Obama's Bet on Higher Education

I count myself among the fortunate immigrants that have been lured to this country not by the prospect of a job but by the opportunity for a quality education. Mine was a far more privileged entry point, for sure, especially considering that many jobs taken by newcomers are among the worst, while the education available to international students is second to none.

When I was 13 I had one of those "a-ha" moments that shaped the rest of my life. Sitting at my desk in school outside Bogota it dawned on me that there couldn’t be any better occupation in life than being a journalist. Much of what I did from that point forward was directed toward that goal, including the year I lived with American families and attended high school in Long Island, NY, as a Rotary Club exchange student. I knew that if I wanted a shot at attending the best journalism schools, I first had to learn English.

Among my first new American friends was Brian, a kid who seemed just as certain as I was about his future but who had no desire to go to college. He wanted to become a carpenter.

Coming from a country where being a carpenter meant a life of hardship, I was shocked. But soon I learned that in the United States Brian could have a very comfortable life and, in fact, he could start earning good money much sooner than I ever could.

In other words, a college degree was not a prerequisite for American prosperity -- at least not back in the mid 1980s.

There is little sense that is the case today. Once a high school diploma could lead to a good job, but as President Obama has been pointing out of late, that is no longer possible. Even if a job is obtained with a high school diploma, Obama told students a the University of Texas at Austin on August 9, today “the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have.”

Accordingly, Obama has set the urgent goal to produce 8 million more college graduates by 2020 and signed new legislation to make college more affordable. The government has begun to administer student loans directly, cutting out the middleman and saving more than $50 billion in fees it used to pay private lenders. The savings is being used to increase Pell Grants for low-income students and help fund historically black and Hispanic colleges.

According to an AP/Univision poll released last month, 94 percent of Latinos say they expect their own children to go to college. This is impressively high considering only 13 percent of Hispanics have a college degree or higher, compared with 30 percent among Americans overall.

Obama is particularly interested in assisting two-year community colleges. These are already preferred by low-income and minority students. In California, for example, a four-year college is at least five times more expensive than a two-year program.

Still the challenge, according to Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, is not only to increase the number of kids in college but also to see them graduate. Many students that enter a community college tend to “die out” there, Kirst said in an interview. Over a third of U.S. college students, and over half of minority students, don’t earn a degree, even after six years.

Higher education is no magic bullet, as Grover Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution warns. Getting the right kind of vocational training in a trade that is in demand can still be a better option for the Brians of today. In a blog commentary after Obama’s recent speech in Texas, Whitehurst noted that Germany has a stronger economy than France but half the percentage of young adults with a college degree.

It may be too that current circumstances make it hard to attain what Obama envisions. In the midst of a recession and with the public growing more skeptical about larger government, funds for education are diminishing. Indeed, much of Obama’s college plan will have to be put on hold, said Kirst, since Congress drastically underfunded it, underwriting $2.5 billion of the $12 billion requested.

By the year 2030 minorities will represent more than half of U.S. youth. Today black and Latino students already represent a majority of elementary and secondary education in 11 states. Clearly more needs to be done to get minorities into and through college -- otherwise the trend that took the United States from first to 12th place in college graduation rates in a generation will only continue.