New research reveals college graduates are far more robust against the effects of the recession, even with debt, injecting some much needed optimism into a topic often bogged by anxiety.
What is made even clearer, however, is who gets left behind, and how far.
A new report by Pew Research reveals the cost of not attending (or completing) college is far higher than the reverse. It strikes directly at banal claims that we are "a new lost generation" and stereotypes of college-educated baristas.
Debt aside, respondents described greater satisfaction with their careers, higher incomes and less unemployment than counterparts without a bachelor's or higher.
The report is optimistic and should be reassuring to students who feel apprehensive about their futures. What can easily be forgotten, though, is the group of people who did not attend or finish college, and that calls for more than consideration. It calls for action.
The poverty rate for those with only some college education is over twice as much as those who graduated. For those with only a high school diploma, the poverty rate is nearly four times higher.
The income gap continues to widen and this report confirms that.
The economy is changing, and has been for some time. Manufacturing jobs are comfortable on other shores and, despite political rhetoric that says otherwise, they are not coming back.
In this modern economy, we are all called upon to be entrepreneurs of, for and by ourselves, miniature enterprises out to face the increasingly more competitive world with none of the guarantees of past generations.
A college degree, this report makes clear, will significantly assist in all of that, empowering us against the vagaries of this market.
But for the nearly two-thirds of us who either don't finish college or don't go at all, according to a National Center for Educational Statistics report, the only guarantee is a bleak future.
If we are resigned to believing this shift in the economy, from Fordism and manufacturing to whatever it is that drives our growth today, is permanent, then devising ways to close the gap is necessary.
While this report can remind us of the bright futures a degree can, and often does, lead to, it remains a call to action.
Too many are being left even further behind. How they are able to move forward is the true measure of our economy and society.
But as the gap widens, it can be difficult to see the issues facing others, which inhibit or prevent college attendance in the first place.Inequality in income, education and life chances are rapidly becoming the defining characteristics of this post-recession age. Devising ways to encourage college attendance and completion, implementing programs to assist with the structural issues that prevent this and ideas to empower those left by the wayside as our economy shifts are all necessary now more than ever.
The message is clear. Go to college, get work experience, study hard and finish. For the others, the truly lost generation left in the dust of this "knowledge economy," only dire forecasts exist.
The task, then, is finding out how to lift all boats. Too many in this country are drowning far below the surface, often out of sight and out of mind.
email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
