Work smarts, life smarts

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Winter 2003 by Carnevale, Anthony P, Desrochers, Donna M

HOW EDUCATION'S SOCIETAL MISSION AND BUSINESS'S HUMAN RESOURCE NEEDS ARE CONVERGING

In today's economy, access to postsecondary education or training has become the threshold requirement for individual career success. And successtul business organizations now depend on employees with at least some education or training beyond high school. The increasing economic value of postsecondary education is good news in a society that strives to make economic opportunity subservient to individual merit, rather than family background. Unlike the European welfare states that guarantee access to income and benefits irrespective of individual educational performance, our increasing reliance on education as the arbiter of economic opportunity allows us to expand opportunity without surrendering individual responsibility. As a result, we emphasize equality of educational opportunity rather than equality of economic outcomes. Ultimately, student performance is assessed individually and individual educational performance determines access to income and benefits in labor markets.

At the same time, the growing economic value of a postsecondary education is the source of new tensions among educators, government leaders and the business community. It has become increasingly apparent that with tight public budgets we cannot afford all the postsecondary education we need, especially given the growing costs associated with pre-K development and meeting new standards in elementary and secondary education. As a result, there are growing pressures to produce postsecondary education cheaper, faster and better. As one business leader puts it: "Higher education isn't really higher, it's just longer."

The relentless market pressures for more efficiency in higher education create inevitable tensions, because higher education is different from other economic commodities. Postsecondary education is about more than dollars and cents. It does more than provide foot soldiers for the American economy. Postsecondary education, more than K-12 education, has intrinsic as well as extrinsic value. College educators also have cultural and political missions to ensure that there is an educated citizenry that can continue to defend and promote our democratic ideals. Nevertheless, the inescapable reality is that ours is a society based on work. Those who are not equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to get, and keep, good jobs are denied full social inclusion and tend to drop out of the mainstream culture, polity and economy. Hence, if postsecondary educators cannot fulfill their economic mission to help youths and adults become successful workers, they also will fail in their cultural and political missions to create good neighbors and good citizens.

Growing demand for postsecondary education Postsecondary education will be a key ingredient in the 21st century recipe for a growing economic pie. In the 20th century, increasing educational attainment, principally improvements in the rate of high school enrollment and graduation, contributed about 25 percent to overall economic growth. Currently, high school completion rates-including students earning General Education Development (GED) certificatesare approaching 90 percent. In the future, the economic contribution from increasing educational attainment will have to come from increasing access to college. The economic returns from expanding access to college, persistence and graduation can be substantial. Increasing a country's level of schooling by one year can increase economic growth by 5 percent to 15 percent-that means between $500 billion and $1.5 trillion added to U.S. economic output, including roughly $160 billion to $500 billion in new tax revenues.

While important to national wealth and competitiveness, the apportionment of economic opportunity among individuals and their families is also strongly influenced by access to college. Access to college has become the new threshold requirement for good jobs. Since the 1970s, the earnings of workers with at least some college relative to high school graduates (the socalled "college wage premium") has doubled from 35 percent to 70 percent, even though the overall supply of workers with at least some college has grown by 60 percent over the same period.

Since 1959, the fastest growth has occurred among jobs that require at least some college education. Jobs employing prime-age workers (ages 30 to 59) that require at least some college increased from 20 percent of all jobs in 1959 to 59 percent in 2000. And about three in 10 prime-age workers have at least a bachelor's degree.

Moreover, college requirements have increased across all occupations and industries. Consider:

* Office jobs, the fastest growing set of jobs in the economy, have grown from 30 percent of all jobs in 1959 to 39 percent today. About 50 million Americans work in these white-collar office jobs. Fully 69 percent of them have at least some college education, up from 29 eret-nt in 1973.