In A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education, released today, Lumina Foundation reports on progress toward its Big Goal: 60 percent of Americans with a two- or four-year college degree or a “high-quality” vocational certificate by 2025.
College attainment rates have inched up to 37.9 percent with 8.4 percent of adults with an associate degree, 19 percent with a bachelor’s and 10.5 percent with a graduate or professional degree as their highest level of education. Another 22.2 percent have “some college,” 27.1 percent completed high school and 12.8 percent have less than a high school education.
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that 60 percent of jobs in the U.S will require postsecondary education by 2018. “You don’t go anywhere in the American economy — or any post-industrial economy without some postsecondary training,” said Georgetown’s Anthony Carnevale in a conference call.
In the 1970′s, as many more college graduates entered the workforce, the premium employers paid for a degree went down, Carnevale said. But after the recession in the 1980′s, the return on higher education rose sharply, even though the supply of college-educated workers increased dramatically.
Even in the midst of recession, “employers are paying an increasing premium for college graduates,” the report finds.
Employers increasingly depend on the skills and knowledge of their workers, and they are paying a premium to get those skills. Meanwhile, the well-paying, low-skill jobs that American industry used to provide in abundance are disappearing quickly. What is left, as documented by MIT economist David Autor, is a stratified job market in which jobs are either high-skill/high-wage or low-skill/low-wage. In this economy, workers with jobs in the former category are in the middle class or above; those with jobs in the latter category are the working poor. Just as importantly, the only route between the two strata is through education to obtain the skills and knowledge the global marketplace demands.
A generation ago, 60 percent of workers with a high school education or less earned middle-class incomes. Now only 25 percent are in the middle class.
Economic recovery requires “the ability to retool and ‘up-skill’ workers to meet the
changing requirements of employment markets,” the report argues. “Talent
is the key, and higher education is the lever for developing it.”
The report includes state data on college attainment and workforce demands for educated workers. Massachusetts has the most educated workforce, with half of adults holding a college degree. By contrast, only a quarter of West Virginia’s adults have earned a degree.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lumina Foundation, Joanne Jacobs. Joanne Jacobs said: Blog: It's a long road to the Big Goal http://communitycollegespotlight.org/content/its-a-long-road-to-the-big-goal_1873/ [...]
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[...] Community College Spotlight: It’s a long road to Lumina Foundation’s Big Goal: 60 percent of adults with a two- or four-year college degree or a “high-quality” [...]