We Have to Address the Real Barriers to Early Career Success

Two recent opinion pieces in the Washington Post have me thinking about the message we’re sending to DC youth –– and reminded me that, once again, we aren’t doing enough to address the barriers our students face to ensure they are set up to succeed and thrive.

The first, ‘A college degree is worth the cost — and then some’ argues that “it is hard to conceive of a more reliable and cost-effective investment than attending and completing college.” 

Of course, college degrees hold value––but the college experience is not monolithic for every student. In fact, the majority, 56%, of students that start 4-year college stop out before completing their degree. Of course, these students still owe student loan debts but lack the credential to increase their earning potential. In short, they come out of the experience far worse off than when they entered college. 

In DC, the reality is even worse with less than 10% of D.C. students entering a public high school will graduate with a BA within six years of leaving. This mismatch will persist if we ignore the real barriers students face in reaching that goal, including significant student loan debt inequities, particularly in DC, where Black students have some of the highest debt burdens nationwide.

CityWorks DC had the opportunity to investigate why students were not completing college by surveying more than 200 recent graduates who either didn’t start or started and stopped out. Recently, I wrote about what we learned from these surveys and why we started ASU Local (a high-support and low-barrier college option) in DC, and if you are interested, you can read it here. 

The second, ‘Education reform’ is dying. Now we can actually reform education’ argues that “our education system should be about learning, not job credentialing.” The first part of that sentence is pretty easy to agree with…of course, our education system should focus on learning. But it should also provide opportunities to multiple pathways for success and supportive guidance about life after high school graduation. 

Right now, the median net worth for a white household in D.C. is 81 times that of a Black household. Regionally, more than 80% of jobs paying a sustaining wage require a college degree. Remember, less than 10% of DC youth that enter our public high schools complete a college degree on-time. 

With such a staggering wealth gap and opportunity, we must prioritize closing our enormous academic achievement gaps, reducing student loan burdens, and creating pathways for young adults to secure meaningful work that allows them to thrive. We need multiple pathways for our students to succeed and more options designed to address the barriers students face to ensure students are set up to succeed and thrive.

We also have to provide students with opportunities to be competitive when they enter the world of work with relevant experience and social capital. If our educational system continues to focus only on the goal of academic learning (as Mr. Bacon suggests) and we have only one measure of success (college!), how do we begin to close the persistent gaps in wealth and opportunity?

I believe that we need to continue to prepare students for college. We also have to create pathways through college for students. Options that allow them to work, take time away to support family and then return, learn other life and career skills, etc. We also need to acknowledge that college isn’t the only road to success.If a student doesn’t see themselves succeeding in college, our schools need to provide options and opportunities for what can come next. 

In short, well-meaning and well-educated adults must start listening to our students and designing pathways with their interests, skills, and talents in mind. We must create new pathways for students to succeed instead of just encouraging them to take the roads that led to our own success (college, job, grad school, better-paying jobs, etc.). This is especially true for the 90% of students who will enter our high schools and not achieve the traditional 4-year college pathway.

Credentials help students represent what they have learned and what they can do in the workplace. While the 4-year college degree will continue to be a high-value credential, we can do a better job of guiding students to other ways of entering and advancing in the workforce. 

If you are interested in learning more about CityWorks DC and our work towards solutions to these issues, contact me at rpohlman@cityworksdc.org.