Letters from 2022

By Anthony P. Carnevale

The newsletters that I wrote in 2022 discuss the value of college, pathways to good jobs, and the future of affirmative action. Skepticism about the value of college persists despite a growing amount of data showing strong average financial returns for graduates. At the same time, the ROI of college degrees varies widely by institution and program, and consumers need more and better information about the likely outcomes of their investment. Notably, higher education and access to economic opportunity remain vastly unequal and inaccessible for some members of society. If the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down race-conscious college admissions, there will be even greater need to strengthen pathways to postsecondary education.

ROI rankings promote transparency, accountability, and efficiency in higher ed

February 22, 2022

Return on investment (ROI) is growing in popularity as a measure of the payoff of postsecondary institutions and programs. To be sure, not all of the benefits of higher education can be quantified. But many students are motivated to pursue postsecondary education because they are seeking strong financial returns from the abundance of well-paying jobs available to workers with higher levels of education. In fact, in a 2018 survey conducted by Strada and Gallup, the majority of people who attended a postsecondary institution reported that they were primarily driven by career outcomes.

The Education Department’s release of new College Scorecard data this month signals a continued push for economic transparency and accountability in higher education. Our updated ROI rankings of 4,500 colleges and universities using the new data enable students and their families to compare the potential payoff across institutions in the short and long term. Our interactive online tool also includes a new Scorecard metric that highlights the share of students at an institution who go on to earn more than workers with only a high school diploma.

More information is good, but data alone are not sufficient to prepare students and their families to evaluate their options when it comes to postsecondary education. Career counseling is the missing link between quality information and positive outcomes for individual students. In addition to helping students understand the information now available to them, career counselors could guide students in making decisions about their postsecondary plans to reflect their goals and values.

Beyond these benefits for students, the availability of ROI data at the program level could generate efficiency in higher education. Students comparing programs within their chosen discipline will be able to make informed choices based on the likely financial outcomes of competing programs. When consumers flock to the programs with the best financial outcomes, public systems will be likely to reorganize programs across their campuses. By contrast, individual private colleges will not be able to restructure so easily.

We hope that continued emphasis on ROI will lead to a higher education system that is more attuned to students’ needs and taxpayers’ desire for cost-effectiveness.

The delayed American dream

May 26, 2022

Young people really do have it harder these days. It’s taking them longer to get a good job compared to generations past.

While just over half of older baby boomers had a good job by age 27, older millennials aren’t achieving the same milestone until age 30. This has downstream effects, influencing the jobs that young people take and when they get married, have children, buy a home, or start a business. The rules of the game just aren’t the same anymore.

Our research highlights the enduring inequalities that make the road to financial independence even longer, and more bleak, for some members of society. The likelihood of holding a good job breaks down in predictable ways across race and gender — the groups who have historically been shut out of the American dream remain less likely to hold a good job at all levels of educational attainment. These include Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and American Indian/Alaska Native peoples. Women are less likely to have a good job than men across every racial and ethnic group.

The data also emphasize just how critical some form of postsecondary education has become to attain a good job. Young people with bachelor’s degrees are the only educational group more likely to hold a good job than similarly educated baby boomers were at the same age.

The importance of college reinforces the need to strengthen existing pathways to postsecondary education, whether that be to community college, a credentialing program, or a four-year degree. From an equity perspective, it also speaks to the need to improve postsecondary access for racial and ethnic minorities at a time when existing pathways are at risk of being weakened should the Supreme Court ultimately rule against the use of affirmative action in college admissions.

Continue reading: The Delayed American Dream

Why college is risky for consumers

August 25, 2022

We have reached a critical juncture in the evolution of higher education. College enrollment is declining, and recent research verifies the public’s skepticism about the value of postsecondary education. Just half of Americans think the benefits of college are worth the cost, according to a recent Public Agenda survey. Meanwhile, New America’s polling reveals substantial concerns about the high price of college attendance.

Despite these creeping doubts, the reality is that pursuing education or training beyond high school is the most reliable route to the middle class. Today, 80 percent of good jobs are held by workers with at least some postsecondary education.

But for students, postsecondary education still comes with significant risk. Since 1980, average costs have increased nearly 170 percent, while young adults’ earnings have increased much more slowly. Student debt has ballooned, with borrowers owing more than $1.7 trillion. With their financial security at stake, it’s no surprise that students would be worried that their investment in higher education might not pay off.

The risk is heightened by the numerous options available to students. There are tens of thousands of degrees, certificates, and other programs, and their earnings and employment outcomes vary dramatically by field of study and institution. Some programs even provide students with negative returns on investment, leaving them worse off financially than before they enrolled.

The movement toward transparency and accountability in higher education is arriving right on time. Thanks to the Education Department’s College Scorecard, we now have data on students’ economic outcomes from more than 37,000 programs at 4,500 institutions. And if the College Transparency Act becomes law, it will improve data collection and provide more useful data for tools like the Scorecard.

But gathering and interpreting data is just the first step. Congress should mandate that colleges report on the value of their programs. For their part, colleges and universities should embrace the opportunity to demonstrate their value to consumers. Finally, we need a robust college and career counseling system to guide potential students and their families in making informed decisions as they pursue postsecondary education.

Reflecting on the Supreme Court arguments on race in college admissions

November 17, 2022

It’s hard to imagine that race-conscious college admissions will survive this US Supreme Court term. During the October 31 arguments on race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, hostility toward diversity was evident. Justices repeatedly questioned the educational benefits of diversity and raised concerns about what counts as diversity. They also expressed discomfort with the fact that there is no agreed-upon definition of success in achieving racial diversity and therefore no identifiable “end point” for considering race in college admissions.

Meanwhile, in today’s United States, it’s difficult to argue that race has no discernable impact on people’s lives. Conceding that point, Justice Barrett noted a distinction between considering race as an identifier (“in a box-checking way”) and considering it as an element of experience. The latter approach could allow personal essays and teacher recommendations to discuss how racial discrimination may have affected an applicant’s pathway. But it could be difficult to parse what counts as experience vs. identity. As Justice Kagan noted, that’s “slicing the baloney awfully thin.”

To many Americans, the slicing of the country’s people into various identity groups is one aspect of what is on trial. Rather than redressing inequality, they argue, race-conscious admissions practices further divide Americans. Sympathizers with this argument who nonetheless believe that educational opportunity is deeply unequal say that class-conscious admissions may provide a workable alternative — and one that addresses the fact that representation in selective colleges is even more inequitable by class than it is by race.

As we will detail in a forthcoming report, however, the use of class as a substitute for race in college admissions is likely to have mixed results. The good news is that with class-based alternatives to race-based affirmative action, Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students could meet or exceed their current enrollment shares at selective colleges if colleges stopped giving preference in admissions to privileged groups like legacy applicants. The same is not true of Indigenous students, however. And no admissions model that excludes consideration of race will bring us close to mirroring the racial/ethnic demographics of the current high school class.

The October 31 arguments made clear that if, in fact, race-conscious admissions practices are outlawed in higher education, we should prepare for similar cases related to other aspects of the college experience (identity-focused housing, diversity scholarships, etc.) and in other arenas, including in public- and private-sector hiring practices. Solicitor General Prelogar indicated that the US Armed Forces is already concerned about the possible implications for their recruitment, arguing that achieving diversity within the officer corps is impossible without race-conscious admissions. We should also prepare for court challenges to the use of various class-based proxies for race, such as geography and socioeconomic status.

It will be several months before we have decisions on these two cases, and at this point, our best hope is that they provide clear guidance on what counts as race-conscious and race-neutral factors in an admissions decision. What is clear: the onus has shifted even more to K-12 public education, rife with its own problems and a key source of nested disadvantage. If colleges can no longer affirmatively address racial disadvantages at the point of admission, K-12 will need to work harder to erase those disadvantages before students ever apply. And until we as a society address what ails public education, we will continue to prop up a system that favors those who are wealthy and white.

Dr. Carnevale is the director and research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. CEW is a research and policy institute within Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the links among education, career qualifications, and workforce demands.

Thanks to Katherine Hazelrigg, Kathryn Peltier Campbell, and Emma Wenzinger for editorial feedback and Fan Zhang for graphic design.

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