According to a study released by the College Board, the United States is lagging behind other nations in college completion rates, an area in which the U.S. was once dominant. Now the U.S. has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations for the number of 25 to 34-year-olds with college degrees.
“In the global economy, the disadvantage is that we won’t be able to compete as well as other nations,” said John Lee, assistant researcher with College Board. “It goes back to a sort of American competitiveness on a local and a global scale.”
By 2018, 63 percent of the jobs in the U.S. will require some sort of post-secondary degree, but if only about 40 percent of people can actually access those jobs, we’ll have to either import that labor or eliminate those jobs, Lee said.
Lee said part of the reason the U.S. is falling behind other countries, like number-one-ranked Canada, is they have increased access and financial aid to education. In the U.S., grants and scholarships aid students through college, but in some countries, secondary education is free. But Lee said he doesn’t think the rates are completely financial, because nations with lower gross domestic products (GDPs) are still performing better than the U.S.
“Some generations ago, if you got an eighth grade education, well by most national standards, that was pretty good,” State Sen. Greg Adams said. “And then if you got a high school diploma, that was just a really big deal. Today we need to ask ourselves the question, ‘what is the next generational goal for education?’ We’ve always had one, and what is it now?”
Adams was a high school teacher for 31 years before becoming a senator, and he is now involved with the Education Commission of the States and the Midwestern Higher Education Commission.
The problem in American education extends beyond college completion, and begins in early education.
The College Board has prescribed guidelines to help the nation get back on track and even has calculated the data for each state, with a page listing each state’s strengths and weaknesses according to their rankings in the 10 guideline categories.
The first five all concern kindergarten through 12th-grade education, calling for high quality preschool programs that would be universally available to families and improved middle and high school college counseling.
From early childhood, college and career counseling, dropout prevention and recovery, standards and alignment, to educator quality, each of the sections addresses issues the survey reveals to be weak spots that may be contributing to lower college entrance/completion rates.
What educators begin in preschool, must continue through to high school for success. Lincoln area high schools are all focused on getting students to college with programs that offer job shadowing, career investigation, help with financial aid, and counseling programs to aid students through high school and toward making a secondary education decision.
Mike Wortman is the principal of Lincoln High School, and says he tries to put emphasis on college even through simple ways, such as having a college T-shirt day, where all the teachers wear something from the college they attended.
“Just so that kids can see the range of colleges are available, … and realize that every teacher they’ve got went to college somewhere,” Wortman said, adding it makes it easier for teenagers to open the dialogue this way.
Nebraska’s strength is getting students through high school. The state is ranked second in the nation for average graduation rates for public high school students according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data for 2009.
Despite this, Nebraska has a lot of weaknesses.
“There are definitely areas where Nebraska has room for improvement,” Lee said. “Especially, for example, by closing the achievement gap. If we’re going to close that gap of where we are competitively with other countries we’re also going to have to close the gap of how our different races in our countries perform.”
Lee said closing the gap between minorities and Caucasian students, especially first-generation students, as well as the gap between low-income students and higher-income students, is something College Board is passionate about and will make a difference in the U.S. ranking.
Lincoln high schools focus on this gap as well, and school administrators work to connect with first-generation students through their programs, such as junior/senior parent night, where parents can come and learn about the importance of college and the options for their student and encouraging students to go on college visits.
“It’s different if you have a parent or older brother or sister that’s been to college, that’s kind of what you talk about all the time,” Wortman said. “But if you haven’t ever had anybody do that in your family, it’s a first experience, so you don’t have all the details to make it happen.”
Wortman said Lincoln High, and other schools, could do a better job of connecting with all parents, helping them understand college requirements and the admission process.
Of College Board’s ten-part plan, numbers six through nine deal with college specifically, with suggestions to make the college admission process clearer, increase the access to financial aid, to keep college affordable and to follow through with college completion.
Adams said this follow-through has been a problem.
“We haven’t done a very good job in Nebraska of not only articulating our educational goal, but then following up after high school,” Adams said. “It’s almost like we get them through high school, we get them into college, and then they kind of drop off into a data black hole where we really don’t know that much about them. And we need to so that we could see that we’re being successful.”
Nebraska ranks 24th in college completion rates, at 56 percent, which is even with the national average.
Since 1999, the number of degrees conferred at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has been rising overall. With some drops in 2001-2002 and 2005-2006, there has been a pretty steady rise from the 4,180 in 1999-2000 to the 4,468 in 2008-2009.
But with all the effort being placed on preparing students more for college, Adams said, there needs to be equal effort from college professors as well. Kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers are used to differentiating instruction to accommodate for different learning styles, but in college, students are expected to just take what gets thrown at them, he said.
“I’m not saying they have to change the way that they teach, but there has to be some recognition that once those students get to you, we have this state wide goal and it’s to get more kids into higher ed, but it’s also to get them through whatever avenue of higher ed they’ve chosen,” Adams said. “Now then, what are you guys doing to help them get through? Or are they just falling off the edge of the world?”
Through the education committees in the state, the discussion between early education and secondary education is opening up, and both sides have agreed to do more to focus on the problem.
“A high school degree any more is OK, but it isn’t enough. And I’m not saying for a moment that every kid needs to go to college and get a four-year degree, but the reality of it is, high school is not enough,” Adams said.
This follow-through is behind the mentality of the P-16 initiative, by shifting from short term K-12 to long term pre-school through grade 16.
Although college degrees are not required for every career, the data supports the edge it gives graduates. According to the annual report of graduates from 2008-2009 from UNL Career Services, the average salary of graduates with bachelors degrees was $39,992. Of those 2008-2009 graduates who responded to the survey, 91.9 percent reported their job was related to their education and 92.6 percent said they were satisfied with their job.
While educators have their work cut out for them to get the U.S. back on top, Adams said it is a priority for the state and for President Obama’s administration for a reason.
“I can’t imagine that there’s a state out there that sits back and says, ‘Yeah we got a good education system, let’s just write the check and go on and worry about roads,’” Adams said. “Everybody is worried about how good are we, how can we get better, and how can we pay for it.”