2019 Perceptions and Priorities
Higher education dividends are strong but complex challenges lie ahead.
Higher education faces an uncomfortable reality. While colleges and universities continue to deliver exceptional value, confidence in the sector has dropped precipitously in the past three years — with more than half of Americans now questioning higher education institutions.¹ At NACUBO, we have observed that college administrators frequently dismiss the current doubts, readily pointing to clear evidence of financial value and noting that higher education has long experienced dramatic swings in public perception — particularly as demographics, labor economics, and technology evolve. Far too often, however, this results more in assuaging rather than engaging with people’s concerns.
Our own NACUBO Value of Higher Education Initiative points to statistics that demonstrate the lifetime value of a college education. Data show that Americans with postsecondary education, and especially those with at least a bachelor’s degree, are much more likely to be in the workforce and employed than are those with only a high school education.² And when degree-holders work, they earn far more. Full-time workers with a bachelor’s and no advanced degree earn an average of 74 percent more annually than those with just a high school diploma.³
However, more than half of those who went to college say they would change a significant aspect of their higher education experience — such as the institution they attended or their major — if they could do it over again.⁴ And only a quarter strongly agree that their college coursework is relevant to their work and daily life.⁵ Employers still highly value degrees when hiring, but only half say that degrees are “fairly reliable representations of candidates’ skills and knowledge.”⁶
The time has come for NACUBO, our members, and indeed all college administrators, presidents, chancellors, trustees, policymakers, and other fiduciaries to step back, take stock of what is working, and highlight trends that institutions can’t ignore if they want to keep delivering great value. The returns to an investment in higher education have never been stronger, but to maintain that value, the sector must continue to evolve.
Household Income is Not Keeping Pace with the Costs of College Access
NACUBO member colleges and universities are actively examining their existing business models. Changing demographics, coupled with reliance on traditional revenue structures, require institutions to retool and rethink their economic models. NACUBO has provided them a toolkit, the Economic Models Project, to help them assess their financial well-being.
But the most profound shift in college costs has not been in spending or delivery. Rather, there has been a shift in who pays.
Public funding for higher education has been steadily declining. Even as the country has recovered from the Great Recession, state spending on public colleges and universities has remained well below historical levels. State funding for public institutions in 2018 was more than $7 billion below its 2008 level, after adjusting for inflation.⁷ As a result of public disinvestment, students now pay most education-related institutional costs.⁸
Net prices. Increases in the net price of college — what students pay in tuition, fees, and room and board after all grant aid — have outpaced inflation for the past two decades.⁹ Net prices dipped during the Great Recession (as institutions slowed tuition increases and a higher proportion of students qualified for need-based aid) but have since continued to march upward. Annual net prices are now $790 higher (11 percent) at two-year institutions, $5,660 (26 percent) at private four-year institutions, and $6,030 (68 percent) at public four-years than 20 years ago, after accounting for inflation.¹⁰
The increase in the price of a public four-year degree is particularly problematic. This presents an outsized challenge to affordability and access, as more than two-thirds of undergraduates attending four-year colleges and universities are enrolled at a public institution.
We have shifted the responsibility of paying for college much more heavily toward students at a time in our history when families can least afford it. Thus, policymakers and institutions both must redouble their efforts in equity and affordability.
Earnings. Wages are stagnating, trailing far behind increases in tuition and the actual cost of delivering higher education. Real (inflation-adjusted) average hourly wages aren’t any higher today than they were 40 years ago. In fact, they peaked in 1973. Workers have seen some wage growth, albeit inconsistently, since 2000 — but the largest gains have gone to workers who are in the top tenth of earners.¹¹ Wages for those in the bottom tenth have only increased 3 percent in that timeframe, far below both the wage gains of high earners (16 percent) and increases in the net price of college.¹² A college degree has become less affordable for those who were already least able to pay.
Financial need. This shows clearly in the amount of unmet need. The federal formula for financial aid calculates how much students can afford to pay — their expected family contribution — based on their family income, savings, and other factors. However, students often must pay more than their expected contribution because available federal and institutional aid can’t meet their need. Students must then take out loans or figure out other ways to fill the gap between what they can afford and the grants they receive. And that gap has been growing.
Nearly three in four students now have unmet need, and the average amount rose by 23 percent between 2011 and 2015 (the most recent year for which data are available).¹³ Students of color have higher rates of unmet need than do their white peers, with black students having the highest rate. At two-year public, four-year public, and four-year private, nonprofit institutions, the lowest-income students face the largest gaps between what they can afford to pay and the grant aid they receive.¹⁴ At public four-years, for example, students whose families earn less than $27,900 a year have an average unmet need of $12,792. At four-year private nonprofits, that gap jumps to $18,727.¹⁵
As unmet need increases, students rely more heavily on loans. According to The Institute for College Access and Success, “65 percent of college seniors who graduated from public and private nonprofit colleges in 2017 had student loan debt,” and they owed an average of $28,650.¹⁶ Both numbers have increased over the past decade.¹⁷ Outsized exceptions to these averages are not the norm but make attention-grabbing headlines on a regular basis, likely influencing public perception.
Further, institutions are seeing growing numbers of low-income and first-generation students — those who are least likely to be able to shoulder the cost of education or know how to navigate the system — at the same moment in time when students are being asked to make more of the upfront investment in higher education.
These students, those who need higher education to break into the middle class (and are disproportionately likely to be members of underrepresented minority groups), have lower completion rates than their more advantaged peers.¹⁸ If states, the federal government, and — yes — institutions themselves do not increase their investment in both affordability and improving outcomes, we must honestly ask ourselves to consider at what point borrowing for higher education poses more risk than reward.
Completion. We must be honest that college works, but only when it works. In other words, it works exceedingly well for those who make it to graduation, but less well for those who don’t. Students who have some college education but no credential see some wage premium, but it is far lower than for those who earn a degree.¹⁹ Only 62 percent of students who start college have earned a four-year degree eight years later.²⁰ In other words, too many students are leaving college without a degree, and often with debt — and that is a cause for continued concern.
In 1947, President Harry Truman’s Commission on Higher Education stated, “If the ladder of educational opportunity rises high at the doors of some youth and scarcely rises at the doors of others, while at the same time formal education is made a prerequisite to occupational and social advance, then education may become the means, not of eliminating race and class distinctions, but of deepening and solidifying them.”
Equity and affordability must be a demonstrated core value.
The higher education sector must find ways to deliver to the full spectrum of qualified students. Too many worthy but economically disadvantaged students are being priced out of the market or are taking on unmanageable debt levels. For example, according to a recent federal analysis, more than 27 percent of students who started college in 2003–04 and took out loans defaulted at least once over the next 12 years, up from 18 percent of the students who started college in 1995–96.²¹ Default rates were much higher for borrowers from low-income families, reaching 41 percent in the 2003–04 cohort. Additional analysis showed that earning a degree didn’t insure against default, especially for low-income and African American students — but that default rates are much higher for students who don’t complete their education.²² Further, and not unrelated to household economics, the college attainment gap for black and Latino students stubbornly persists.²³
Today, higher education must intensely explore institutional admissions, financial aid, instruction, and academic support practices, and work with vigor to ensure they are working in a way that affords all students a chance to be graduates.
Providing Quality Higher Education Requires Significant Investment
At the same time, the public must recognize that high-quality education is expensive and should better understand why college costs what it does. Instructional delivery, student services, facilities from lecture halls to student housing, and technology all require revenue.
The prospect of free college has captured the public’s attention, and some states have established programs or are contemplating proposals that offer some type of tuition-free access to higher education. But free college is not free — someone always has to pay the bills.
Instruction. The biggest cost driver in higher education is the function at its very core: teaching students. Institutions strive to have the best qualified professionals deliver the education students expect. Instruction makes up the largest single expense category across institutions, ranging from one-third to half of all spending, depending on institutional type.²⁴ Faculty salaries often are critiqued, but they are in line with — or in many cases, lower than — those of other highly educated professionals. Faculty employed full time had a median annual salary of $76,000 in 2017, much less than other highly educated professionals such as lawyers, dentists, and physicians.²⁵ And now, many faculty positions are filled through part-time contracts that pay much less.
Student Services. Spending on student services has grown substantially in the past decade, but contrary to popular belief, this trend isn’t driven by climbing walls and lazy rivers. Rather, institutions are increasing supports — such as academic advising, career counseling, and mental health services — that are critical to helping more students succeed.²⁶
As the demographics of the student population change, with more first-generation students, older adults, lower-income students, and members of underrepresented minority groups arriving on campus, both the range and level of services needed increase. It is imperative that institutions serve greater numbers of students from all backgrounds — and put the systems and services in place to enable them to succeed — but it also takes investment to do so.
Financial Aid. One of the largest costs of providing undergraduate education comes from directly helping students cover costs through institutional grants. Tuition discounting is a major cost center at all institutions, but it is particularly large at private, nonprofit institutions. The 2018 NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study shows that at private colleges and universities, 44 cents of every tuition dollar goes to student financial aid.
The 2018 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments shows that on average, institutions used 49 percent of their total endowment withdrawals to support student scholarships and other financial aid programs, but it also points out that endowment returns are not keeping pace with target rates for long-range planning. Even so, the majority of participating colleges and universities increased their endowment spending in FY18 to support students.
Infrastructure. Colleges and universities also spend a significant amount on facilities, which are far more likely to be labs than lazy rivers. And the financial investment needed is increasing: Institutions have been deferring much-needed maintenance in the past decade, and operating expenses continue to rise. In fact, Sightlines’ 2018 State of Facilities in Higher Education analyzed campus building construction over the past 125 years and found that “the largest demand for capital investment that higher education has ever seen is bearing down on us, whether or not the resources to meet that demand exist.”²⁷ Colleges’ space-per-student needs will require both new construction and renovation of existing but aging facilities–which will take significant investment.
Technology. Colleges and universities also are investing heavily in technology, from systems to streamline back office functions, such as human resources and student billing, to tools designed to improve teaching and learning. Technology often comes with the promise of efficiency and cutting costs. And indeed, it has certainly enabled institutions to do many things better.
But technological advancement in service industries, including education, doesn’t drive down costs the way it does in goods production. Rather, new technologies enable tasks to be performed better and, in many cases, create entirely new tasks.²⁸ That increases quality but doesn’t decrease cost. In higher education, for example, adaptive learning tools and blended classes that employ online education have allowed colleges and universities to deepen the learning experience, increase student engagement, and ultimately improve outcomes, but that has not necessarily reduced costs.
Innovation. A notable exception is a select few institutions that have leveraged blended learning to a degree that allows them to reduce their dependence on physical infrastructure. The University of Central Florida, for example, has grown its enrollment substantially in the past decade without adding much to its campus footprint. Almost all undergraduates take at least one course online, and many take blended courses that meet in person about half the time of a regular class. This enables the institution to serve more on-campus students with the same amount of classroom space.
In another example of innovation, Georgia Tech has leveraged MOOCs to offer high-quality, brand-name master’s degrees for about $6,600. However, the program could not exist without the broader Georgia Tech enterprise and its operating budget of $1.84 billion annually.²⁹ We are certain that many of the world-class faculty contributing to the online master’s curriculum, for example, wouldn’t be at the university were it not for its massive — and expensive — research infrastructure.
Innovative new models raise important questions about how traditional institutions can expand the ways they use resources they’ve made major investments in — from physical facilities to a highly trained faculty. But they do not eliminate the need for or ongoing cost of those investments.
It is expensive to provide access to a high-quality education. But we must not give up on the essential role of higher education simply because meeting our ideals is costly.
Public relations. To respond to the outcry over costs, value, and student loan burden, institutions must share in the responsibility of increasing public understanding around the costs of delivering a quality education. Business officers should take more time exploring how to explain to the public, with clarity, where the money goes, and share evidence that higher education spending is an investment in excellence. College and university business officers may have once considered their public affairs role complete when they signed off on the annual financial statement. This can no longer be the case; communications skills must be part of a skilled business officer’s toolkit. Further, college public affairs professionals should take the time to better understand the business office and should promote its vital information in the same way they share the stories of students, alumni, and university-based scientists and researchers.
We also believe institutions must harness the opportunity analytics solutions can provide for student success. NACUBO is investing in analytics and is committed to helping colleges effectively utilize data to achieve institutional strategic goals — from increasing student retention to demonstrating they are good stewards of public dollars.
But as institutions and policymakers seek policies to promote innovation and effectiveness, they must be careful not to throttle quality or do harm. Too often, state and federal policies produce attention-grabbing headlines but attempt to solve problems in a silo, without regard to other repercussions.
Smarter policies. In 2013, a bipartisan group of senators established the Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education to help inform efforts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. The group’s final report, Recalibrating Regulation of Colleges and Universities, states that institutions “find themselves enmeshed in a jungle of red tape, facing rules that are often confusing and difficult to comply with,” and argued that “smarter rules are needed.”³⁰ They pointed out that “regulations should be related to education, student safety, and stewardship of federal funds,” but cautioned that many are not.³¹ Even while ensuring accountability for the use of taxpayer funds, policymakers can and should provide institutions the room they need to operate efficiently.
Further, institutional efforts to hold tuition and administrative expenses down should put students’ interests at the forefront. Budgetary decisions should enhance services available to students — and not at their expense. For example, in recent years, the availability of campus‐based banking options for students grew significantly, as did public scrutiny. In response, NACUBO recommended best practices, recognizing that institutions must constantly explore ways to offer improved services to students, as well as find cost savings, but that they can and should concurrently ensure that students’ consumer interests are protected.
Higher Education Provides Opportunity for Upward Mobility and a Lifetime of Value
As government funding for higher education has declined, placing more responsibility on students to fund their educations, Americans increasingly see higher education as a private good more than a public one. This viewpoint is debatable, but its prevalence is not.
Higher education provides benefits to society — from advancing research to driving economic development — that extend beyond its role in educating students. And society derives myriad benefits from a more highly educated population.
Upward Mobility. Moreover, colleges and universities foster economic mobility. Pathbreaking new research on economic mobility by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found that most colleges successfully “level the playing field” for students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. A college degree remains the best ticket into the middle class — and policymakers and the public are deeply invested in higher education as a tool for promoting economic mobility.³²
But there is room for improvement; Chetty and colleagues’ data on economic mobility underlines that point. While higher education overall clearly serves as a mechanism for mobility, some institutions do much better than others — both in enrolling large numbers of lower-income students and in helping them to move up the economic ladder.
Wage Premium. In the industrial economy, only one- third of entry-level jobs required training beyond high school, but two-thirds do today.³³ Bachelor’s degrees have always paid a premium, but until recently, the majority of jobs paying at least $35,000 a year for young workers or $45,000 for older ones didn’t require a degree.³⁴ In 2008, that changed: For the first time, workers with bachelor’s degrees held more jobs paying over $35,000 a year than did workers without. In the years since, they have continued to make gains.
Today, Americans with a bachelor’s degree hold 56 percent of these “good jobs,” as defined by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and another 24 percent are held by those with at least some postsecondary training.³⁵ In other words, while just over four in 10 Americans have postsecondary training, they hold eight in 10 higher-paying jobs.³⁶
That’s one reason bachelor’s degree holders earn between $600,000 and $1 million more than high school completers over a lifetime, depending on how the estimates are calculated.³⁷ Americans with associate degrees see a premium of about $300,000 over their work life.
A recent analysis of more than 100 million job postings by labor market analytics firm Emsi and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work found that skills commonly associated with a liberal arts education — such as communication, critical thinking, ethics, and problem-solving — are among the most in-demand from employers.³⁸ In fact, strong communication was the number one skill employers sought. The researchers posit that demand for such higher-level “human” skills will only increase alongside growing automation. As computers perform a wider range of work, the most secure and lucrative job functions will be those that only a person can do.
A recent Pew Research Center report backs up this perspective and demonstrates that the trend is already well underway. The center found that while overall employment grew by 50 percent between 1980 and 2015, the growth rate was much higher (83 percent) for jobs that require above-average social skills, such as interpersonal, management, and communication skills, and for jobs that require higher levels of analytical skills (77 percent), such as critical-thinking and computer skills.³⁹ The analysis also found that wages increased more among jobs requiring higher social or analytical skills.
Social Value. Beyond individual earnings, there is the impressive value that society reaps from college-goers. People with a college education are significantly more likely to volunteer in their communities and vote in elections.⁴⁰ A college education also leads to healthier lifestyles; college graduates are less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise regularly, and their children are less likely to be obese.⁴¹
The broader economic impacts of an educated workforce are unquestionable. Our policymakers must recognize these benefits and the higher earning potential for graduates as federal and state priorities. Federal lawmakers should redouble their efforts to increase the Pell Grant, the cornerstone of federal financial aid programs. In FY17, Congress improved the program by reinstating year-round Pell Grants, which allow students to apply funding to coursework over the summer and thus graduate faster. Looking ahead, Congress should index the maximum grant award to inflation to maintain the program’s purchasing power.
State lawmakers should also increase their investments in higher education and reverse the trend of shifting more and more of the burden onto students and families. Further, they should comb their budgets and policy practices to ensure that tuition dollars are dedicated to delivering higher education.
2019 Priorities
In closing, we urge our NACUBO members, our partners, and others to recommit to these three broad priorities:
1. Equity and affordability must be a demonstrated core value.
2. Innovation and effectiveness should not throttle quality or do harm.
3. Higher education must be regarded as an outstanding investment.
We call on institutions to reflect not just on their revenue models, but on the broader impact their budgetary decisions have on measures of equity and affordability. We call on business officers to ensure they are keeping students in mind in their efforts to establish new revenue streams and cost savings, and to be transparent in ways that educate stakeholders. We call on policymakers to continue to invest in higher education, robustly, and to be smart when crafting accountability measures — enhancing institutions’ ability to deliver quality rather than holding them back with needless red tape.
For more than 50 years, in addition to providing business officers with the tools they need to excel at their jobs, NACUBO has been a leading advocate for colleges and universities. Our strategic priorities include engaging higher education institutions in undertaking necessary transformations, driving effective solutions, utilizing analytics, preparing business officers to be leaders, and increasing our advocacy efforts. We are cognizant of the criticisms and challenges the sector faces and are grounded by our understanding of the difference a college degree can make for a student and the impact university-based research can have on our world.
What keeps us going is knowing that the best is yet to come.
A slide deck with additional charts accompanies this post and is available on the NACUBO website.
1 Jaschik, Scott. “Falling Confidence in Higher Ed.” Inside Higher Ed, 9 Oct. 2018, www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/09/gallup-survey-finds-falling-confidence-higher-education.
2 “Unemployment Rates and Earnings by Educational Attainment.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 Mar. 2018, www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm.
3 NACUBO analysis of 2017 American Community Survey 5-Year estimates of “Median Earnings in the Past 12 Months,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://factfinder.census.gov.
4 “New Study by Gallup and Strada Education Network Reveals More Than Half of U.S. Adults Have Second Thoughts About Their Higher Education Decisions,” Strada Education Network, 17 Jan. 2018, www.stradaeducation.org/news/new-study-gallup-strada-education-network-reveals-half-u-s-adults-second-thoughts-higher-education-decisions.
5 “From College to Life: Relevance and the Value of Higher Education,” Strada Education Network, http://www.stradaeducation.org/consumer-insights/relevance-and-higher-education/.
6 Gallagher, Sean R. “Educational Credentials Come of Age: A Survey on the Use and Value of Educational Credentials in Hiring.” Northeastern University, December 2018, www.northeastern.edu/cfhets/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Educational_Credentials_Come_of_Age_2018.pdf.
7 Mitchell, Michael, et al. “Unkept Promises: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Access and Equity.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4 Oct. 2018, www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/10-4-18sfp.pdf.
8 Desrochers, Donna M., and Steven Hulburt. “Trends in College Spending: 2003–2013.” The Delta Project, American Institutes for Research, Jan. 2016, deltacostproject.org/sites/default/files/products/15–4626%20Final01%20Delta%20Cost%20Project%20College%20Spending%2011131.406.P0.02.001%20….pdf.
9 “Trends in College Pricing 2018,” The College Board, 16 Oct. 2018, trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/2018-trends-in-college-pricing.pdf, p 3.
10 “Trends in College Pricing 2018, Figures 8–10,” The College Board, 16 Oct. 2018, trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/2018-trends-in-college-pricing.pdf.
11 Desilver, Drew. “For Most U.S. Workers, Real Wages Have Barely Budged in Decades,” Pew Research Center, 7 Aug. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/.
12 Ibid.
13 Walizer, Lauren. “When Financial Aid Falls Short,” Center for Law and Social Policy, December 2018, www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018/12/2018whenfinancialaidfallsshort.pdf.
14 Ibid., p 5
15 Ibid., p 6
16 Cheng, Diane and Veronica Gonzalez. Student Debt and the Class of 2017, The Institute for College Access & Success, September 2018, https://ticas.org/sites/default/files/pub_files/classof2017.pdf
17 Ibid.
18 “Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2018 Historical Trend Report,” The Pell Institute, http://pellinstitute.org/downloads/publications-Indicators_of_Higher_Education_Equity_in_the_US_2018_Historical_Trend_Report.pdf.
19 “Unemployment Rates and Earnings by Educational Attainment.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 Mar. 2018, www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm.
20 Ginder, Scott A., et al. “Graduation Rates for Selected Cohorts 2008–13; Outcome Measures for Cohort Year 2008; Student Financial Aid, Academic Year 2015–16; and Admissions in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2016.” National Center for Education Statistics, December 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017150rev.pdf.
21 Woo, et al. “Repayment of Student Loans as of 2015 Among 1995–96 and 2003–04 First-Time Beginning Students,” National Center for Education Statistics, October 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018410.pdf.
22 Fain, Paul. “Default Crisis for Black Student Borrowers,” Inside Higher Ed, 17 October 2017, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/17/half-black-student-loan-borrowers-default-new-federal-data-show.
23 Parker, Kim, et al. “On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites are Worlds Apart,” Pew Research Center, 27 June 2016, www.pewsocialtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/06/ST_2016.06.27_Race-Inequality-Final.pdf.
24 Adams, Megan, “What Contributes to Rising College Costs?” EAB, 20 June 2017, https://www.eab.com/research-and-insights/facilities-forum/expert-insights/2017/factors-affecting-college-tuition.
25 “Occupational Outlook Handbook: Postsecondary Teachers,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017, www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/postsecondary-teachers.htm.
26 Desrochers, Donna M., and Steven Hulburt. “Trends in College Spending: 2003–2013.” The Delta Project, American Institutes for Research, January 2016, deltacostproject.org/sites/default/files/products/15–4626%20Final01%20Delta%20Cost%20Project%20College%20Spending%2011131.406.P0.02.001%20….pdf.
27 “2018 State of Facilities in Higher Education,” Sightlines, 3 Jan. 2019, www.sightlines.com/insights/thank-you-for-downloading/?resid=9463.
28 Archibald, Robert and David Feldman. Why Does College Cost So Much, 2014, Oxford University Press.
29 “Fiscal 2018 Operating Budget,” Georgia Institute of Technology, www.budgets.gatech.edu/File?F=18BudgetInBrief.pdf
30 “Recalibrating Regulation of Colleges and Universities,” The Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Ed, 12 Feb. 2015, https://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Documents/Higher-Education-Regulations-Task-Force-Report.pdf.
31 Ibid., p 2.
32 Chetty, Raj, et al. “Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility,” Equality of Opportunity Project, July 2017, http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/coll_mrc_paper.pdf.
33 Carnevale, Anthony P., et al. “Three Educational Pathways to Good Jobs,” Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, 16 Oct. 2018, https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/3pathways.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 “Investing in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and the State of Student Debt,” The Obama White House, July 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160718_cea_student_debt.pdf;
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, et al, “Eight Economic Facts on Higher Education,” Brookings Institution, 26 April 2017, www.brookings.edu/research/eight-economic-facts-on-higher-education.
38 Weise, Michelle R., et al. “Robot-Ready: Human+ Skills for the Future of Work,” EMSI; Strada Institute for the Future of Work 7 Nov. 2018, www.economicmodeling.com/robot-ready-reports.
39 Parker, Kim, et al. “The State of American Jobs,” Pew Research Center, 6 Oct. 2016, www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/the-state-of-american-jobs.
40 U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Volunteering in the United States, 2015,” 2016; U.S. Census Bureau, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2016,” 2017.
41 Ma, Jennifer, et al. “Education Pays 2016,” The College Board, 2016, https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays.
