Ep 329: Who Needs College Anymore?
Introduction to Talking to Teens
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Andy Earle: You're listening to Talking to Teens, where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle.
The Changing Value of College
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Andy Earle: We're talking today about whether college still matters.
In today's business landscape, more and more companies are moving towards hiring people with the right skills and experiences and away from focusing on a college degree.
As the cost of college continues to go up, but universities continue to fail in that last mile of getting students into a fulfilling career, something needs to change.
Throw AI in the mix and the role of college in the future becomes uncertain.
Meet Kathleen deLaski
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Andy Earle: Our guest today, Kathleen deLaski, is the founder and board chair of the Education Design Lab. She is a senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard University, a professor at George Mason University, and the author of the new book, Who Needs College Anymore?
Kathleen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on Talking to Teens.
Kathleen deLaski: Glad to be here.
Andy Earle: Yes, really excited. Going to be talking about college. How necessary college is, who it's necessary for.
Really interesting topics. Talk to me a little about that. How did you get interested in all of this? And what inspired you to put it into a book?
Personal Stories and Inspirations
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Kathleen deLaski: Well, I would say that my own teenagers were the most, influential inspiration for both the work that I've been doing, and the book that came out of the work.
So, my kids were in middle school to high school from, like, 2008 2009 through, like, 2013. So that period was really the heyday for college is possible. College for all! We're all going! And particularly if you live in an area like we do, the D. C. area, where you know, everybody has a master's degree at a P. H. D. and lots of parents are pushing their kids to go to college.
So, I ended up having 2 kids who were not really, you know, some, Well, you know, 1 of them was probably college material, in her mind, but was struggling in school and wanted to be a ballerina.
And you have to go and apprentice right after high school for that. So she was always on a debate about that track. The other 1 would say even though she was very bright, she now has learned that she is on the autism spectrum, but we didn't know what was going on. She just struggled in school all the way through. I had these 2 kids that the model wasn't working for. I wasn't standing around neighborhood cookouts, talking about, is your kid going to go to UVA or try to get into Vassar?
That was not the conversation that I was able to engage in. So, I came along as an outsider and thinking about, were the needs of my kids being met? In high school, but particularly after high school. What are they going to do and not feel stigmatized? Trade school didn't seem like a path.
Cause that was the only thing Anyone talked about besides college: go to trade school. Work with your hands. Right? So, we really struggled.
The College Dilemma
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Kathleen deLaski: And at the same time I was working in the college access space. I was on the board of a public university. I ended up starting around 2013, a nonprofit to work with colleges across the country to create and begin thinking about other forms of college, that could be shorter paths and not such pressure cooker paths to good jobs. That movement, now, it's really taken off. We're now 12 years after I started the education Design Lab. And, there's a lot of movement in this area, a lot of mindset change. It's exciting, but also scary, to think about what do you tell, young people today?
Examining College Success Rates
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Andy Earle: You uncover some really interesting data. It seems like only about half of people after graduating high school even go to college. And then only about half of them actually graduate from college.
Kathleen deLaski: More than half attempt college. But less than 40% are earning a 4 year degree. 40% of the people who start the gauntlet don't finish.
Not always because they failed out, but sometimes because they left. It wasn't what they expected. Life got in the way. That happens to so many people. And we don't really talk about those people, and how could we meet their needs differently.
Andy Earle: So, a lot of what you're really doing is examining what college is and what role it plays. Is it worth the money that it's costing, especially as the costs keep going up and up? How do you even begin to analyze that or break that down?
Historical Perspective on College
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Kathleen deLaski: I've always been fascinated by the role that college plays in society. It's sort of held up as the ticket to the American dream. It's an aspiration, even though more than half people don't attain the 4 year degree. And I actually start the book with my own, colonial relative, my great grandfather at times seven, who, was a very early graduate of Harvard University in 1673. He was the son of an indentured servant who, came over in like the 1630s.
And yet, my great grandfather at times seven, John Wise was his name, managed to graduate from college, first in his family, and became an influential minister. The reason I know about him is because books have been written about him. He catapulted his family in one generation, using his college degree, to eminent standing. That's my ancestral college success story. Lots of people have stories on that theme. That's why a lot of immigrants come to this country.
So their kids can have that dream. I would say we have our heads in the sand about the fact that it's not working for so many people. I'm not here to tell your listeners, oh, don't send your kids to college. No, no, no. If they have certain characteristics and your bank account has certain amounts of money, absolutely. It's a wonderful form of adultification. If you can afford it. If your child wants to play by the rules and go through that gauntlet that college sets. But if they're not, or if they already know what they want to do, and it's not something that needs a degree, I don't necessarily recommend it. I have one child who went to college and one who did not. And so I see both sides of it.
Andy Earle: But isn't college these days, like the new high school? A prerequisite that's required for so many directions you might want to go.
Kathleen deLaski: That is true, up until the pandemic. A lot of job descriptions require a bachelor's even to like, be an administrative assistant.
And then if you want to work in a biology lab, you have to have a master's degree. There's been a degree inflation over the past 30 years, certainly since I got out of school. But that's beginning to break down, partly because the lines between blue collar jobs and white collar jobs are blurring.
And that's technology that's doing that. Because now, when you think about working in a manufacturing plant, it used to be that you were working on an assembly line. And you had a job to do, and you got trained to do, and you could do it. And now an assembly line role probably involves something with robotics. You're having to play a much more technical role, because a lot of things are automated. The roles on the factory floor are more about fixing the robots than doing what the robots are now doing. That's just one example where you don't need to go to college to do that.
I interview in the book the head of apprenticeships at the BMW plant in South Carolina. He says you could become a car designer coming up through the apprenticeship route. You don't need to have an engineering degree to design cars if you've come up through the ranks.
So, these lines are blurring is my point. And what it means is that in high school, everyone needs more hands on experience in many fields. And then, everybody needs what used to be called the college prep courses. What you're seeing in some of the forward thinking high schools is a blended model where you're not just either going the vocational route or the college route.
Those are getting blended together.
The Last Mile to Employment
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Andy Earle: You're arguing in the book that colleges are failing to get students this last mile into a job they want to be doing. And I thought that was interesting. What makes up that last mile that you need in order to land a good job?
Kathleen deLaski: Yeah, it's really hard these days just to come out of college with a history degree or I was an English poli sci major. My first career was as a journalist.
I was in Durham, North Carolina and got myself an unpaid internship at the TV station. And then that's what got me my job after college. Not my degree. I'm not saying my degree didn't help. It probably did. But, colleges don't think it is their job, particularly four year universities, do not think it is their job to, like, drop you off at the door of your 1st employer.
And they're not set up to do that. But as trends shift to the point now where people in surveys, most young people say, I'm going to college to get a good job. And if their colleges aren't setting them up for success in doing that, then they are the 52 percent of graduates say they're not working in a job that required a degree. And so what's that about? Well, they haven't been trained in the thing that would get them that first job on the ladder. That's what I'm talking about by the last mile.
The last mile is forcing people to have the connection with the career services office at their school, because a lot of students just don't go check it out. They don't know they're not going to get handed a job when they're a senior.
And neither do the parents. Neither do any of us.
AI and the Job Market
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Kathleen deLaski: About the effect that A.I. Is already having on the application process. Employers will tell you right now they're getting a whole lot more applications because everyone's using an A. I. agent to make a good application and to have their resumes show all the right skills.
That's no longer a differentiator. Like, I have a friend who's a recruiter for a software company. She's getting, for certain jobs, like a hundred resumes a day. She said, I'm just discounting all the ones that are coming in through job boards or LinkedIn. If I don't know you or have a relationship with you in some way, you have to network with me.
You have to have friendship with us or you have to have specific experience that is gonna pop off the page. What I say in the book is colleges would do very well considering it part of their job to provide career related experience. They need to do that.
That mindset needs to shift to where they feel it's their job to provide at least some career experience. Because employers want to hire experienced people, which causes a chicken and egg problem for learners. How do you get it when you're in school?
How do you get your first experience?
Andy Earle: And you're really saying that we need to change on both sides. Because also as employers, we need to start looking for other ways to assess job readiness beyond, what school did you go to, or, what were your grades like in college?
Kathleen deLaski: And that's beginning to happen some.
Alternative Pathways to Success
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Kathleen deLaski: When I look at the workarounds that early adopter employers are using outside of the degree, it's really industry certifications and apprenticeships. But neither of those are widely available. That's why I say early adopters.
So I think in 10 years these will become more widespread. In fact, we're doing a lot of advocating for Congress to change the rules to better fund, apprenticeships and better fund the kind of certification processes that are shorter term programs. Because, let's face it, the time that the average technical skill lasts is about 5 years. That's what IBM says.
I call it a step ladder approach that college needs to become. Where you're coming in and out of work, even starting in high school. and work can be just experiences like my time in the TV newsroom.
It doesn't have to be paid. Employers are trying to move more towards paid internships.
Andy Earle: That makes a lot of sense. So, you talk about different pathways, which I found really helpful. Starting to think of college as being one pathway that you could go down, but also looking at other pathways.
Kathleen deLaski: The term pathways people are using a lot to describe a broader name than the degree. They're using the term multiple pathways. There are multiple pathways to get to family sustainability, or a good paying career. Community colleges are starting to use the term micro pathways to designate a short term program, like 6 months or a year, where they're designed with the employers in that field to get the certifications that you need. Some of these you can even start in high school, through dual enrollment. Those are very popular and actually are helping to prop up the enrollment of community colleges right now. So many kids are doing dual enrollment.
This latest statistic that surprised everyone in the field is that one out of every five community college students is actually a high school student taking classes at a community college. States have really stepped up these programs and many of them are paying for it. So you can either get a jump on college or get certifications that you could actually become employed right after high school.
I profile a young man in the book, a high school student who got his network security certifications through his CTE program, Career and Technical Education program, at his high school, and then was able to get hired that summer by AWS, Amazon Web Services, as a junior data center worker. Within a couple of years, he was able to parlay that into another job as a software engineer somewhere else. He is now 23 and making a six figure salary as a software engineer. He started out doing community college on the side and then after a while, he was like, this is pointless. I'm learning so much more at work than I am in this community college program. Not to knock community college, because it can be a great starting block. But once you're off and running in your job, it's less necessary unless you want to switch to a different role, or you're trying to upskill. He was able to do that a few years ago. The economy for tech workers has slowed somewhat. So, that strategy can work in fields where there are shortages.
But maybe not so much in fields where there's saturation.
Certifications vs. Certificates
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Andy Earle: You talk in the book about the difference between a certification and a certificate.
Kathleen deLaski: Yes.
Andy Earle: Okay.
Kathleen deLaski: Right. And I think that's important for parents to understand as they're helping their young people navigate this new world of, some people call it unbundled education. Where you can get pieces of it from different sources. A certificate is now being offered. And if you go on a website like Coursera, C O U R S E R A dot org, that's probably the most well known place where you can see all the certificates that you can get. They tend to be maybe six month short term programs. You can pay like 49 a month.
I signed up myself to see what it was like. It's sort of like a course. Some of them, which I recommend, actually have inside the course, you're getting a certification, which is something different.
So, certification is where an industry or a particular company, like Microsoft, has a test that you take to verify that you have mastery of a particular skill set. Like the Network Plus Security certification is the 1 that this guy, Patrick, that I was just describing, the young guy in high school, and that is done by an industry association. Lots of companies respect it and support it and will hire people who have that certification. The big difference is certification is actually a proctored test that you take. A certificate is basically like an intro course to learning about the field. Some of them do have prep for relevant certification. So those are good ones to look at. They don't deliver the certification in the course. But they prepare you for it.
Does that make sense?
Andy Earle: I see. Yeah, so you could do both
Kathleen deLaski: You can do both. But I would say that from a standpoint of being hired, a certification is more useful than a certificate. It's kind of like a license.
Andy Earle: Demonstrating that you've proven certain competencies.
Kathleen deLaski: Yes. Right. I mean, it's not to say that the Google I. T. certificate. I mean, millions of people have taken that one. And I talk about it in the book. And some colleges are baking them into their courses now, which is cool. But they're really just training you on what the industry says are the latest things to learn, generally.
Conclusion and Further Resources
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Andy Earle: So, I think this book is super relevant and packed with great information. It has, stories, interviews that you've done with people, with experts, with everyday people going through all these various situations that we've talked about and more.
I highly encourage people to pick up a copy of Who Needs College Anymore, Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won't Matter.
Kathleen, thank you so much for coming on the show today and speaking with us about all of this. It's been, really interesting and useful.
Kathleen deLaski: Thank you for having me.
Andy Earle: Can you talk a little bit more about where people could go to find out more about what you're up to? Follow updates on maybe what you're doing next?
Kathleen deLaski: Yeah. So we created a website for the book, which also has you can order it there. And it also has discussion guides for different groups. And there's one for families. So, check that out. If you want to start a conversation in your school or in your district or in your neighborhood, or with your children.
Yeah. And so the website is the name of the book, whoneedscollegeanymore.org , O R G.
Andy Earle: Excellent. The book is available everywhere.
We're here with Kathleen deLaski talking about whether college really matters anymore, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.
Kathleen deLaski: One of the features of bootcamps is they're usually taught by industry professionals, not academics. They're taught by people who are in the field and come in to teach you. This is really a tragedy. But the good news is that colleges are taking on the role, at least community colleges are.
AI I think is really going to change the point of view.
It's going to really accelerate this idea that you can learn any expertise you need in the palm of your hand. So, college has to serve a different purpose, to de stress the process as much as possible is critical. And I wish that I had done a better job of that as a parent. Exposure to hands on learning is an antidote to having them burn out about sitting in the classroom. Don't stress about college or bust. It's going to work out.
There are many more options and depending on how young your children are, there may be even more options on the way.
Andy Earle: Want to hear the full interview? Sign up for a subscription today. It's completely affordable and your membership supports the work we do here at Talking to Teens. You can now sign up directly on Apple Podcasts.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
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