...Post-secondary Education College refers to the attainment of valuable post-secondary credentials beyond high school, including professional/technical certificates and academic degrees. This includes certificate programs, job apprenticeships, and university.
...A Necessity We live in a knowledge-based economy and most jobs require a post secondary credential beyond high school in order to succeed in the workforce today.
According to the report America's Divided Recoveryby theGeorgetown University Center on Education in the Workforce, "[t]he post-Great Recession economy has divided the country along a fault line demarcated by college education. For those with at least some college education, the job market is robust. The economy has added 11.6 million jobs since the recession bottomed out — 11.5 million, or 99 percent of them, have gone to workers with at least some college education. By contrast, workers with a high school diploma or less hear about an economic recovery and wonder what people are talking about. Of the 7.2 million jobs lost in the recession, 5.6 million were jobs for workers with a high school diploma or less. These workers have recovered only 1 percent of those job losses over the past six years. This group also saw no growth among well-paying jobs with benefits." "Workers with at least some post-secondary education have also captured the vast majority of the good jobs — jobs that pay more than $53,000 per year for full-time, full-year workers and come with benefits, such as employer provided health insurance and a retirement plan. At the other end of the education spectrum, workers with a high school diploma or less essentially have experienced no job recovery. So far, they have gained 80,000 jobs in the recovery, just a tiny fraction of the 5.6 million jobs that were lost by these workers in the recession."
Figure I. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree have added 8.4 million jobs in the recovery, but workers with a high school diploma or less added only 80,000 jobs after losing 5.6 million jobs in the recession.
...For Everyone The post-secondary education attainment rates among low-income, rural, first-generation, and students of color are significantly lower than those of other students. We are committed to closing these gaps. The Lumina Foundation's A Stronger Nation report explains that "educational opportunity – particularly attainment of credentials beyond high school – is key to reducing economic and social inequality.
...A Public Good Post-secondary educational opportunity and attainment are critical to a just and equitable society, strong economy, and healthy communities.
The Association of of Public & Land-Grant Universities mention how a college degree benefits our nation at large: "Although the public often emphasizes the benefits of a college degree to graduates themselves, the benefits to society are just as important. Through volunteer work, leadership, and philanthropic contributions, public university graduates enrich the civic and economic life of their communities. They also contribute more in taxes and are less reliant on government services than their peers whose highest degree is a high school diploma."
The Lumina Foundation's "It's Not Just The Money" report also tells how Bachelor's degree holders are also "considerably less reliant on government programs and services than those with a high school degree. These government programs include Medicaid, housing subsidies, nutrition assistance, unemployment benefits, and other public assistance. For instance, those who graduated college are 3.5 times less likely to be impoverished and nearly five times less likely to be imprisoned. In all, lifetime government expenditures are $82,000 lower for college graduates than for those with high school degrees."
Our rapidly evolving, complex economy is causing a surge in demand for skilled employees. According to the Lumina Foundation, "Today’s employers want to hire graduates with a broad array of knowledge and skills--not just specific content knowledge, but transferable skills like critical thinking, the ability to solve unscripted problems, and to communicate effectively,” said Jamie Merisotis, Lumina’s president and CEO. “Higher education and employers must work together to prepare students for real-world success."
"Perhaps the clearest evidence of the need to increase higher education attainment comes from the fact that employers cannot find people with the skills they need to fill all of their current job openings, much less those that will be created in the future (at the current production rate in higher education, we will fall 5 million short of the workers with postsecondary credentials we will need by 2020!) What happens when employers can’t find people with the skills and credentials they need? The answer is that the economy as a whole suffers. Available evidence suggests that our nation’s inability to match jobs to people with the right skills is a major factor in explaining why employment rates have not improved as quickly as they should have in the economic recovery." " Americans who have less education live shorter lives and have poorer health during those shorter years. According to Virginia Commonwealth University's Center on Society in Health, "education is important not only for higher paying jobs and economic productivity, but also for saving lives and saving dollars. More education leads to higher earnings that can provide access to healthy food, safer homes, and better health care. Medical care is important, but actions outside of health care—education, jobs, and economic growth—may be the best way to stem spiraling health care costs. Disinvesting in education not only makes U.S. businesses less competitive in a global marketplace built on science and technology, but can also increase health care costs in the long run."
Complied by Katrina Groeller, Orchard View College Adviser