly important for students who are first-generation college-goers, who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and who have other academic vulnerabilities.
In the end, what is most critical is that all young people be helped to find a direction that matches their interests and skill sets, and that they be provided with a clear sense of the steps that are required to get there. Below we outline ways to help young people forge a successful path to school or work.
Career Academies as a Route from School to Work
One promising option for those who are not bound for four-year colleges is the high school career academy. “This is not the old vo-tech model,” says MDRC’s Robert Ivry, who has long been involved in evaluating the effectiveness of these programs. Rather than relegating students who are not on the college track to the ugly stepsister role, as is often the case with the vocational track in high schools today, these programs serve a broad cross section of students. “They’re neither stigmatized nor elitist,” says Ivry of these career academies. “They include students who also take AP classes and those struggling. Career academies make the educational experience come alive by bringing coherence to classroom work. The programs tie all classes together around a career, and in doing so they make school feel more relevant.” Currently there are twenty-five hundred of these academies around the country operating as schools within schools and serving approximately thirty to sixty students per grade. Some of the academies are funded through states. Students take classes together as a cohort, mix traditional academics with career-focused studies, and take part in various internships or apprenticeships.
A career academy in California, for example, focuses on the health industry. During students’ freshman and sophomore years, the curriculum focuses on work readiness in addition to basic studies. They might learn about the SAT process and receive other preparation for college, but the majority of the focus is on career development. By their junior year, the students are shadowing health care providers on the job, which exposes them to the range of options available in the field. In their senior year, they complete a paid internship in a local hospital. “They are high-quality jobs,” says Ivry. “They’re working in medical labs in hospitals, or if they’re in a computer academy, they’re working at Intel, or they’re at the launchpad in Coco Beach, Florida, if they’re in an aerospace academy.” The classes offered in career academies also reflect students’ career interests. Students in the health care academy, for example, read about the discovery of penicillin in their science classes. “It’s really exciting,” says Ivry. “It gives them more of a sense of purpose, more a feel of what it’s like to work in the real world.”
Students in career academies like the fact that they are better known by their teachers. They also have a greater comfort zone with their teachers. In many high schools, students who are not college-bound often feel that teachers are not as engaged with them as they are with their college-bound peers. In career academies, these students suddenly feel that school is more relevant and they have a greater sense of purpose. The programs also do something else that is invaluable for low-income youth: They provide personal references and experiences for résumés, things that these students’ more privileged peers take for granted.
MDRC has rigorously evaluated several of these career academies, and the results are astonishing: Eight years after high school, career academy students were earning significantly more than their peers who were not in the program—in total, $30,000 more over the eight years combined. “That is equivalent to the earnings gains from an associate’s degree,” says Robert Ivry. “That’s not to say kids should skip the degree, but clearly there’s a labor market payoff to career academies.” Those earnings also allowed young people to make a more successful tra
nsition to adulthood. They were more likely to be married, to not be single parents, and to be living independently from their parents than their classmates who did not go through the program.
Improving Community College Experiences
Improving the community college experience is also on the agenda of reformers, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Obama administration has also recognized the important role of community colleges in strengthening the skills and opportunities of those who do not or cannot go on to four-year colleges by proposing $2 billion in additional funding for job-related training. The administration also plans to more tightly link community colleges with employers.
Community colleges are a critical ladder to success for students who cannot afford or are not prepared for four-year schools, those who are returning to school after time in the workforce, or those who have been sidetracked by early family responsibilities. However, a variety of factors—ranging from a lack of financial aid to inadequate student services and poor “remedial” classes—can impede student progress.
Community colleges and their students are also, in some ways, the wave of the future. The traditional model of higher education is rapidly changing, with student demand for more convenient class times (evenings, weekends, or in intensive spurts) and formats (completely online or online mixed with face-to-face instruction); for flexibility in transferring courses across institutions and in moving between full-time and part-time statuses; and for lower-cost options, to name a few. There is no question that the University of 2020 will look dramatically different from the institutions we know today, and the four-year full-time program done in residence will be a much less frequent pathway through higher education.7
Several innovative programs are in the works to improve retention and graduation rates at community colleges. One novel program, on which the Network is collaborating with MDRC, is Opening Doors. Opening Doors is designed to test a handful of interventions meant to improve graduation rates and later job success for low-income students. In the sites that focused on an intervention based on “learning communities,” for example, small groups of students moved through a common set of classes, which gave them the ability to assist one another, form study groups, and build relationships that carry the potential for support beyond the classroom. Other sites offered interventions in child care, intense career and education counseling, or small performance-based financial incentives. The different elements of these programs are being tested in a range of community colleges across the country, including those that serve nontraditional and low-income students.
These evaluations have been very promising to date, particularly in light of the rigor of the evaluations. MDRC is using a control group and experimental group to test the programs’ effectiveness. The study compares the experiences of students who receive the Opening Doors interventions with those of students who simply receive existing services. The study design allows evaluators to conclude with certainty that the program itself is responsible for any resulting differences in the groups’ outcomes.
Early results of the performance-based financial incentives, for example, show fairly strong gains among a population of largely low-income single mothers in Louisiana who have returned to college. The financial stipend encouraged more of these students to register for college and to register full-time. Students were more likely to persist in their course of study, being about 30 percent more likely to register for a third semester than students in the control group. The program also increased the number of credits that students earned, and had a positive impact on some social and psychological outcomes, like feeling positive and more able to accomplish long-term goals.
The gains that result for community college students with these kinds of interventions, and the gains that result for non-college-bound high school students in career academies, point to the possibility of real success for at-risk youth when programs are well designed and when they address the true needs of students and the emerging workforce. Too many young adults are entering the world of work sorely unprepared for the types of jobs that will be available to them, or without the types of soft skills—things like showing up on time, dressing appropriately, and taking instruction from superiors—that are necessary to stay employed and to advance.
Often, though, even when a four- or even two-year degree isn’t necessary for effective on-the-job performance, it will still be imposed as a job requirement. An emphasis on finding ways to certify that applicants have the specific, requisite skills for a job seems preferable to rigidly clinging to degrees that may have little to do with the job itself or an employee’s performance in it. This strategy, too, would open up opportunities for non-college-bound youth to compete for positions for which they are genuinely suited.
On the Job Without a Net
The landscape for jobs will change dramatically in the future. Some argue that the “Great Recession” that began in late 2008 is the nail in the coffin for many industries, and that we are in the midst of a fundamental restructuring of the labor market. Who knows what things will look like five or ten years from now, but one thing seems certain: New industries will emerge from the ashes of this collapse, and those industries will demand higher-skilled workers who are even more flexible and nimble than workers today. General skill sets that are transferable to a variety of jobs may be most beneficial in this rapidly changing economy. Workers of all stripes will likely change jobs over the course of their careers. It seems inevitable that job-shopping will become the new model of work. In this sense, young people will be served well in the future if they learn how to be adaptable and flexible in the labor market. All signs suggest that young people are indeed comfortable with this flux and that they may even prefer it.
If the economy continues to be dominated by service sector jobs, however, we face a split workforce of low-paid and high-paid employees, with a hollowed-out middle, unless protections are carved out for workers at the bottom. Reinvented unions could rally for those protections as they did in the 1940s and 1950s in the manufacturing sector, which contributed to the strong middle class our country enjoyed for decades. The Reagan era, coupled with internal union corruption, signaled the beginning of the end of the old union model. But that does not mean that unions have no place in today’s workforce in which workers are responsible for their own safety nets, their own training, and their own retirement.
With or without unions, companies across the board should reinvest in on-the-job training. In 1979, companies spent $20 billion in current dollars on job training. Today, they spend only $6 billion, according to a report by the National Employment Law Project. Training is imperative if workers are to move up the ranks into better-paid and more complex jobs. A system of standardized training and recognized credentials that workers can carry with them from job to job would make sense given the highly mobile workforce today. This training should be aligned with regional workforce demands. To accomplish this, more coordination is needed between employers, government leaders, community colleges, and trade schools. A universally recognized set of skills and credentials for jobs would help prepare a workforce for the specific demands and core competencies of a job, and in doing so, better ensure that tuition is money well spent.
Apprenticeships allow new workers to gain a broad perspective on what a field entails and learn the applicable skills in a structured, directed way. For young adults, they are invaluable routes to solid jobs. Job shadowing is another option for those who are uncertain of what they want to do. There are many opportunities to improve the transition into the workforce, but they require cooperation on the part of employers, and strong partnerships between employers and schools, especially high schools, technical schools, and community colleges.8
As benefits wither, health care becomes a growing concern for millions of Americans. Young adults are the most likely to be uninsured. The new health care law will expand health insurance coverage for many of these young adults. The new law, for example, allows y
oung people to remain on their parents’ health policy through age 26. Several provisions make insurance more affordable as well. For example, uninsured individuals can now receive sliding-scale subsidies to purchase health insurance in state exchanges if their employers do not offer insurance and if their incomes are lower than 400 percent of the poverty line. Public programs such as Medicaid have been expanded slightly as well to cover more low-income families.
The pressure on employers to provide insurance has increased. Larger employers will now be fined $2,000 per full-time employee if they do not offer coverage and if they have at least one employee who receives a premium credit through an exchange. Small businesses have the option of purchasing insurance through an exchange as well, which may lower the cost of providing insurance. However, part-time workers are not covered under the new law. Young adults are often more likely than older workers to be in part-time positions.
These parameters are hardly set in stone. Revisions are on the horizon and a strong opposition in Congress is threatening amendments to the law. However, as of April 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation will reduce the number of uninsured by 32 million in 2019 at a net cost of $938 billion over ten years, while reducing the deficit by $124 billion during this time period.
The Promise of Civic Participation
Obama’s election in 2008 capitalized on the youth vote and on the new forms of social media that define this generation. Doing so is critical for our society and for the future of democracy. Civic experiences in high school and college have been linked not only to later community involvement, voting, and volunteering, but also to academic achievement, college attendance, and college graduation. A curriculum that emphasizes and even requires civic engagement could therefore be an important tool to hook young people into lifelong civil participation. Service learning opportunities in high schools have shown great promise in creating active, involved citizens.9 Though “service learning” can mean a variety of things, it always involves community service projects that are closely connected to formal instruction and curriculum, and it often involves close partnerships between schools or colleges and communities. The hallmark of service learning experiences is that they are hands-on, involving community service or volunteering, visits to government or community institutions, debates or discussions, mock trials or role-playing. They encourage actively “doing” democracy by mobilizing students to foster dialogue and make change in their schools and communities around issues that matter to them.
Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone Page 25
