New England Lags in Opening Higher Education to All

by Evan S. Dobelle

The more our urban students earn college degrees and find good jobs, the better they will be able to build strong communities.

The urban activist Jane Jacobs knew well the connection between a vibrant city and a healthy economy. In her landmark work, “The Death and Life of Great Cities,” she observed, “Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon.” Decaying cities, declining economies and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.

Jacobs, who died last month, was making a point that should not be lost on New England’s educators. Any city’s health depends much on the educational attainment of its residents. The more our urban students earn college degrees and find good jobs, the better they will be able to build strong communities.

But despite the quality of our higher education, New England lags behind the rest of the nation in making college available to minorities and the working class. Our universities may be gateways to opportunity, but too many people - urban youths, non-traditional older students and many returning to a new work force - cannot get in.

We must prepare and motivate our young people earlier and better for college. We need to listen to researchers who report that mandatory pre-school for 3-year-olds enhances prospects for later success. We must celebrate and fully fund the mission of access and affordability of community colleges. And we must give our students the financial tools to afford a good education.

We also need to prepare for the approaching drop in our high-school-age population. In 2008 New England’s number of high school graduates will peak and start a long decline. If New England is to stay economically competitive, we need more of our young people to go further in their education. That is why the six New England states, working in concert with the New England Board of Higher Education, have joined forces to launch College Ready New England. The initiative marks the first time ever that all of the region’s governors, state higher education executives, education commissioners and the business community have come together to increase college preparedness and success.

College Ready New England aims to “widen the pipeline” by increasing the numbers of students who graduate from high school prepared for college and who then go on to earn degrees.

College Ready New England incorporates two main avenues: First, it will develop a regional network of policymakers and educators, from pre-kindergarten to college levels, to share ideas and methods for reaching common goals. We can make schools more responsive to students’ needs and more in line with the demands of higher learning, and we can cite who isn’t doing it.

The second arm of College Ready New England will work with the states to develop marketing campaigns targeted at those students who face the most difficulty in entering and succeeding in college. Too many of them think that college is a perk; it isn’t.

We have to get this message out, and we have to make it a priority in the upcoming election. That means less talk from pols about each other and more conversation about working together without agendas. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events and small minds discuss personalities.” We need leaders to act like great minds in the hopes of cultivating more great minds to come.