BY MARTIN KICH

Consider the following chart:

The article from which this graphic is taken, “Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet,” has been written by Richard Fry and Kim Parker for Pew Research and is available at: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/11/15/early-benchmarks-show-post-millennials-on-track-to-be-most-diverse-best-educated-generation-yet/?utm.

The chart suggests some very positive developments—the increasing diversity of our student population, the increasing recognition of the value (or, perhaps, economic necessity) of a college education, and an increasing familial emphasis on the importance of a college education.

But the chart also suggests that some of the most serious issues facing higher education are likely to get worse.

As our student population becomes more diverse, a higher percentage of our students are likely to come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and to be under-prepared for college. But the increasing emphasis in state funding on degree completions means that colleges are increasingly focusing on recruiting those students most likely to complete degrees “on time.” Moreover, although the increasing elimination of support for remedial coursework is justified as removing an unnecessary and discouraging obstacle for under-prepared students, it does not seem to be facilitating a higher rate of degree completion among those students. Instead, it may simply be making the issue of how many students are starting college under-prepared less glaringly obvious, allowing the number of students who don’t succeed because they are under-prepared to be somewhat obscured.

The increased emphasis on the importance of a college degree could be a leveler in terms of creating greater opportunities for upward mobility. But, in actuality, it may be exacerbating economic inequality, which still correlates to racial inequality. Students who have difficulty be admitted into universities or managing the cost of attending them (especially as the costs to attend public universities have shifted from tuition, because of state caps on increases, to unregulated increases in fees and room and board) are often relegated to attended lower-tier universities or community colleges, where class sizes are larger and where individual attention and support services are less available, in part because they are more in demand. It is not at all surprising that the course- and degree-completion rates at these institutions are lower than they are elsewhere.

Likewise, because students of color are less likely to have parents who hold college degrees, there may be less familial understanding of the challenges facing college students and therefore less meaningful practical, as well as emotional, support when students are second-guessing their decisions to pursue a college education.

Nonetheless, the pressing economic importance of having a college degree often means that students who have failed to complete a degree on their initial attempts or perhaps have never enrolled right out of high school often attempt to get a degree when the demands on their time and their financial resources are even more difficult to manage. Not surprisingly, these students often turn to for-profit institutions, which seem to have the lowest admission standards and which seem to offer the most flexibility in doing the academic work.

This statistic is from a recent weekly newsletter from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:

Students of color represent an increasing percentage of for-profit enrollments even as the total enrollment at those institutions has declined dramatically.

But race is not the only characteristic for students most at-risk of accumulating debt without earning a degree.

A more detailed breakdown of enrollment in for-profit institutions is available at the website of the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment (CAPSEE: https://capseecenter.org/research/by-the-numbers/for-profit-college-infographic/):

At a time when our institutions are focusing on both maintaining, if not increasing, enrollment and on recruiting students likely to complete degrees in a timely manner, there is too little focus on how the rapidly changing economy requires a substantial rethinking of federal and state funding models and institutional strategies. What now applies to many students of color also applies to other expanding cohorts of prospective students–single mothers, regardless of race; current and former members of the military services; displaced or credential-limited workers; and those living in economically marginalized urban and rural communities. It is commonplace to hear university administrators, politicians, and other expert commentators speak about higher education as an economic driver. But while it is easier to sustain such a posture when the economy is less volatile, it is more important to commit to such a goal when the economy is undergoing rapid changes, as it is currently.

Just to be clear, I am not endorsing most of the current responses to this major social, economic, political, and cultural challenge. What is required is some coordinated but nuanced strategy involving government at all levels, corporations and small-business associations, and colleges and universities. And all three need to be equal voices in the discussion. Moreover, all three need to be represented by more than simply those at the top. The business side needs to be represented by management and workers; higher education, by administrators and faculty. If they are not, then ridiculous ideas, such re-conceptualizing a university education as short-term job training or increasing affordability by reducing faculty to digital facilitators, end up taking hold. “Remaking” educational institutions is almost always a euphemism for wrecking them for the sake of short-term profit-taking. Earlier in this post, I focused on under-prepared students, and it is worth noting that, with remarkable uniformity, neither the rapid expansion of community-based corporate charter schools nor the development of online charter schools has accomplished anything beyond putting more strain on already over-burdened public schools and enhancing shareholder profits. And the same can be said for most “privatization” efforts. I am advocating, instead, a return to the concept that public institutions are a public good and that when they fail to meet that mission as effectively as they might, the solution is not to dismantle them but to improve them.

But, as complicated as these discussions will inevitably get, coordination is necessary because, without it, the results are as likely as not to be counter-productive. For instance, I teach at a regional campus in a very rural area, and so I have been paying special attention to issues facing colleges and universities that are located in and trying not just to serve but to help to sustain such communities in the face of deindustrialization and depopulation. (In towns that developed around a single large plant, the closure of that plant is devastating. For instance, Pittsburgh has survived the decline of the American steel industry, but the same cannot be said for many of the towns along the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.) Without a national commitment to providing high-speed, high-capacity digital connectivity to rural communities (something similar to the rural electrification project of the 1930s and the development of the interstate highway system starting in the 1950s), those rural communities will continue to decline economically. Without such connectivity, the availability of tech-related jobs within other industries, never mind with tech companies themselves, will remain very limited, if they exist at all, in rural communities. Indeed, as all businesses become more tech-dependent, the disincentives for locating in rural communities will increase—even as the technology itself should be breaking down geographical constraints on such employment. So, attempts by rural colleges and universities to provide their students with technology-related programs that will increase their employment options are as likely to lead to an out-migration of graduates as it is to attract new businesses to the region. Comparable conundrums face colleges and universities attempting to serve and sustain economically marginalized urban communities. But, except in the very broadest sense, the same approaches to meeting those challenges are not at all likely to work across such different types of communities.