I hope your new year has gone smoothly, your classes (if they have started like mine have) don’t see too many silly questions (“Do I need to buy the book?”….sigh), and that your resolutions are still in full swing! Keep it up!
I know that my blogs can feel weighty at times as I share insights about what isn’t working, what seems to be broken, and how troubling institutional projections are. The dropout rate in our country is abysmal, the lack of usable skills for many graduates coming out of higher education is embarrassing, and the cost of higher education can be criminal. But while that stuff is important, it can likely feel too heavy at times. So let’s start 2020 off on a more positive, upbeat note! Yes, the ramifications of this are still weighty and heavy, but the catalyst is one of “winning” and not potentially losing.
Let’s talk about what having that degree actually signals for many human beings. And in doing so, let’s discuss why educating our students is profoundly life changing in the process…
We know that by most economic measures, a college degree is life changing. While falling short of a degree can be equally as life-changing negatively, especially if loans have been taken out, if a person does get that piece of paper, they are likely going to make more money each year, more money in total, have more savings, and have more in retirement than their non-degree counterparts. While it may or may not make a difference where they obtain that degree (I urge you to read “The Years That Matter Most” – Paul Tough, 2019) , and student loans can definitely hamper initial earnings greatly, the degree matters.
Similarly, the more education a person has, the more opportunities they see in front of them. The data seems to suggest that grads not only have more job opportunities than non-grads, but the result is lower unemployment rates, too. At the same time, another signal appears to be that college leads to more opportunities in finding a spouse and even more living opportunities as well. A ten-year-old study found that (mostly) graduate millennials were more employed, married, and/or living autonomously (vs in their parent’s basements) than non-grads.
True, the numbers represented in polls and surveys here are variable rich, sometimes seeing “employed” mean any job at all, whereas a better representation is likely “employed in a field requiring a college degree” or “tied to a specific major”, but the signal remains the same: Get a degree, experience more options.
But the signals are not solely about money or off-chutes of financial success like housing. These signals include potentially devastating situations as well. For example, did you know that Americans without a degree have a significantly greater chance of overdosing on opioids than graduates? To that end, non-graduates smoke at higher rates than degree-bearing individuals, they report less happiness and satisfaction in life than grads do, and they are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, hence the likelihood of dying accidentally.
But with all of these “life signals” comes some responsibility for educators. Yes, the signals that come with a degree are powerful, but it cannot go without saying that there is one specific responsibility which, to this point, has not been fully recognized, operationalized, nor effectively strategized. If that piece of paper is a ticket to a better life, why have we struggled so mightily to ensure everyone has the opportunity to receive it? In the United States, 77 percent of children born into the top income quartile will earn a degree by age 24, but for the bottom quartile that number is only 9 percent (https://www.ed.gov/college).This obviously begs the question of whether higher education is transforming lives or simply handing out more and more opportunity to people who need it the least?
There is likely another signal that we should all be aware of. Education of “the people” has specific civic, political, and government impact. While education has unfortunately not helped people push through the filter bubbles of technology very effectively, thereby spoon-feeding most US citizens a steady diet of what they already believe, it is notable that people with degrees do vote in ways that appear to leverage more factors associated with education such as critical thinking, pushing through confirmation bias, etc. Educated voters, regardless of sex, rural vs city, or almost any other factor, vote differently than non-educated voters. The graph represented here is from the last major election and is represented consistently in all elections.
I hope you can see that these signals are definitely life changing and not just for the individual. But as the individual is concerned, whether it is due to the creation of networks otherwise unknown to establishing ones self as a critical thinker / problem solver or even if it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by employers hiring people who simply had the grit to make it through thereby assuming them to be superior to others who did not, the signals are clear. A degree matters. We connect a lot of positive attributes to a degree.
So how can we connect more and more people to that life-changing signal? How can we help keep students in school, help new students get into school, and help everyone start to see the benefits? That is the question, no?
Good luck and good learning.