Adult Learners, ALICE, and the Argument for Seeking Education After High School
by Jon Reiss
An Introduction to why
Those who are familiar with UpliftED know that our main purpose is to increase the portion of the Central Florida workforce who have a high-value credential or degree to 60%. According to the Florida College Access Network, that number is currently just short of 47% (46.9%) for our area (Orange, Osceola, & Seminole Counties). In order to accomplish this feat by the ambitious year of 2025 (the State has aimed for a more conservative goal of 2030), we realized that we would have to look elsewhere than merely those high school graduates who deny the traditional metamorphosis of high-school-to-college-student.
The rate by which high school students transition to college within a year of graduation was 69% in 2018, informing us that recent high school students weren’t the reason for the low attainment rate (National Center for Education Statistics). Sure, college graduation rates aren’t as high as 69%, but still we found that the attainment gap was largely due to those who had foregone college education in the past, which is why we aren’t currently above 50%, let alone 60% attainment (average U.S. college graduation rate was 54.88% in 2019-2020).
As we narrowed down on this population of non-credentialed persons, we realized that their defining characteristic was itself unconventionality. This is why we often refer to this group of learners as “nontraditional.” ‘Everyone knows’—excuse the broad generalization—you’re supposed to go to school, get good grades, then (“if it’s for you; it isn’t for everybody”) you go to college, graduate, and get a high-paying job. But again, this message was always bookmarked by the misleading acknowledgment that ‘college isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay.’ This conventional wisdom has been popular far longer than it has ever been helpful, but still you may hear it today (should you, tell them to go kick rocks).
What resulted was a growing U.S. workforce that lived in arrested development as the country’s technology, economy, and needs all grew on restlessly. So, now, we talk about dates like 2025, and 2030, and “60%,” because our development has outpaced our workforce, and with huge looming challenges like automation around the bend, we risk losing agency over our own power. What I mean, is that all the contemporary grievance over jobs lost overseas was once a capitalist decision that might have made some business-sense; By 2030, ‘losing jobs overseas’ may become a necessary action, rather than an economic choice or political argument.
Educational Empowerment Through the Eyes of an Hourly Worker
That all is a bit abstract, though, isn’t it? What does this mean for the working person? It’s been somewhat common to hear that the half-life of a skill is 5 years, meaning that something you learn today will be half-as relevant in 5 years, and irrelevant in 10 (still using Microsoft Word? Or have you switched over to Google Docs? Likely, you currently use both to some degree, but one of these is on the fall. Or, another way to put the word processor debate: are you still used to writing as the sole author of a document? Or have you recently gotten more comfortable with writing in a document simultaneously with a colleague, or perhaps several colleagues?). With the expansion of our technologic capabilities and knowledge, it’s been argued that this half-life has been reduced to 1-3 years. 10 years ago, Microsoft Office proficiency was a nice bonus on your resume; now, it is assumed you know every function of Excel and Photoshop before you even start your new job. It would be better if you had HTML, Java, and Python coding experience.
This is partly why education after high school is so important: you are being taught up to the latest advancements in whatever field you choose to study, rather than being given cursory information on broad things you are ‘supposed’ to know. For better or worse, public education is designed to be as accessible as possible while it is being required. This means that by the time you complete high school you’ve really only performed a rudimentary initiation in order to be considered a participating member of American society (a citizen, in a word). It doesn’t prepare adults for the workforce; it doesn’t even really prepare them for entering the workforce.
Therefore, the college experience tends to be so transformative: once people are treated like adults and are introduced into programs of like-minded folk who act as encouragers and teachers, they realize the true potential that education possesses. Rather than understanding the parameters of what you are ‘supposed’ to know, you learn there are fathomless depths of knowledge awaiting to be mined in the classroom, and not only that it’s truly capital-I Interesting, but that you’ve found a path that awards hard work and sustains you both intellectually and economically. ‘Path’ isn’t a euphemism either; you are moving forward through time while also moving up a financial ladder where the person ahead of you offers a hand up to the next rung. These experiences aren’t just foreign to the hourly worker, they are positively alien, and may even seem threatening in their exclusivity.
Education and Adversity
As we’ve entered 2021, can we possibly fathom the advancements that will come, and what they will ask of us within the next decade? Or what natural travesties will challenge us?
A couple more facts about college graduates during the Great Recession to make my point: “From January 2008 to January 2013, millions of people without college degrees lost jobs and never regained them, while all of the job gains went to the one-third of the labor force with at least a B.A. degree” (Brookings).
This wasn’t necessarily intentional; this was a compulsory reaction to where job-demand is headed, hastened by concurrent crisis.
“[College graduates] accounted for 36.5 percent of the U.S. labor force in January 2013; yet, they claimed 71% of the net new jobs created since then. To sum up these figures: of the 10,656,000 net new jobs created from January 2013 to the December 2017, 7,564,000 went to college graduates” (Brookings).
Approximately ten years later, we face a catastrophic pandemic that has ravaged the world, but perhaps most notably our nation and its people and economy. As Forbes has noted through the COVID Inequality Project, Americans with a degree were 8% less likely to lose their job than someone without a degree (In the U.K. the difference is about 7%. In Germany, this difference is 1%). Simply having a degree insulates an individual from the instability that may be roiling around them.
ALICE and Stability
Again, though, perhaps we are getting lost in numbers. What we are really talking about is about stability. Stability for the economy, stability for families, and a stable vision of a stable future. We then find ourselves in ALICE’s territory.
ALICE—Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed—is a designation created to talk about struggling families and populations while refraining from falling back on the decrepit Federal Poverty Line. The ALICE initiative started as a small pilot program in Morris County, New Jersey, and has since grown to become a national reporting system taking place in 21 states, and more than 648 United Ways.
In short, ALICE refers to those who are working, typically more than one or two jobs, have children, but lack a meaningful savings account or other assets like property. The picture of who ALICE is can vary wildly, but the distinguishing factor is the same: they are perhaps one bad day from having their life irrevocably harmed financially. By and large, these people also lack post-secondary (after high school) education, and while their current situation might reflect this, it also means they lack the means for upward mobility out of that situation.
Getting back to the half-life of skills: What if you haven’t taken the time to develop any or certain skills? Put simply, where will your employability as a member of the competitive workforce come from if you haven’t sought education after high school? To be frank, there is little if any jobs available, let alone ones that pay well.
Now, innumerable dollars have been funneled through different social services in an attempt to aid money to these unfortunate people, but not a single cent goes toward remedying the issue that led to the problem to begin with. Therefore, money would be much better spent training these individuals and awarding them credentials, so that they have more agency and less dependency on future social services. Philanthropy is a wonderful thing, but its longevity is taken for granted.
We haven’t even gotten into things like wage stagnation, the fact that the number of ALICE families are consistently rising, distinctions between degrees and credentials (or even distinctions within credentials themselves), and several dozen other relevant fronts in which to charge the problems noted here in this article, all of which would suggest the same thing; America, Central Florida, the people in which this article are about, to the person reading this, are all depending on a fragile population to take a high-stake risk while hardly in a position to try to do so—in fact actively discouraged from attempting through various systemic barriers and a society that often judges harshly the choices of those in financially precarious situations—in going back to school, either for a degree or credential, and empowering themselves and our community.
UpliftED Resources
"Engaging and supporting nontraditional adult learners is a critical facet of our work as higher education providers and community leaders,” said Zoé Colón, MPA, Community Partnerships Manager of Parramore Education Innovation District (PEID), at the University of Central Florida’s Center for Higher Education Innovation, and member of UpliftED’s Guiding Team as Chair of our Adult Learner Impact Team. “Inspiring and guiding this often-forgotten segment of our community towards higher earning jobs and fruitful careers not only helps lift families out of poverty, but [also] stimulates our local economy. Now, more than ever, we have an obligation to these learners so that they are better equipped to bounce back from the impact of this pandemic and [are] less susceptible to economic recession long term."
So, after many words, this is why UpliftED has committed years, but specifically the last few months, to develop tools and resources that help aid adults in taking that big leap back into education, while simultaneously trying to be encouraging without being condescending or patronizing—because that’s the thing: lack of education doesn’t mean unintelligent; at some point, someone stuck between a rock and a hard place followed ‘conventional’ wisdom, and maybe even doubt, too, and decided that the risk wasn’t worth it. Well, we’re here to say it is worth it, despite everything you may have previously been told.
To back it up, we’ve developed a new page for Adults Returning to School, to help with everything we can to get these folks into a program that will change their lives for the better. There are few things in this world that sincerely have that power, but education does. So, no matter if you are a veteran, or a high school drop-out, we’ve got resources to get you on the right track to a better future. It’s time to leave behind doubt and bad advice, and to do the seemingly hard thing and pursue a credential—and here’s another bit of advice not shared enough: the hardest part is getting in the door, because from there you will have organizations that will do their best to see you succeed, because (for better or worse) they have an investment in you as a student, and—to be frank again—institutions (and the state) have a better ROI (Return on Investment) with graduates, than they do stop-outs. The gatekeeping at the door is intentional for the prestige that universities claim (although refreshingly nonexistent in front of technical colleges), but it’s presented as a formality. Know how to play your cards, and they’ll even pay you to come through the door. Matter of fact: we’ve got some help for you there, too.
Sources
Adams-Prassl, Abi, et al. “Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus Shock: Evidence from Real Time Surveys.” Google Drive, COVID Inequality Project, 28 Apr. 2020, drive.google.com/file/d/1JYI4bzQ5ytmml_Vct8o-Zw7BqRsHKzsq/view.
“America's Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots.” CEW Georgetown, Georgetown University, 7 May 2020, cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/americas-divided-recovery/.
“College Dropouts Cost Cash-Strapped States Billions.” American Institutes for Research, 11 October 2010, air.org/news/press-release/college-dropouts-cost-cash-strapped-states-billions.
“Degree Attainment Profile: UpliftED.” Florida College Access Network, 2020.
“Immediate College Enrollment Rate.” The Condition of Education - Postsecondary Education - Postsecondary Students - Immediate College Enrollment Rate - Indicator April (2020), National Center for Education Statisitics, 2020, nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpa.asp.
Shapiro, Robert. “The New Economics of Jobs Is Bad News for Working-Class Americans-and Maybe for Trump.” Brookings.edu, Brookings Institution, 17 Jan. 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/16/the-new-economics-of-jobs-is-bad-news-for-working-class-americans-and-maybe-for-trump/.
“US Colleges Graduation Rate.” Univstats, IVSTATS, 2020, www.univstats.com/corestats/graduation-rate/.