Today’s Staff Editorial
However dim the job market may seem for seniors preparing to enter the always ominous post-graduation world, it’s well known the picture is far bleaker for those with no more than a high school diploma. As of October 2011, unemployment rates were about triple for working-age adults with no more than a high school education what they were for college graduates with bachelor’s degrees. Rehashing these statistics could easily lead to one simple solution: States should work to ensure more students graduate from college, which will in turn significantly boost employment statistics.
To help turn college from a dream into a reality for state residents without degrees, lawmakers passed the College and Career Readiness and College Completion Act of 2013 in March. Among other initiatives, the bill, set to go into effect in July, would help students who have completed some college — so-called near-completers — return to school.
The state has until Dec. 1 to submit detailed plans for the incentive program and the marketing campaign, which will hopefully convince those without degrees to go back to school. While these plans remain in the development stages, we expect state lawmakers and university officials to collaborate and assess the best way to bring students back to school. For example, blended learning programs are already burgeoning — the new style of online teaching mixed with in-person lectures simply must be specifically tailored to address the needs of part-time and near-completer students.
As the Provost’s Commission on Blended and Online Education continues to consider best practices for the future of blended learning at this university, it must prioritize learning based on efficient, targeted methods. If the state truly hopes to encourage a more competitive workforce to continue rebounding from the national recession, then simply putting more students into classrooms just won’t be enough. Or as Dewayne Matthews, policy and strategy vice president at the Lumina Foundation, told The Diamondback, “There’s in fact no way you could scale up the current system and its cost structure to get to these much higher levels of attainment.”
This rationale will be put to the test in coming years, as the state expands its goal of increased degree attainment. In principle, it’s a necessary and value-added initiative for the state to pursue — by 2018, two-thirds of state jobs will require post-secondary education, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Nevertheless, while moving forward with these initiatives, education reform policymakers and university officials should keep in mind that a college degree is only as valuable as the career for which it prepares you. Merely printing out more diplomas will not satisfy the demands of tomorrow’s job market. Workers need tangible and applicable skills — whether they come from a college degree or not.
State legislators have shown they are fully committed to the tried and true model of earning a degree to earn a living. By 2025, they hope to increase college degree attainment among working-age adults from 39.3 to 60 percent. Current projections have the state reaching 52 percent attainment by the 2025 deadline, which would no doubt disappoint lawmakers if they were to hold. Yet as officials continue to work toward increasing degree attainment, reaching somewhat arbitrary percentage thresholds should not come at the expense of providing students with a quality product: enlightening education, the goal of every student.
