Education loomed small at both political conventions this summer—a shame considering what dire condition it’s in. But former President Barack Obama’s address to the DNC contained one reference that deserves attention and applause: “Kamala knows that if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But she also knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class.”
Coming from Obama, who presided when the “college for all” mindset was at its apex, this is a big deal and an important indicator of how far the pendulum has swung from the days when support for career and technical education was lukewarm at best. Now, expanding it is a popular position, promoted by Democrats and Republicans, the left and the right, especially for programs that focus on high-skill and even high-tech, jobs.
Yet when pollsters survey kids in the real world, students report that all they continue to hear from their schools is “college, college, college.” That’s one takeaway from a study released last week by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation.
As Cory Turner reported for National Public Radio, this leaves the students who don’t aspire to college feeling less engaged in school: “So of those planning to go to college, which is about half of Gen Z teens, the overwhelming majority say they have a great future ahead,” Turner said. “They're optimistic. But more than four in ten Gen Z students say they don't have college plans, and they are a lot less optimistic.”
“They're also less likely than college-bound teens to say there's an adult at school who makes them feel excited about the future or even encourages them to pursue their dreams,” Turner added. “Part of the problem these teens say is school staff spend a lot of time talking about college, but not alternatives.”
In the NPR report, Zach Hrynowski, a senior education researcher at Gallup, added:
“Even the kids who are like, I don't want to go to college. What are they hearing the most about? College. We're not talking to them about apprenticeships, internships, starting a business, entrepreneurial aspirations, jobs that don't require a college degree.”
It’s scarcely surprising that so many non-college-bound students report that their studies don’t interest them and seem irrelevant to their career plans. Nobody in their schools seems to be encouraging what they do want to do.
As I’ve written before, it’s likely because so few of these students are actually provided the opportunity to do a serious career tech program. Almost everywhere in America, even high-quality CTE is just a set of elective courses, taken alongside the regular college prep track. Just a handful of high school students get to spend significant schooltime focused on career preparation, including via hands-on apprenticeships—even in their junior or senior years. Everybody else is still sleepwalking through more semesters of math, English, science, and history, even if those subjects no longer interest them and provide little preparation for the careers that lie ahead.
The reason this is happening is because policymakers have failed to update our high school graduation requirements to allow students serious alternatives to traditional college-prep.
A case in point right now is Indiana, where some state leaders were trying to make room in high school course schedules for significant work-based learning by stripping out requirements for world history, foreign language, and fine arts.
But the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported some kids and parents, along with higher education institutions, rebelled, worried that the new mandates were going to mess up the traditional college prep pathway. And they weren’t wrong. Indiana was loath to create two different pathways—one for kids aiming for college and another for those wanting to join a trade. So what the state came up with was a compromise that made nobody happy: making everybody do work-based learning but also college prep.
The state has backed off of the changes and is now proposing a standard diploma that is focused on preparing students for college, along with an optional seal that would indicate career readiness. In other words, Indiana is more or less back to where it started.
We could do better. States should get serious about creating pathways that offer a real choice to kids and their families. At least by junior year of high school, let them decide whether they want to focus on traditional college prep or something more career-oriented. That is the only way we’re going to help all students feel engaged in their studies, not just the ones who have their sights set on the Purdues or Princetons of the world.
Editor’s note: A version of this was first published on Forbes.
