In tomorrow’s interconnected world, the role of education in shaping a country’s ability to compete on the world stage cannot be overstated. A well-educated workforce is a prerequisite for the ability of American businesses to drive the innovation and productivity needed to compete on the world stage while increasing economic prosperity and social well-being at home.
But in the face of growing demands for an educated workforce, the voices of criticism of American academia are deafening. I hear Ivy League-educated pundits wearing prep school fashions criticizing the intelligentsia and “elites.” We witness members of Congress branding university presidents as if they were enemies of the state. Parents revolt against school boards, donors threaten to defund universities, and tech entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel incentivize young people to “say no” to post-secondary education In the midst of this, our country’s values have clearly changed.
While demand for an educated workforce is steadily increasing, supply is trending in the wrong direction.
Parents around the world still dream of sending their children to America to receive the best education possible. In contrast, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal addressed “Why Americans No Longer Believe in the Value of College.” While we cannot underestimate the challenges and barriers to education facing academic institutions today, we must not allow inertia and polarization to take over our ability to improve our systems.
Today, many articles point to the dramatic increase in the cost of college education. They point out that the average cost to attend college in 1980 was about $10,000 a year, which in today’s dollars would be closer to $40,000, and that the minimum wage in 1980 was an hourly wage. Very few people have completed the analysis that it was just over $3.
Meanwhile, college discount rates have increased to 40-50% at some top schools. In other words, her $80,000 list price at many of the most prestigious educational institutions is nearly half of what the average student would pay. This is a result of the increasing generosity of donors, who build large endowments that can fund discounts for disadvantaged students.
As it turns out, the actual cost of attending college today is not as exorbitant as many people think. The cost of a quality education is too high for many, but we help students overcome this obstacle by informing them about scholarships and providing access to financial aid.
Another obstacle is that many students are not ready for a college education.
As the population becomes more diverse, English proficiency and early learning programs become more of a challenge. Increasing urbanization, the dramatic decline in two-parent households, and many other social changes are creating new problems. Change is always difficult, but it is especially difficult for government-funded institutions that provide basic services. State and local governments are struggling to respond to changing needs.
American students perform in the middle of the pack in reading and science, but far below other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in mathematics. Secondary school graduation rates are declining, especially among men. Meanwhile, other developed countries have increased their focus on education, with PISA scores and graduation rates steadily improving.
As a result, U.S. companies are increasingly looking to foreign nationals to fill specialized roles. For example, approximately one in four doctors and surgeons working in the United States is foreign-born. While there may be many reasons for the increasing trend of foreign-born professionals in our workforce, the reality is that while the demand for an educated workforce is steadily increasing; Supply is going in the wrong direction.
At stake is the ability of American companies to maintain or grow their ability to compete globally. I witnessed this first hand over 20 years ago, when executives at both 7-Eleven and Blockbuster were struggling to fill the jobs needed to manage thousands of stores across the country. did. As with other supply chain issues, I believe that ultimately companies will rise to the challenge. As with many business solutions, we need to harness the power of technology to transform the supply chain of our most precious resource: human knowledge.
Technology has allowed us to completely reinvent other aspects of American life, from the way we buy groceries to the way we communicate. We need to take advantage of today’s technological advances to improve the way we teach and learn.
In the short term, we can certainly encourage the use of technology to supplement traditional in-class learning. The pandemic has given us a gift in a way. For example, the urgency of home-based learning has led companies like AT&T, Microsoft, and Apple to step up their offerings of Wi-Fi hotspots, hardware, and software that allow high school students across the country to access online learning. Such urgency has accelerated student access to technology by his second decade. This short-term feature still exists, giving students free and unlimited access to tools like Khan Academy to enhance in-class learning. Young people now have more learning in the palm of their hands than ever before in human history.
An important next step is to encourage businesses to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of investing in public education. In other words, companies need to consider their support for public schools as an investment rather than a charity. By improving access to an educated workforce, companies can reduce hiring and training costs and reap tangible benefits from their investments in public schools.
We should encourage technology leaders to develop open solutions for education platforms that integrate engaging, incentive-based tools and make them world-class. We have tools at our fingertips that can use machine learning to dramatically improve human learning by cherry-picking the ways in which individuals learn most effectively. Such tools can also help rethink the role of teachers in teaching and learning.
Finally, we need to encourage young people to recognize the importance of education to reach their full potential. If they wish to pursue a profession, that is equally noble, but they should be made aware of all options and encouraged to learn as much as possible. If, like many of us, they don’t have a clear picture of their ultimate career path, encourage them to gain as much knowledge as possible to provide them with options.
Bottom line: We need to avoid discouraging young people from going to college, but rather remind them that education is an investment that will pay off for the rest of their lives.
