In the United States, college attendance has been increasing in recent decades. However, there are still a significant number of people who do not have the opportunity to obtain higher education.

According to data from the United States Department of Education, in the 2022-2023 school year, 65.9% of students ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in a higher education program. This percentage has increased in recent years, but is still far from the 90% that is considered the ideal enrollment rate.

Paul Tough, an educational journalist and author of The Inequality Machine, spoke in an interview with Wired magazine about the future of higher education. As many Americans return to their college campuses this month, rising costs and a lower return on investment have raised uncomfortable questions about where higher education is headed. The question is: Can the university be saved? due to declining enrollment and the college myth.

Paul wrote this book, The Inequality Machine, and it kind of breaks the myth of the university as the great equalizer in America. We think that college opens up opportunities for a better career, a more lucrative career, you know, that whatever your background, it can make the American dream come true for you, and your book says that’s actually not true, which in any case, exacerbates existing social inequalities in the United States. And then, in early September, Paul published an article in The New York Times Magazine titled “Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College.” And he paints a pretty scary picture. He shows that college enrollment is declining and that more and more people simply no longer believe that college is a good investment. And that seemed particularly relevant as hundreds of thousands of Americans return to college.

Paul’s Times article had more than 3,500 comments. Clearly, that article struck a chord, and that is that for children today, there is a real risk that it will simply become a crude topic.

We could be in a big decline right now. What is really driving this change in sentiment?

There are two very interesting things, education and social mobility. How children go to school, where they go to school, what they learn in school, how that affects their ability to change their lives, this happens during early childhood. Yet, in some ways, the real action in education and social mobility is in higher education. That this was the time after high school when the lives of kids from different backgrounds really diverged more than anywhere else.

Today the situation is quite alarming. Enrollment has been decreasing. The number of people going to college has been declining in the United States, while it is increasing in other countries. And also people’s feelings about the value of college have become much more negative in recent years. And the key reason, broadly speaking, seems to be that there is no longer a reliable promise that college will be worth it financially in terms of your later career.

So in the historical journey of a college being worth it, where you make a lot more money, you’re more likely to have a job. What I think both high-level economists and ordinary American families have come to understand over the last decade is that, in fact, the equation is much more complicated than that, and what used to be a really sure thing, a kind of stable investment, going to university is now a much riskier task. There is much more variability in the results. So there are some people who continue to do very well as a result of going to college. You are really increasing your income. You are increasing your wealth, but there are others for whom it is not giving the same results. And so there are a couple of relatively new studies that look at this question of how much college benefits people financially in new ways that I haven’t seen before. One of these studies looks at, instead of what economists usually look at, what they call the college wage premium (the very simple number of how much more a college graduate earns on average than a typical high school graduate), instead, analyzes the university salary premium. college wealth premium. So over the course of life, how much more assets against debt do you have at the end of your working life if you went to college versus not going to college, versus just ending up with a high school diploma? And what these economists at the Federal Reserve St. Louis discovered was that, in fact, for younger graduates, for people born in the 1980s and later, that college wealth premium, the idea that you would have a lot more money at the end of your working life if you had gone to college, was starting to disappear. And for African-American graduates born in the ’80s and after, it had more or less completely disappeared. For people who earned a graduate degree, the situation was worse, and the reason appears to be tuition costs, rising tuition costs, and student debt.

In other words this means more of a bet on whether college will pay off, but that bet also depends on where you come from.

And this comes to the research of another Federal Reserve economist, a guy named Douglas Webber, who looked at the benefits of college through the lens of the lifetime odds that you’ll get ahead of someone else. who only has a high school diploma. And what he discovered is, yes, if you somehow manage to go to college and it’s completely free and you’re 100 percent sure that you’ll graduate in six years, then college is still worth it. You have a 96 percent chance of earning more than a typical high school graduate. The problem is that not many people have that experience, right? And what he has discovered is that around 40 percent of young people who begin a university degree in this country do not finish it, but rather abandon it before finishing it. For them, the odds are truly ruinous. They are almost always going after people who only went to high school, because of the debt they have and the lack of a credential to increase.

He also discovered that what is studied matters a lot. So people who study, get a degree in STEM, they’re still doing pretty well, their odds are still pretty good, even if they’re spending a good amount of money on college. It’s the rest of us, those who study the arts, the humanities, the social sciences. If they spend $25,000 a year on college, the odds that they will do better over the course of their lives than a high school graduate are very slim. And if they spend $50,000 a year, their odds are worse than even. There is a greater chance that the high school graduate will do better than them.

This paradox, however, is that economists expect the demand for American college graduates to continue to rise faster than universities do. There are some projections of a shortfall of between 6.5 and 8.5 million graduates in the workforce by 2030. Not enough places at university? Are they not recruiting the right people? Are the costs to discourage people?

So that’s a mismatch between supply and demand. The supply is going down. The number of American college students is declining. About a decade ago there were around 18 million college students. Now it is around 15.5 million. Some of that is changing demographics, but a lot of it is simply due to students, young people making different decisions than they would have made before. But the question of demand has not changed. And, in fact, what these economists are saying is that, because of the way the economy, technology, and the global marketplace is changing, we need more highly educated people in the workforce. And so those demands don’t change based on the decisions that teenagers make. Those are just sort of the basic facts of economics. The problem is, whereas in the past, the higher education kind of economics responded to that by saying, look, there’s a demand for people with degrees. It is reflected in the university wage premium that university graduates receive, so we need to attract more graduates. I think institutions still want to do that. They are desperate to have more students, but it is the students who say: no, it’s not worth it. We believe you. The demand exists, but the costs are too high.

Let’s look at the issue of costs. So college costs have roughly doubled in the last 30 years, even taking inflation into account. I think they have increased even more in the case of public education.

There is a lot of debate about exactly why college costs have risen so much in recent decades. Certainly, part of the reason, especially when looking at the public side of the college experience, is that the question of who pays for public higher education has really changed. So, 50 years ago, it was the public who paid tuition for public higher education at institutions such as the University of California. It was really cheap or almost free. Typically, you could pay for a year’s tuition at a place like Berkeley by working a summer job. And now that has completely changed. And that is mainly due to the decisions that governments have made. Fund less and less of the cost of higher education. They realized the students would pay for it anyway. They will do it, they will pay tuition, they will take out loans, so the government pays less and less. So that’s part of the answer, but it doesn’t explain why private higher education is becoming so expensive. I think part of it is this race that private institutions feel they have to get into for high-income students. The economics of private colleges are actually a little crazy, because tuition continues to rise, but so do the discounts that institutions offer students. So does financial aid, and in this world of enrollment management, the question of how much each student is charged to accept their offer of admission is like… it’s nuclear physics. They are incredibly complicated algorithms that are used to calculate this. But what they have realized is that in order to attract more wealthy students, something they need to budget for, they also have to offer more services. In fact, they have to spend more. So these colleges, some of which are losing money, are stuck in this real spiral where they have to keep spending more money to get students whose tuition money they think will help them get out of the deficit and make more money. For many of them, this equation doesn’t really work, but it creates this world where the sticker price, at least, is going up a lot.

The current educational system

It is easier to find examples of things that are done wrong than of things that are done well. But there are some institutions that are fighting general trends of stratification and inequality. There is a university called Arrupe College. It is a two-year university that is connected to Loyola University, a private Catholic institution. Unlike Loyola, which is kind of a traditional high-achieving, high-income campus, Arrupe is made up of mostly Chicago public school graduates who are low-income, predominantly black and Latino, and don’t have very high S.A.T. . and an A.C.T. score. And the costs in Arrupe are low. About a couple thousand dollars a year in tuition. Most, if not all, of that money is typically covered by a Pell grant. But Arrupe, by raising funds and finding ways to pay for this type of support, provides a lot of in-person help to these students. And these are the types of students that across the country don’t graduate from two- or four-year institutions, but at Arrupe they do and they are mostly succeeding. And I think that’s the level of support that a lot of students coming out of high school who aren’t really prepared for college, that’s what they need. And what Arrupe shows is that there is a lot of motivation among low-income students. There is often a lot of desire to overcome the enormous obstacles in their life to succeed, but what they need is an extra level of support. And I think that’s a model that’s starting to be replicated across the country. And it seems like a really smart way to think about creating a more diverse group of college graduates.

The success of universities like Arrupe is doing the work to try to facilitate a more diverse range of students, as long as they are supported by laws and policies at the government level.

The way laws and policies can affect higher education is primarily by affecting public institutions. When hedge fund guys give $300 million to Harvard, they get a gigantic tax break, and that goes to, you know, raising more rich kids to become hedge fund guys, which actually does not seem to be the best use of our public funds.

Each state has a higher education system. There are more students attending public institutions than private institutions, and certainly more low-income students go to those public institutions. Any state could be doing a much better job of improving its community college system, its public higher education system, not just the flagship institution, but also many regional publics, which tend to have lower graduation rates. And that has to do with investing in those institutions, investing in student support, in more types of advice and practical support like those offered Arrupe, but also invest enough so that tuition can go down. Even at those public institutions, even at community colleges, sometimes tuition is a barrier for low-income families, especially really low-income families. So we could go back to having the kind of public higher education system we had 50 years ago. It’s really just a matter of priorities.

Reasons for low university attendance

There are several reasons why some people do not attend college. One of the main reasons is cost. College tuition has increased significantly in recent decades, and many families cannot afford to pay for their children’s education.

Another reason is the lack of academic preparation. Some students do not have the knowledge or skills necessary to succeed in college. This may be due to learning disabilities, a lack of educational opportunities in high school, or other personal circumstances.

There are also social and cultural factors that can discourage people from attending college. For example, some people may believe that they are not smart enough to go to college, or that it is not a viable option for them.

Challenges of public and private institutions

If current trends continue (i.e., declining enrollment, rising college costs, and increased uncertainty for those entering college about whether it will be worth it), it seems fairly clear that the trend toward inequality will continue. which has been true for the last few decades in this country. A lower college wage premium isn’t good for college graduates, but it’s a good thing for the country. Like that’s what we had in the years after World War II, with the Gi Bill we sent all these soldiers to college and we had a world where a college degree wasn’t really worth that much. And paradoxically, that is what we should expect. We should expect a world in which there are many opportunities for many different people from different sectors of the economy. It’s not what we have now and it’s not where we’re headed.

The difference between now and a few decades ago when the GI Bill was passed and when, in fact, there wasn’t a big wage premium for going to college, in terms of opportunity that was a less unequal time.

It had a lot to do with the type of jobs available to people who only had a high school degree. There were many more good, well-paying jobs that could be done with your hands. So the question of whether or not to go to college was partly an economic question, but partly it was like, well, what do you want to do? You like to read books? Then you should go to university. Do you like working with your hands? Then there is a job in the factory. And I think that’s really changed. And so, as those jobs disappeared and that level of opportunity declined and the wages of blue-collar workers fell comparatively, the gap tended to widen.

Concern as parents

As parents we worry about the future of our children and when we see this data and research we worry more. If the system is rigged, can they make the system work for them? What will it be like for them to live, work and vote in a country where these inequalities by origin, education, race and socioeconomic status are not improving and could be getting worse? What can we do to make the United States that they are going to inherit more fair and have more opportunities for everyone?

The future reaches us

It seems that there is a long way to go in the future, we hope that our children will have greater opportunities for education and different ways of acquiring it, we are already seeing it with the boom of the internet and social networks, our children learn at accelerated steps using technology, today there are YouTubers who explain programming to you in such a simple way that everyone understands it and without detours or embellishments, this could be seen as different, but let’s hope that’s the case, that we form a system where there are many ways to obtain that education, where it doesn’t have to be just sitting in a classroom, going straight from high school to college; there should be; I believe that all of this is a great challenge for American society and for young people who are making great changes in their way of obtaining knowledge.

While college costs in the US are very high, according to Paul’s article, it is, in part due to rising costs, that enrollment in the US is declining. And in most OECD countries, it is increasing and that seems existential for a country trying to compete in the global economy. If there are fewer graduates every year, when China produces more and more, and when other countries also produce more and more, what is the future of the American economy?

Higher education should have higher goals than the simple accumulation of wealth; the pursuit and provision of an education should include human and social motivations that are not defined by material accumulation. Education and going to college is actually more than that. I mean, it’s really about learning to think critically and there’s more to it than just getting a degree that allows you to make more money. It’s about becoming a better citizen. It is about making society itself better informed. It is about creating the foundations for a democracy. And all that is true, but you can’t eat democracy. And then it comes down to the question: If you have to pay so much for college, and if that risks putting you in so much debt that you can’t get out of it, and that inhibits you from other opportunities in life, then, of course, You will wonder if you should do it or not.

Conclusions

So how do we fix this? What conclusion can we draw about what we really need to do to fix our broken higher education system here in the United States? Since 40 percent of people do not graduate, much more needs to be done to determine who does not graduate, often people from poorer backgrounds, and how to help them navigate college and achieve higher levels of education. . possibility of success.

If we create a great two-year college system or an alternative college system and offer people different paths to higher education, as long as the Ivy League exists as the Ivy League, as long as private donors are inclined to give money to these private institutions and increase their endowments, as long as state and federal governments look at, you know, their budgets and say, “You know what? “We are going to cut back on donating money to these private institutions.” by public schools.” It looks like that will continue to create a multi-tiered system. Where the elite eventually go to the elite institutions, and then someone else goes to the alternative school.

Well, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to solve our broken education system in one article, but I think we gave it a good try.

Solution to the problem

To increase college attendance, it is necessary to address the factors that prevent people from having the opportunity to obtain higher education. This includes reducing the cost of tuition, improving students’ academic preparation, and removing social and cultural barriers that may deter people from attending college.

Some of the measures being taken to address this issue include:

Financial aid programs: These programs offer grants and loans to students to help them pay for college tuition.
College Preparatory Programs: These programs help students develop the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college.

Awareness campaigns: These campaigns are designed to encourage people to attend university, regardless of their background or circumstances.

It is important to note that there is no single solution to the problem of low college attendance.

A multidisciplinary approach is needed to address the factors that prevent people from having the opportunity to obtain higher education.

Por: ForAllTech
Imagen de: Freepik