College commencement is an emotional, often defining, moment in the life of any student, but can be transformative, particularly for those who are from low-income backgrounds or the first in their families to earn a credential. But with college campuses across the country closed for the semester, the class of 2020 has been participating in virtual commencement ceremonies and celebrating with family over video platforms such as Zoom, HouseParty and FaceTime. Just this weekend, as a member of the Board of Trustees at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado, I had the opportunity to celebrate with over 1,000 Maverick graduates from the comfort of my living room.
For many, the celebratory mood may be dampened by an uncertain job and internship market due to the impending employment crisis caused by Covid-19. As students grapple with rescinded job offers, disappearing job postings and an economy on lockdown, I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Collins, vice president at Jobs For the Future and co-editor of the new book, Teaching Students About the World of Work: A Challenge to Postsecondary Education, about the opportunities to more intentionally align the connection between postsecondary education and career opportunities. Michael shared his reflections on the connection between education and employment, the inequities in career preparation exposed by Covid-19 and why—now more than ever—higher education must focus on preparing students for a rapidly changing world of work.
Alison Griffin: Even before Covid-19, the higher education narrative was already shifting from college completion to a new focus on completion and career. Over the last decade, philanthropists and policymakers have targeted support and policies toward completion, setting numerical targets and aligning incentives. Through those activities, the connection between completion and career has become even more apparent and now seems incredibly timely.
Michael Collins: The evolution of the completion agenda from completion to completion and careers is only part of the story. The national policy focus went from postsecondary access to a more intentional focus on completion. That completion focus was rooted in counting degrees and the establishment of state-level goals for completion of credentials and then subsequent employment of those graduates, through initiatives like 60x30TX in the state of Texas. As a result of this focus on completion, we have begun to see data that show huge variations in the payoff from different degrees and academic programs. Those data show that African-Americans, people from Latinx backgrounds, and women are overrepresented in degree pathways that lead to jobs and careers that do not pay well. As the nation wrestles with the immediate and longer-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be increasingly important to surface these data.
Griffin: In your forthcoming book Teaching Students About the World of Work: A Challenge to Postsecondary Educators, you and JFF Senior Advisor Nancy Hoffman curated a series of articles that focus on the frayed connections between college and the world of work. How did you first get interested in this topic?
Collins: Our interest is both personal and professional. Nancy’s personal interest came from her experience as a woman attending college in the 1960s, graduating and entering the labor market at a time when the types of jobs available to women were limited. My interest in this work stems from the impact that higher education had in creating my social capital network when I was in college and after graduation. I grew up in the inner city. I cannot remember any professionals in my neighborhood. My view of the world widened when I was bused to a wealthy suburb where many of my fellow students' parents were professionals. Back then, I did not know that the kind of work I do today, existed. I was fortunate enough to go to college and ultimately graduate school, where I met people who helped guide me to professional opportunities that I could not have imagined growing up.
Our joint professional interest in understanding social capital comes from witnessing the disconnect between rhetoric about the role of higher education in bolstering economic mobility for people of color and people from low-income backgrounds—and what it actually does. The rhetoric holds up for low-income people and people of color who attend elite institutions, but it falls apart for the vast majority who attend our nation’s open access higher education institutions. The returns from higher education can be extraordinary for low-income students who graduate from highly selective colleges, but research from Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby and Harvard’s Christopher Avery found that more than half of the most highly talented low-income students never apply to competitive colleges. According to Hoxby and Avery, low-income students were less likely to have interacted with teachers or older students who attended selective institutions. Social capital, or lack thereof, plays a role in who goes to what school and ultimately what they earn. For low-income learners to really benefit from higher education, they need support to understand the world of work and what credentials, relationships and set of experiences will help them succeed.
For example, low-income and first-generation students often do not understand the huge variation in the labor market returns for different majors. For their investment in higher education to pay off, they need advising and counseling to help them understand the earnings potential and preparation necessary for different degrees. They also need educational experiences that help them make direct connections to the labor market in the fields in which they hope to work. Work-based learning, such as internships and apprenticeships, are important to helping low-income students build not just the technical skills, but also the relationships, that will help them as they navigate the labor market.
Griffin: What are three concepts that policymakers, philanthropists, and industry executives should consider at the intersection of postsecondary education and career?
Collins: If these stakeholders start thinking about the intersection of college and career at the point when students are making the transition from college to work, they are too late. By the time students graduate, a constellation of factors have already impacted how the student will connect to the labor market. Considerations such as where they attended high school, their family structure and their parents’ level of education all factor into the college they chose to attend, what they chose to study and their connections to the industry in which they hope to work. Having said that, the three concepts policy and industry stakeholders should consider include: building social capital, strengthening work-based learning (through internships, apprenticeships, work study), and supporting career navigation by equipping students with the information they need to make sense of employment opportunities and the skills and credentials required for different jobs.
Griffin: Historically, we have seen that a lack of social networks and career connections disproportionately impact students from low-income, minority and first-generation backgrounds. How can institutions repair those connections, particularly at a time when resource and equity gaps are exacerbated by campus closures and physical distancing?
Collins: I think for low-wealth communities, it’s not about repairing connections, it’s about establishing connections. Connections are not transparent. Work hierarchies are not clear. People from low-income backgrounds may not even be aware of the types of work available to them or the pathways to prepare them for the type of work they wish to do. Transparency of postsecondary options, exposure to wide varieties of careers, and explicit knowledge about how to make connections in the industries in which students hope to work all matter in whether or not a student will connect to middle class employment.
Griffin: Millions of students are set to graduate into June, entering a job market clouded by uncertainty. Given the challenging new circumstances, what are some approaches that colleges and universities can use to help prepare students for the workforce?
Collins: The pathway to work starts long before college graduation. The students who have been making connections in the field in which they want to work will have an advantage over students who have just now started to think about how they want to use their credential. Colleges are brokers of social capital. They should actively consider how they can use their position in their local and regional economic systems to connect their graduates to career opportunities.
Griffin: In these anxious times for higher education, we could all use a little optimism. Based on the conversations you had as you compiled chapters for the book, what is the silver lining as we look to the months—and even years—ahead?
Collins: We are moving in the right direction. We know more than we’ve ever known about the payoff of different types of degrees through Georgetown University’s Center on Education & the Workforce, which has shown time after time the powerful benefits of credential completion beyond high school. We also know which institutions have been able to produce bottom-to-top mobility for low-income students through the work of Raj Chetty, who has taken an unflinching look at student loan debt and earnings data and found that the institutions with the highest dividend for social and economic mobility are not always the most prestigious. And I am optimistic that we will learn more about the value of a higher education credential as the Gates Foundation’s Commission on the Value of Higher Education shares its findings this fall.
Of course, all of this progress will have to be re-calibrated as we use labor market information to understand the economic landscape and employment patterns post-Covid-19. I’m optimistic that we have the tools to capture the data, and there is increased awareness of the notion of value in higher education. Ultimately, coupled with the right support services, I hope these new data will help lead students to make more thoughtful and deliberate choices about their education and training pathway. People will have the tools and the data to do quick calculations on the return-on-investment (ROI) of different pathways to employment. Some will learn that a traditional degree is not going to give them the ROI they are seeking. Others will find out that they have to go to an elite college to meet their earnings goals and that they should think carefully about the ROI of the same degree at a more affordable institution. Some will find out that they are better off pursuing training that will get them into the labor market more quickly than a traditional degree.
But teaching students about the world of work they need to navigate after college and being explicit with them about the importance of developing relationships can help them navigate an increasingly uncertain labor market and climb the income ladder.
