Getting New England College-Ready

by Evan S. Dobelle

The late 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 on the educational attainment of its residents. The more our urban students earn college degrees and find good jobs, the more they will be able to build strong communities.

But recent studies suggest that New England is failing those students. Despite the quality of our colleges and universities, we lag behind the rest of America in making higher education available to minorities and the working class. Our educational institutions may be gateways to opportunity, but too many people -- urban youths, non-traditional older students, and many returning to a new workforce -- cannot get in the door.

We delude ourselves if we think that this is not a serious problem, or that the welfare of New England will be ensured by its elite institutions -- which educate only a small share of the region’s students. The global economy demands ever-increasing skills of all workers, and the gaps in income and in quality of life continue to grow between those with college degrees and those without.

Most good jobs formerly open to smart, ambitious high-school graduates now require a bachelor’s degree. Each year, fewer avenues to success exist for those who haven’t attended college.

Cities are suffering disproportionately under these pressures. For example, recent studies reported unemployment as high as 50 percent among urban African-American men in their 20s without college degrees. Among high-school dropouts, the figure soars to 72 percent. With statistics like this, it’s just a matter of time before a major crisis develops. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Higher education is only part of the solution. These challenges extend to our streets and living rooms. Reform demands a new commitment to shared success from all levels of our society.

Nonetheless, schools and colleges have critical roles to play in a more coordinated and integrated fashion. We must prepare and motivate our young people earlier and better for college, so that they will have a place in our economy. We need to listen to researchers who report that mandatory pre-school for 3-year-olds hugely enhances students’ prospects. We must celebrate and fully fund the mission of access and affordability of our community colleges, in both occupational and transfer programs. 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 then start a long decline. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are getting younger; one of every four 18-year-olds, for instance, lives in California.

If New England is to stay economically competitive, we need more of our young people to go further in their education.

That’s why the New England states, working with the New England Board of Higher Education, have launched College Ready New England. This marks the first time in history that all the region’s governors, state higher-education executives, education commissioners, and business leaders 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 then earn college degrees.

To achieve these goals, College Ready New England incorporates two main approaches.

First, it will develop a regional network of policymakers and educators, from pre-kindergarten to college, to share the best ideas and most successful methods of reaching our goals. Through collaboration across the six New England states, we can make our schools more responsive to our students’ needs and more in line with the demands of higher learning, and we can point out who isn’t doing it.

Second, to complement the policy effort, 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. The campaigns will impress upon these students and their parents the value of a college degree in today’s job market, and will give them information and resources to navigate the available options.

Too many think that college is a perk; it isn’t. More and more, it’s what lets you sustain a vibrant life in the future.

We have to get this message out, and we have to make it a priority in the coming election cycle. That means less talk from politicians about each other and more about working together without agendas. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, and small minds discuss personalities.”

What we need is for our leaders to act like great minds, in the hopes of cultivating more great minds to come.

Evan S. Dobelle is president and CEO of NEBHE.