Obama’s education plan
Speaking at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in March, President Obama called for reforming American education with the goal that we “once more [become] the envy of the world.” The president’s ambition is reflected in his proposed five-year, $2.5 billion Access and Completion Incentive Fund, which aims to create reliable pathways to college graduation for students from low-income families. The line of reasoning behind Obama’s plan is that more college degrees make the American workforce more competitive; however, there is reason to worry whether college educations do in fact make future members of the workforce more valuable. It seems even proponents of Obama’s plan recognize that there may be a disconnect between the traditional conception of a liberal education, which stresses learning for its own sake, and the conception that would best help the economy and students seeking employment. This disconnect, and the difficulties encountered in trying to make college more accessible without a comprehensive plan for education reform, cast doubt on the potential effectiveness of the president’s plan.
What’s the Point?
As Louis Soares, director of the Economic Mobility Program at the Center for American Progress, told the HPR, “With technological change and the globalization of markets, a general trend toward demand for higher skills can be seen.” As firms reorganize because of globalization, many jobs that were once entry-level and did not require a degree now require post-secondary training. As a result, more people are heading to college than ever before to expand their employment opportunities; yet at the same time the purpose of a college education has never been in such serious dispute.
In the eyes of academics and many in the humanities, while universities still impart general skills that make workers more productive, their primary purpose is to produce more complete human beings. Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, told the HPR that there is evidence that a college education has significant positive effects on students’ ability to communicate and reason.And, for many Americans, the four-year bachelor’s degree is an important cultural marker practically required of accomplished citizens. However, George Leef, vice president for research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education, told the HPR that such an understanding of college education is not suited to all students, specifically those for whom “the idea of a liberal education seems to actually be of relatively little interest.” It is, accordingly, unclear whether a college education is truly helpful for students who prefer to learn specialized, career-oriented skills that are more directly applicable to potential lines of employment.
A Broken Pipeline
Yet the dispute over the purpose of a college degree is by no means the only complication in sending more students to post-secondary school. Soares suggested that the bigger question is whether the American educational system can be reformed to make it easier for students to choose the right career path, and so that those without high school diplomas have a means of catching up with those who do. Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, pointed to what he called a “broken pipeline”: research shows that poor secondary education raises serious challenges for college performance and decreases chances of graduation. Both those who are sympathetic to expanding federal funding for college, like Soares, and those who are more hesitant, like Lips, agree it is unwise to send more students to college without also offering better preparation.
Obama’s Access and Completion Incentive Fund is, of course, not only about pushing more students into and through college. According to Soares, the plan is designed to create “sustainable pathways” to higher education so that large numbers of students, with various learning profiles, can transition to college. But, without more details on how the president plans to create these pathways his plan seems to dissociate the question of college education from other issues blocking the path to education reform, meaning it runs the risk of throwing money at colleges without laying the groundwork for that money to be effective. Accordingly, the most promising efforts at reform will have to involve a grand theory for improving education from cradle to commencement, instead of piecemeal initiatives primarily aimed at better funding the system we already have.
