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ANALYSIS: New book looks at what is working, and what is not, when it comes to post-high school education
A higher education researcher has a new book out that explores trends in higher education and how colleges and policymakers can adapt to a changing economy.
Kathleen deLaski founded the Education Design Lab and is a senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard University. She also teaches about education reform at George Mason University and previously worked as an executive for student loan company Sallie Mae.
The former White House correspondent for ABC News draws on both her professional and personal experience to look at what does work and what does not when it comes to higher education, including alternatives to the standard four-year college degree.
In “Who Needs College Anymore,” deLaski argues for redefining “college” to mean a broad array of post-high school training options.
“I believe we are on the cusp of a new era in which college as we know it could become an umbrella descriptor for several proud paths to adultification, skilling, or confidence building,” she writes at the beginning of book.
She provides insights into the “rise and fall of bootcamps” for tech skills, unique nonprofits that are training workers, and innovative approaches by states. Her publisher, Harvard Education Press, provided a copy of the book to The College Fix and deLaski also answered questions via email.
One idea highlighted in the book is a “wallet” for “credentials.” Instead of a college degree, workers may want to have verified ways of showing their specific skills. “A statewide skills wallet system will likely be a feature of most state school and college systems in the next five years,” the author predicts in her book.
Only six percent of workers currently have a specific “industry certification,” according to deLaski. Her books suggests ways to improve the portability of credentials.
She does a good job of digging into the data and writing an easy-to-understand book that uses both statistics and interviews with employers and workers to tell a story. Furthermore, she examines the own decisions her children made with education, making the book relatable and not dry. She has a variety of life experiences that also help her see the different issues at play better than someone who merely spent an entire life in government or academia as a wonk could.
However, at times the book makes distracting political points. “Hiring practices,” she wrote, came under scrutiny following the “murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action might also hurt skills-based learning, deLaski wrote. She cited an American Bar Association news release, and argued that “to withstand bias lawsuits, newer efforts to hire or promote workers based on skills will need the kind of documentation that the tried-and-true degree seems to enjoy de facto.”
Asked for comment on evidence for this, deLaski told The Fix:
Certainly, the general societal pressure felt by many corporations to bring in more diverse hires after the 2020 events I describe in the book have been dampened by The SCOTUS ruling and perhaps more explicitly by the new Trump Administration’s outright war on DEI programs. I don’t have data to back that up, except to point to conversations I have had with HR folks who say they still have intent to engage in skills-based hiring, but perhaps as a hard to execute change management initiative it falls a little further down the priority list. Except for job roles where employers can’t find enough talent. There skills based hiring and creating new pathways to employment besides the degree is seen as an urgent strategy.
She also shared with The Fix her thoughts on what role the federal government could play in skills-based learning. The Fix specifically asked if she had any concern that this could lead to more problems, such as too many layers of bureaucracy.
“Now there is a message of chaos coming from the federal govt., in a time of lay offs, it’s pretty hard for the federal government to be a model for skills based hiring,” she wrote. “They are mostly laying off, not hiring. But one further exec order, beyond the one I mentioned that Trump and Biden endorsed to promote skills based hiring, would be to extend the executive order to government contractors, which I believe was hinted at during the Biden Administration but not made explicit.”
The author’s personal political views aside, the book is still generally a worthwhile read, particularly for policymakers, higher education officials, and business leaders.
It begins to answer a question that many College Fix readers certainly have – “who needs college anymore?”.
Editor’s note: The headline has been updated to say deLaski is a higher education researcher.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A copy of a new book is shown next to Kathleen deLaski; Harvard Education Press; Jessica Overcash