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The Value of Education

“education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.” —nelson mandela.

I was so excited to wake up and see the headline on last Thursday’s newspaper: Next semester, juniors and underclassmen will for the first time be able to declare a secondary in Educational Studies. I’d heard rumors about a possible Education secondary that piqued my interest—I earned an associate’s degree in Education at the community college I attended before Harvard—but had no idea it would actually come to fruition in my remaining two years here. Giving students greater accessibility to formally exploring education, especially as an intersection to their respective concentrations, is a wonderful decision that will benefit many people at Harvard and beyond.

My mom has been a public elementary school teacher since before I was born, and because I grew up seeing just how much the job demanded from her, I always believed I’d never have anything to do with education. In community college, though, I heard rave reviews about an education class, and since I was undecided on my major, I took it. I enrolled in that class expecting to learn strictly teaching strategies and classroom management. To my surprise, it was centered around exploring the social and economic forces that shape the way our society interacts with and values schools and education. It made me rethink everything I knew about not only the American school system, but our society as a whole.

I learned about education inequality among races, incomes, and geographic locations. I learned about the critical role of community, school, and family support systems. I learned about the politics of education , the foundational policies, modern legislation, and ongoing issues of contention. Instead of simply learning how to teach, I learned how to better myself in order to help others learn. That was the most unexpected, yet fascinating part: I learned to identify my biases, empathize with others, acknowledge differences and establish common grounds, and build and maintain relationships with people very different from me—not just for the sake of teaching, but to be a greater positive influence on the world. I left that class with a much stronger appreciation of America’s education system, finally understanding the extent to which education intersects with all other aspects of our society.

Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of learning about schools, students, and myself as opposed to simple lesson planning, but the magic of this education class was that I began to notice and question things I’d always just passively accepted before. I started paying attention to how schools are funded and what kind of students different schools produce.

When I first came to Harvard, I was fascinated by student demographics and backgrounds . Quite a bit of what I learned in that class was applicable to daily life, too. I remember one class in which our professor explained student misbehavior as a possible manifestation of the frustrations of poverty, a difficult home life, and lack of a support system. This was a good lesson in learning about not only education but empathy, a reminder that you never know what someone else is going through.

That’s the value in exploring education through the new secondary, or even taking an education class or two. Studying education can provide you with a broader, more in-depth understanding of others, yourself, and the world around you. After all, learning is a lifelong endeavor; wouldn’t it be nice to better know who and what influences how you and others learn?

Every student at Harvard ended up here because of some kind of influence from the education system they grew up in, whether that system propelled them directly into a top university or they followed a less direct path. For students, it’s important to recognize the systems that enabled us to be here—and especially the political, social, and economic forces that drive those systems.

Educational Studies will enable us to do just that: better understand our own paths and, hopefully, better understand the forces that drive the paths of others. You might be surprised to see just how much the world of education intersects with your concentration; you might find out it intersects with fields you never would have expected. Even if you have no plans to pursue teaching or education careers, so much can be learned from this invaluable new program.

Emilee A. Hackney ’20 is an English concentrator living in Adams House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.

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Quality education an ‘essential pillar’ of a better future, says UN chief

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Education is an “essential pillar” to achieving the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN chief António Guterres told an audience on Tuesday at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization, ahead of the agency’s General Conference .

We must ensure universal access to basic education for every child, everywhere. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President, UN General Assembly

Mr. Guterres, who noted that one-fifth of young people are out of work, lack education or adequate training, praised UNESCO ’s fundamental role in coordinating and monitoring global efforts, such as the agency’s initiative on the future of education.

The theme was taken up by Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the UN General Assembly, in his opening remarks to a ministerial meeting on education at the Conference.

Mr. Muhammad-Bande referred to estimates showing that some 265 million children are out of school. The number is projected to fall to 220 million over the next decade, but he declared that the illiteracy figures forecast for 2030 remain a scandal: “We must remove all barriers to education. We must ensure, at a minimum, universal access to basic education for every child, everywhere.”

He also highlighted the importance of educating children effectively, and equipping them with the necessary analytical and critical thinking abilities, in “an ever-changing and more complex world”.

Recalling his former experience as an educator in his home country of Nigeria, Mr. Muhammad-Bande called for more efforts to ensure that teachers are adequately qualified, because “no educational system can rise above the quality of its teachers”.

We must treat young people not as subjects to be protected, but as powerful agents for change.I was very pleased to meet a few of these changemakers at @UNESCO this morning. pic.twitter.com/DjgZP0jNh9 António Guterres, UN Secretary-General antonioguterres

Other important measures cited by the General Assembly President include strong curricula that fully integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT); ensuring that girls complete at least 12 years of education (which, according to the World Bank, would add some $30 trillion to the global economy); and the effective monitoring and evaluation of learning.

Mr. Muhammad-Bande called on nations to meet their commitments to education spending, and for donor countries to increase international aid directed towards education.

‘Powerful agents of change’

As well as the difficulties in accessing quality education, Mr. Guterres also outlined several other challenges faced by young people: the fact that millions of girls become mothers while they are still children; that one quarter are affected by violence or conflict; and that online bullying and harassment are adding to high levels of stress, which see some 67,000 adolescents die from suicide or self-harm every year.

World leaders, and others who wield power, he continued, must treat young people not as subjects to be protected, but as powerful agents for change, and the role of the powerful is not to solve the enormous challenges faced by young people, but rather to give them the tools to tackle their problems.

Mr Guterres underscored the importance of bringing young people to the table as key partners, and praised UNESCO’s efforts to include their voices, which include holding a major event at the General Conference, and the Youth Forum .

• quality education

The turning point: Why we must transform education now

Global warming. Accelerated digital revolution. Growing inequalities. Democratic backsliding. Loss of biodiversity. Devastating pandemics. And the list goes on. These are just some of the most pressing challenges that we are facing today in our interconnected world.

The diagnosis is clear: Our current global education system is failing to address these alarming challenges and provide quality learning for everyone throughout life. We know that education today is not fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. These findings were detailed in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report in November 2021 which called for a new social contract for education.

That is why it has never been more crucial to reimagine the way we learn, what we learn and how we learn. The turning point is now. It’s time to transform education. How do we make that happen?

Here’s what you need to know. 

Why do we need to transform education?

The current state of the world calls for a major transformation in education to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. We must ensure the right to lifelong learning by providing all learners - of all ages in all contexts - the knowledge and skills they need to realize their full potential and live with dignity. Education can no longer be limited to a single period of one’s lifetime. Everyone, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged in our societies, must be entitled to learning opportunities throughout life both for employment and personal agency. A new social contract for education must unite us around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape a better world anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.  

What are the key areas that need to be transformed?

• Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools

Education is in crisis. High rates of poverty, exclusion and gender inequality continue to hold millions back from learning. Moreover, COVID-19 further exposed the inequities in education access and quality, and violence, armed conflict, disasters and reversal of women’s rights have increased insecurity. Inclusive, transformative education must ensure that all learners have unhindered access to and participation in education, that they are safe and healthy, free from violence and discrimination, and are supported with comprehensive care services within school settings. Transforming education requires a significant increase in investment in quality education, a strong foundation in comprehensive early childhood development and education, and must be underpinned by strong political commitment, sound planning, and a robust evidence base.

• Learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development

There is a crisis in foundational learning, of literacy and numeracy skills among young learners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills compared to their peers. More than 771 million people still lack basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom are women. Transforming education means empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to be resilient, adaptable and prepared for the uncertain future while contributing to human and planetary well-being and sustainable development. To do so, there must be emphasis on foundational learning for basic literacy and numeracy; education for sustainable development, which encompasses environmental and climate change education; and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

• Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession

Teachers are essential for achieving learning outcomes, and for achieving SDG 4 and the transformation of education. But teachers and education personnel are confronted by four major challenges: Teacher shortages; lack of professional development opportunities; low status and working conditions; and lack of capacity to develop teacher leadership, autonomy and innovation. Accelerating progress toward SDG 4 and transforming education require that there is an adequate number of teachers to meet learners’ needs, and all education personnel are trained, motivated, and supported. This can only be possible when education is adequately funded, and policies recognize and support the teaching profession, to improve their status and working conditions.

• Digital learning and transformation

The COVID-19 crisis drove unprecedented innovations in remote learning through harnessing digital technologies. At the same time, the digital divide excluded many from learning, with nearly one-third of school-age children (463 million) without access to distance learning. These inequities in access meant some groups, such as young women and girls, were left out of learning opportunities. Digital transformation requires harnessing technology as part of larger systemic efforts to transform education, making it more inclusive, equitable, effective, relevant, and sustainable. Investments and action in digital learning should be guided by the three core principles: Center the most marginalized; Free, high-quality digital education content; and Pedagogical innovation and change.

• Financing of education

While global education spending has grown overall, it has been thwarted by high population growth, the surmounting costs of managing education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a massive global education financial gap amounting to US$ 148 billion annually. In this context, the first step toward transformation is to urge funders to redirect resources back to education to close the funding gap. Following that, countries must have significantly increased and sustainable financing for achieving SDG 4 and that these resources must be equitably and effectively allocated and monitored. Addressing the gaps in education financing requires policy actions in three key areas: Mobilizing more resources, especially domestic; increasing efficiency and equity of allocations and expenditures; and improving education financing data. Finally, determining which areas needs to be financed, and how, will be informed by recommendations from each of the other four action tracks .

What is the Transforming Education Summit?

UNESCO is hosting the Transforming Education Pre-Summit on 28-30 June 2022, a meeting of  over 140 Ministers of Education, as well as  policy and business leaders and youth activists, who are coming together to build a roadmap to transform education globally. This meeting is a precursor to the Transforming Education Summit to be held on 19 September 2022 at the UN General Assembly in New York. This high-level summit is convened by the UN Secretary General to radically change our approach to education systems. Focusing on 5 key areas of transformation, the meeting seeks to mobilize political ambition, action, solutions and solidarity to transform education: to take stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses; to reimagine education systems for the world of today and tomorrow; and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG-4.

• More on the Transforming Education Summit
• More on the Pre-Summit

Related items

• Future of education
• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

Post-Tribune | The importance of a college education

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Contrary to this false narrative, a college education is more important now than ever before, for both tangible and intangible reasons. A college degree is still the surest way to increase wage potential. In addition, with the rise of artificial intelligence and the consistent call for multi-talented and flexible critical thinkers in our workplaces, college is — and will increasingly be — the best way to prepare for an uncertain future.

From a wage perspective alone, college is crucial to finding security in the often-unstable and unpredictable economy of the 21st century. According to a report on the value of college majors conducted by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, “people who earn bachelor’s degrees and work full-time can expect to earn 84 percent more than their peers with a high school diploma over their lifetime.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education estimates this earnings gap to be more than $32,000 per year, resulting in a lifetime total of nearly $1.4 million. This conservative estimate assumes the wage gap will not increase, which it has done for decades. Beyond wage earnings, college graduates also receive increased employer-provided fringe benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans that result in better health and longer life expectancy.

In other words, investment in a college education yields an extremely strong return on investment, and any student (or parent) weighing the cost-benefits analysis of paying for higher education need only glance at those numbers to see that college is incredibly influential in terms of a person’s long-term financial stability and that its value is higher today than it ever has been. In addition, the Chronicle goes on to state that “graduates with bachelor’s degrees pay $563,000 more in taxes than high-school graduates who never attended college” — showing that these earnings benefit not just the individual but the greater economic environment as well.

Wage-earning potential is not the only way a college education paves the way toward a secure future. A 2018 report from Bain & Company Inc. examines how automation and artificial intelligence, among other factors, are changing the landscape of what it means to be a worker. The report predicts that “the rapid spread of automation may eliminate as many as 20 percent to 25 percent of current jobs — equivalent to 40 million displaced workers — and depress wage growth for many more workers.”

However, the researchers qualify this statement with the following: “The benefits of automation will likely flow to about 20 percent of workers — primarily highly compensated, highly skilled workers — as well as to the owners of capital.” Furthermore, “the demand for workers to build the automation tools of the future is already growing, and not only in fields such as engineering and software development.”

Tech companies will be calling for highly skilled employees trained in STEM-related fields, of course, but these same companies will need employees with communications, business and humanities backgrounds who can market their products, recruit potential investors and interact with clients and media. College graduates with industry-specific skills and the growth potential to weather the changes brought by artificial intelligence will contribute positively to the development, sale and use of technology as it changes the way we work.

While a college degree can certainly provide a student with specialized training in a particular field and higher income potential over a lifetime, what cannot be overlooked are the intangible skills that a college degree instills in its students. A 2016 study published in the Review of Educational Research found that “both critical thinking skills and dispositions improve substantially over a normal college experience”. A New York Federal Reserve study published in 2014 confirmed that “college instills in students ‘aptitudes, skills and other characteristics that make them different from those who do not go on to college’.”

In today’s ephemeral job market, where it is normal to have more jobs in the first three years out of college than our grandparents did during their entire lifetimes, the ability to tackle a wide array of problems, projects and proposals is priceless. Without a college degree, a person could still gain some of these skills, but a defining feature of a four-year degree is a steady stream of classes, experiential learning opportunities like internships or research and interpersonal interactions that uniquely prepare a student for a diverse working world. These are often posited as “soft” skills, yet it is these attributes gained on campus that are often what set one applicant apart from another, making a college degree an integral part of the job acquisition — and retention — process.

The world is changing at a rapid pace. While it isn’t entirely possible to know everything that will occur in the future, colleges and universities in Northwest Indiana — and across the country — are working diligently to prepare our students for what is to come. A college education is not the only path, but it is the strongest proven path toward financial stability, job retention and career malleability — and there is no way to put a price tag on that.

Mark A. Heckler, Ph.D., is the President of Valparaiso University.

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The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 90 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion.

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a  9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling . For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.  Education is further a powerful catalyst to climate action through widespread behavior change and skilling for green transitions.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the  2018 World Development Report  (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to  Learning Poverty , and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world. 

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in  Learning Poverty  (that is, the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text) increased from 57% before the pandemic to an estimated  70%  in 2022.

However, learning is in crisis. More than 70 million more people were pushed into poverty during the COVID pandemic, a billion children lost a year of school , and three years later the learning losses suffered have not been recouped .  If a child cannot read with comprehension by age 10, they are unlikely to become fluent readers. They will fail to thrive later in school and will be unable to power their careers and economies once they leave school.

The effects of the pandemic are expected to be long-lasting. Analysis has already revealed deep losses, with international reading scores declining from 2016 to 2021 by more than a year of schooling.  These losses may translate to a 0.68 percentage point in global GDP growth.  The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of  US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings  in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss. 

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Acceleration Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and advance progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024

The World Bank’s global education strategy is centered on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. To reach this, we are helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. From early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

Investing in the world’s most precious resource – people – is paramount to ending poverty on a livable planet.  Our experience across more than 100 countries bears out this robust connection between human capital, quality of life, and economic growth: when countries strategically invest in people and the systems designed to protect and build human capital at scale, they unlock the wealth of nations and the potential of everyone.

Building on this, the World Bank supports resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $26 billion in 94 countries including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise 62% of the education portfolio.

The investment in FCV settings has increased dramatically and now accounts for 26% of our portfolio.

World Bank projects reach at least 425 million students -one-third of students in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Bank’s Approach to Education

Five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach:

• Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
• Teachers are prepared, skilled, and motivated to facilitate learning and skills acquisition;
• Learning resources (including education technology) are available, relevant, and used to improve teaching and learning;
• Schools are safe and inclusive; and
• Education Systems are well-managed, with good implementation capacity and adequate financing.

The Bank is already helping governments design and implement cost-effective programs and tools to build these pillars.

Our Principles:

• We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children. 
• We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education, including children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas , those in marginalized and rural communities,  girls and women , displaced populations,  students with disabilities , and other vulnerable groups.
• We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements.   
• We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all. 
• We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives.   

Laying the groundwork for the future

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms.  Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the  average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic , and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning.  In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact.  We still need more and better funding for education.  Closing the learning gap will require increasing the level, efficiency, and equity of education spending—spending smarter is an imperative.

• Education technology  can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/ TV / Online learning resources; and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity  to reimagine education in bold ways. Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth.

Accelerating Improvements

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the  Accelerator Program  works with a set of countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation.  Countries such as Brazil (the state of Ceará) and Kenya have achieved dramatic reductions in learning poverty over the past decade at scale, providing useful lessons, even as they seek to build on their successes and address remaining and new challenges.  

Universalizing Foundational Literacy

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The  Literacy Policy Package (LPP)   consists of interventions focused specifically on promoting acquisition of reading proficiency in primary school. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Advancing skills through TVET and Tertiary

Ensuring that individuals have access to quality education and training opportunities and supporting links to employment.

Tertiary education and skills systems are a driver of major development agendas, including human capital, climate change, youth and women’s empowerment, and jobs and economic transformation. A comprehensive skill set to succeed in the 21st century labor market consists of foundational and higher order skills, socio-emotional skills, specialized skills, and digital skills. Yet most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development. 

The World Bank is supporting countries through efforts that address key challenges including improving access and completion, adaptability, quality, relevance, and efficiency of skills development programs. Our approach is via multiple channels including projects, global goods, as well as the Tertiary Education and Skills Program . Our recent reports including Building Better Formal TVET Systems and STEERing Tertiary Education provide a way forward for how to improve these critical systems.

Addressing Climate Change

Mainstreaming climate education and investing in green skills, research and innovation, and green infrastructure to spur climate action and foster better preparedness and resilience to climate shocks.

Our approach recognizes that education is critical for achieving effective, sustained climate action. At the same time, climate change is adversely impacting education outcomes. Investments in education can play a huge role in building climate resilience and advancing climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change education gives young people greater awareness of climate risks and more access to tools and solutions for addressing these risks and managing related shocks. Technical and vocational education and training can also accelerate a green economic transformation by fostering green skills and innovation. Greening education infrastructure can help mitigate the impact of heat, pollution, and extreme weather on learning, while helping address climate change. 

Examples of this work are projects in Nigeria (life skills training for adolescent girls), Vietnam (fostering relevant scientific research) , and Bangladesh (constructing and retrofitting schools to serve as cyclone shelters).

Strengthening Measurement Systems

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) The  Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) : This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics.

• Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and
• Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in 13 education systems already – Peru, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sierra Leone, Niger, Gabon, Jordan and Chad – with more expected by the end of 2024.

(2)  Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP) : LeAP is a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to support student achievement measurement and national assessments for better learning.

Supporting Successful Teachers

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 160 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool, Teach, was designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries. It is now 3.6 million students.

While Teach helps identify patterns in teacher performance, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching practice through hands-on in-service teacher professional development (TPD).

Our recent report on Making Teacher Policy Work proposes a practical framework to uncover the black box of effective teacher policy and discusses the factors that enable their scalability and sustainability.

 Supporting Education Finance Systems

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize resources for education and make better use of their investments in education.

Our approach is to bring together multi-sectoral expertise to engage with ministries of education and finance and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective and efficient public financial management systems; build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks, and develop interventions to strengthen financing systems; build the evidence base on global spending patterns and the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies; and develop diagnostic tools as public goods to support country efforts.

Working in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio.

Education is crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term. 

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. 

The ongoing  Supporting  Egypt  Education Reform project , 2018-2025, supports transformational reforms of the Egyptian education system, by improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. The World Bank has invested $500 million in the project focused on increasing access to quality kindergarten, enhancing the capacity of teachers and education leaders, developing a reliable student assessment system, and introducing the use of modern technology for teaching and learning. Specifically, the share of Egyptian 10-year-old students, who could read and comprehend at the global minimum proficiency level, increased to 45 percent in 2021.

In  Nigeria , the $75 million  Edo  Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation (EdoBESST)  project, running from 2020-2024, is focused on improving teaching and learning in basic education. Under the project, which covers 97 percent of schools in the state, there is a strong focus on incorporating digital technologies for teachers. They were equipped with handheld tablets with structured lesson plans for their classes. Their coaches use classroom observation tools to provide individualized feedback. Teacher absence has reduced drastically because of the initiative. Over 16,000 teachers were trained through the project, and the introduction of technology has also benefited students.

Through the $235 million  School Sector Development Program  in  Nepal  (2017-2022), the number of children staying in school until Grade 12 nearly tripled, and the number of out-of-school children fell by almost seven percent. During the pandemic, innovative approaches were needed to continue education. Mobile phone penetration is high in the country. More than four in five households in Nepal have mobile phones. The project supported an educational service that made it possible for children with phones to connect to local radio that broadcast learning programs.

From 2017-2023, the $50 million  Strengthening of State Universities  in  Chile  project has made strides to improve quality and equity at state universities. The project helped reduce dropout: the third-year dropout rate fell by almost 10 percent from 2018-2022, keeping more students in school.

The World Bank’s first  Program-for-Results financing in education  was through a $202 million project in  Tanzania , that ran from 2013-2021. The project linked funding to results and aimed to improve education quality. It helped build capacity, and enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in the education sector. Through the project, learning outcomes significantly improved alongside an unprecedented expansion of access to education for children in Tanzania. From 2013-2019, an additional 1.8 million students enrolled in primary schools. In 2019, the average reading speed for Grade 2 students rose to 22.3 words per minute, up from 17.3 in 2017. The project laid the foundation for the ongoing $500 million  BOOST project , which supports over 12 million children to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills, and complete a quality education.

The $40 million  Cambodia  Secondary Education Improvement project , which ran from 2017-2022, focused on strengthening school-based management, upgrading teacher qualifications, and building classrooms in Cambodia, to improve learning outcomes, and reduce student dropout at the secondary school level. The project has directly benefited almost 70,000 students in 100 target schools, and approximately 2,000 teachers and 600 school administrators received training.

The World Bank is co-financing the $152.80 million  Yemen  Restoring Education and Learning Emergency project , running from 2020-2024, which is implemented through UNICEF, WFP, and Save the Children. It is helping to maintain access to basic education for many students, improve learning conditions in schools, and is working to strengthen overall education sector capacity. In the time of crisis, the project is supporting teacher payments and teacher training, school meals, school infrastructure development, and the distribution of learning materials and school supplies. To date, almost 600,000 students have benefited from these interventions.

The $87 million  Providing an Education of Quality in  Haiti  project supported approximately 380 schools in the Southern region of Haiti from 2016-2023. Despite a highly challenging context of political instability and recurrent natural disasters, the project successfully supported access to education for students. The project provided textbooks, fresh meals, and teacher training support to 70,000 students, 3,000 teachers, and 300 school directors. It gave tuition waivers to 35,000 students in 118 non-public schools. The project also repaired 19 national schools damaged by the 2021 earthquake, which gave 5,500 students safe access to their schools again.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in  Uzbekistan  had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the  Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project , by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bilaterals, and other multilateral organizations. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the  Coalition for Foundational Learning  to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning.  The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the  Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning , a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

Australian Aid, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Echida Giving, FCDO, German Cooperation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Porticus, USAID: Early Learning Partnership

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is a multi-donor trust fund, housed at the World Bank.  ELP leverages World Bank strengths—a global presence, access to policymakers and strong technical analysis—to improve early learning opportunities and outcomes for young children around the world.

We help World Bank teams and countries get the information they need to make the case to invest in Early Childhood Development (ECD), design effective policies and deliver impactful programs. At the country level, ELP grants provide teams with resources for early seed investments that can generate large financial commitments through World Bank finance and government resources. At the global level, ELP research and special initiatives work to fill knowledge gaps, build capacity and generate public goods.

UNESCO, UNICEF:  Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a  Learning Data Compact , a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS):   Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education.

FCDO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

MasterCard Foundation

Our Tertiary Education and Skills  global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities.  It is designed to reframe, reform, and rebuild tertiary education and skills systems for the digital and green transformation.

Bridging the AI divide: Breaking down barriers to ensure women’s leadership and participation in the Fifth Industrial Revolution

Common challenges and tailored solutions: How policymakers are strengthening early learning systems across the world

Compulsory education boosts learning outcomes and climate action

Areas of focus.

Digital Technologies

Early Childhood Development

Education Data & Measurement

Education Finance

Education in Fragile, Conflict & Violence Contexts

Girls’ Education

Higher Education

Inclusive Education

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• Tertiary Education and Skills Program
• Service Delivery Indicators
• Evoke: Transforming education to empower youth
• Global Education Policy Dashboard
• Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel
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Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It

BROCHURES & FACT SHEETS

Flyer: Education Factsheet - May 2024

Publication: Realizing Education's Promise: A World Bank Retrospective – August 2023

Education and Climate Change flyer - November 2022

Learning Losses Brochure - October 2022

World Bank Group Education Fact Sheet - September 2022

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Our Best Education Articles of 2020

In February of 2020, we launched the new website Greater Good in Education , a collection of free, research-based and -informed strategies and practices for the social, emotional, and ethical development of students, for the well-being of the adults who work with them, and for cultivating positive school cultures. Little did we know how much more crucial these resources would become over the course of the year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, as we head back to school in 2021, things are looking a lot different than in past years. Our most popular education articles of 2020 can help you manage difficult emotions and other challenges at school in the pandemic, all while supporting the social-emotional well-being of your students.

In addition to these articles, you can also find tips, tools, and recommended readings in two resource guides we created in 2020: Supporting Learning and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Crisis and Resources to Support Anti-Racist Learning , which helps educators take action to undo the racism within themselves, encourage their colleagues to do the same, and teach and support their students in forming anti-racist identities.

Here are the 10 best education articles of 2020, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors’ picks.

Can the Lockdown Push Schools in a Positive Direction? , by Patrick Cook-Deegan: Here are five ways that COVID-19 could change education for the better.

How Teachers Can Navigate Difficult Emotions During School Closures , by Amy L. Eva: Here are some tools for staying calm and centered amid the coronavirus crisis.

Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope With COVID-19 , by Lea Waters: These well-being practices can help students feel connected and resilient during the pandemic.

Help Students Process COVID-19 Emotions With This Lesson Plan , by Maurice Elias: Music and the arts can help students transition back to school this year.

How to Teach Online So All Students Feel Like They Belong , by Becki Cohn-Vargas and Kathe Gogolewski: Educators can foster belonging and inclusion for all students, even online.

How Teachers Can Help Students With Special Needs Navigate Distance Learning , by Rebecca Branstetter: Kids with disabilities are often shortchanged by pandemic classroom conditions. Here are three tips for educators to boost their engagement and connection.

How to Reduce the Stress of Homeschooling on Everyone , by Rebecca Branstetter: A school psychologist offers advice to parents on how to support their child during school closures.

Three Ways to Help Your Kids Succeed at Distance Learning , by Christine Carter: How can parents support their children at the start of an uncertain school year?

How Schools Are Meeting Social-Emotional Needs During the Pandemic , by Frances Messano, Jason Atwood, and Stacey Childress: A new report looks at how schools have been grappling with the challenges imposed by COVID-19.

Six Ways to Help Your Students Make Sense of a Divisive Election , by Julie Halterman: The election is over, but many young people will need help understanding what just happened.

Train Your Brain to Be Kinder (video), by Jane Park: Boost your kindness by sending kind thoughts to someone you love—and to someone you don’t get along with—with a little guidance from these students.

From Othering to Belonging (podcast): We speak with john a. powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, about racial justice, well-being, and widening our circles of human connection and concern.

About the Author

Greater good editors.

How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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What’s the Value of Higher Education?

Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society? Dr. Johnnetta Cole discusses how universities can inform and inspire.

• Dr. Johnnetta Cole President Emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; President Emerita, Spelman College and Bennett College

This interview was conducted at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit , hosted by Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute on January 30, 2018.

The value of a college degree can be measured in a number of different ways: increased lifetime earnings potential, a network of classmates and fellow alumni, subject-matter expertise, a signal of stick-to-itiveness, potentially a marker of class or the capacity to move across classes. There are also less tangible benefits, like becoming a more well-rounded individual and part of a well-informed public.

Yale Insights recently talked with Dr. Johnnetta Cole about how she measures the value of higher education. Cole is the former president of Spelman College and Bennett College, the only two historically black colleges and universities that are exclusively women’s colleges. After retiring from academia, she served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. In addition, she served on the boards of a number of corporations, including Home Depot, Merck, and Coca-Cola. She was the first African-American chair of the board for the United Way of America.

Q: Why does higher education matter?

I would say that we could get widespread agreement on what I’m going to call the first purpose of higher education: through this amazingly powerful process of teaching and learning, students come to better understand the world.

There might be some disagreement on the second purpose. I’d say it is to inspire students to figure out how they can contribute to helping to make the world better. Certainly, higher education is about scholarship, but it’s also about service. It’s about creativity. It’s about matters of the mind, but it’s also, or at least it should be, about matters of the heart and the soul.

Q: Has the public perception of universities changed in recent years?

Throughout the history—and herstory—of higher education, there have been doubters, those who have critiqued it. But I have a concern, and some polls tell us, in this period in which we are living, many people believe that higher education is not contributing in a positive way to American life.

That’s something that we need to work on, those of us who are deeply engaged in and care about higher education, because I think when one looks with as much objectivity as possible, the truth is, and it’s always been, that higher education contributes substantially.

Q: You’ve led two historically black colleges for women. What is the role of special mission institutions?

In my view, we still need special mission institutions. Remember Brandeis, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young are special mission institutions.

With respect to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), not every African American wants to or does go to an HBCU. The same is true of women and women’s colleges. But for those who wish that kind of education, and if the fit is right, it’s almost magical.

I think it is as basic as having an entire community believe that you can. On these campuses, we believe that black students can do whatever they set their minds to do. On the women’s campuses, we believe that women can reach heights that have not been imagined for women.

HBCUs are not totally free of racism. Women’s colleges are not utopias where there are no expressions of gender inequality or sexism. But they come far closer than at our predominately white and co-ed institutions.

Q: One of the big issues with higher education now is cost. How do we solve the affordability problem?

The affordability question is highly complex and serious. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” I believe that this is a perfect example. Colleges and universities are not just raising tuitions so they can make big profits. Pell grants are no longer at least a reasonable response to the affordability question.

We’ve got to figure this out because, in a democracy, accessibility to education is fundamental. The idea that something as precious, as powerful, as a solid education is only accessible to some and not to others, is an assault upon democracy.

Q: You came out of retirement to lead the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Why was the draw so strong?

I’ve managed, systematically, to get a failing grade in retirement.

I grew up in the South, in the days of legalized segregation—you could also call it state-sponsored racism. I didn’t have access to symphony halls. I didn’t have access to art museums. I still remember the library that I went to in order to travel the world through books, was the A. L. Lewis Colored Public Library.

As a young girl, I fell in love with the visual arts, especially African and African-American art. I went off to Fisk University at age 15 and began to see the real works of art for which we only had reproductions in my home. From Fisk, I went to Oberlin, where the Allen Memorial Art Gallery was a special place of solace for me

The opportunity with the Smithsonian wasn’t something I sought; I was asked to apply. My doctorate is in anthropology, not art history, so I was reluctant, but they told me they were looking for a leader, not an art historian. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The work was an almost indescribable joy.

Generally, our museums across America do not reflect who America is, nor do they reflect how our world looks. They need to be far more diverse in terms of their boards, staff, exhibitions, educational programs, and visitorship.

What the African art museum has is a unique opportunity because it can speak to something that binds us together. If one is human, just go back far enough, I mean way back, and we have all come from a single place. It is called Africa.

Here’s a museum that says to its visitors, “No matter who you are, by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability or disability, or nationality, come to a place where the visual arts connect you to the very cradle of humanity.”

During those eight years when I had the joy of being the director of the National Museum of African Art, I would greet our visitors by saying “Welcome home! Welcome to a place that presents the diverse and dynamic, the exquisite arts of Africa, humanity’s original home.”

Q: Do you think that our education and cultural institutions are properly valued in our society?

I have to say no. Because if we did, we would take better care of them. If we did, we would make sure that not some but all of our educational institutions from kindergarten through post-secondary education, into graduate and professional schools, have the means to do what needs to be done.

If we really value all of our cultural expressions, whether it’s dance or music, visual arts, theater, when there is a budget shortfall, we wouldn’t say, “These are the first things to go.” We wouldn’t say, “Kids can do without music in their public school.” It’s one thing to say we love an institution; it’s another to care for and protect an institution. I think we can do far better.

Magazine readers share their thoughts on the value of a college education

The question of whether a degree is still worth the sizable investment strikes a chord in the college & careers issue., educational value.

I was amazed that not a single word in “Is College Still Worth It?” mentioned the value of what is actually learned (April 14). I received a liberal arts education at a private university in the mid-1960s. For me, what made college worthwhile was not just the money I later made from having a degree but the learning experience I had while I was there. It opened my eyes to a wider worldview and exposed me to people and ideas I never would have discovered. My education helped me to become a more thoughtful person than I might have been had I not attended. Nearly every life experience I’ve had since was enhanced by the education I received as an undergraduate.

Sam Kafrissen

This story asked the wrong question. A more relevant and insightful question would have been “At what cost is college worth it?” The responses could be much different for an annual cost of $30,000 versus $90,000. Another way to approach this issue is to ask at what level of accumulated student debt a college education could be justified on the basis of economic return. Leaving college with a loan balance of, say, $15,000 is much different than $150,000 or more in terms of monthly loan payments and the impact on one’s discretionary spending and ability to build savings.

Daniel Levenson

As a retired educational and vocational counselor, I would advise anyone deciding whether or not to go to college to rely on facts, not opinions. The survey done by the Globe and Emerson College is interesting, but it should not weigh too heavily on that decision. Every individual is different; what is right for one is probably wrong for another. Seek good counseling. There are aptitude tests that can give a good indication of whether one will be successful in various occupations, and interest inventories that can compare your interests to successful people in various occupations.

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There is no consideration of potential job satisfaction, with the focus being exclusively on college cost, loans, and potential earnings. How many of the surveyed cohort might have found a rewarding career in a field unconnected with higher education? I speak as a college dropout; in my junior year, over 50 years ago, I abandoned a scholarship in favor of working. I am now long retired from a successful and lucrative 40-year career as a carpenter, building contractor, and real estate investor, and in retrospect, could not have chosen a more satisfying way to earn a living. Perhaps the emphasis on a college degree usually leading to higher income is driven by the relentless barrage of marketing that has convinced people that their satisfaction with life is achieved only by acquiring more and costlier stuff.

Steven Artigas

Westerly, Rhode Island

To What Degree

Overlooked in this brief article are the many jobs in the building and construction trades (“How Important Is a College Degree in Today’s Job Market?” April 14). Compensation and benefits are excellent, and these jobs are readily available to those who applied themselves in public technical and vocational high schools. In my half-century of commercial bank lending, a majority of my large general and specialty contractor clients entered a building trade directly out of high school. (All this while the parents of other students were driving around “looking at colleges.”) Many of them eventually founded companies that grew impressively in clients and number of employees.

Paul Ricchi

Rumford, Rhode Island

I feel that the writers are making the wrong comparison. One should compare a 22-year-old college educated job applicant with a 22-year-old without a college education. Even a bright 18-year-old high school graduate is unlikely to get hired because of lack of maturity and life experience, whereas a 22-year-old may well be hired despite a lack of a degree. College confers not only four more years of maturity at a critical time in one’s life, but actual experiences (living away from home, making decisions about money and time management), not only advanced education.

Ellen Penso

West Newton

As a manager who often hires new employees, I always look at degrees and years completed, and make rough calculations in my mind, to note who completed their bachelor’s in four years and grad degrees in typical durations. In fact, just the achievement of finishing what one has started I always take as a positive. We know all the posturing, pressure, and challenges that confront young adults; if one has a track record of completing a goal, and by reason handling all the smaller tasks and social pressures to get there, I think the applicant in front of me has, to some degree, what it takes to do the job.

Peter J. Atkinson

CONTACT US: Write to [email protected] or The Boston Globe Magazine/Comments, 1 Exchange Place, Suite 201, Boston, MA 02109-2132. Comments are subject to editing.

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Recognizing the Value of Educational Research

• A recent survey shows that research on teaching and learning is not valued at many AACSB-accredited schools across the U.S. and Canada.
• One reason that business schools might not recognize research on teaching and learning is that the journal quality lists they commonly use to assess faculty intellectual contributions focus primarily on discipline-based scholarship.
• STEM fields already place equal value on research on teaching and learning within individual disciplines. By following their lead, two Canadian scholars argue, business schools will enrich their students’ learning experiences.    

If business educators were asked to define the purpose of business schools, they likely would emphasize the need to “prepare the next generation of leaders.” But if this is the case, why do so few business schools prioritize research that advances teaching and curricular design?

Researcher Sanobar Siddiqui first explored this question as the subject of her doctoral dissertation. “One of my thesis findings was that the tenure system’s lack of rewards impedes business academics from pursuing research in teaching and learning,” she explains.

Now an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Regina’s Faculty of Business Administration in Canada, Siddiqui wanted to learn why so many business schools do not value research on teaching and learning (RoTL). This response is puzzling, she says, given that Standard 7 of the  AACSB Business Accreditation Standards  accepts “scholarship of teaching and learning” as documentation to indicate a business school’s teaching effectiveness and impact.

She and Camillo Lento, a professor with the Faculty of Business Administration at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, published a  paper  on the status of RoTL in the April 2022 edition of the International Journal of Educational Management . The paper’s findings are based on a survey in which Siddiqui and Lento asked educators two questions:

• How do AACSB-accredited business schools in the U.S. and Canada define “teaching effectiveness,” according to AACSB’s Standard 7?
• Do these schools consider research on teaching and learning in their promotion and tenure decisions?

This topic is particularly important, says Siddiqui, because business schools serve such diverse student audiences. Moreover, learner success is integral to every business school’s mission. Many of the instructional strategies “that we use in class are not research-informed or evidence-based. Hence, we are shortchanging our students,” she says. “Our teaching needs to catch up with the changes we see in our classroom.”

‘A Last Priority’

Siddiqui and Lento received 78 responses to their survey; in the second phase of their study, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 educators in the U.S. and Canada.

Among survey respondents, 42 percent noted that they were “unaware of an explicit teaching effectiveness definition” at their schools, but 58 percent said the policies in place at their schools communicated “an implied definition.” Only one respondent could quote a definition of teaching effectiveness from the school’s website.

Respondents noted a lack of “perceived respect and value” for RoTL, describing this line of scholarship as “a last priority” at their schools. As one educator put it, “Our department does not really care about teaching as long as you are cranking out strong scholarship.”

Schools that consider educational research for tenure and faculty qualification tend to focus on journal quality alone, not on whether published articles are discipline-based.

The good news is that 55 percent of respondents noted that their schools did take RoTL into account when making tenure decisions. Siddiqui and Lento found that these schools have two things in common. First, they focus on journal quality alone for the purposes of tenure and faculty qualification, not on whether faculty’s published articles are discipline-based.

Second, these schools are more likely to consider RoTL when faculty include this work “as part of a larger research plan that includes discipline-based research.” Only faculty following teaching tracks are likely to receive tenure based solely on publications in education-focused journals. 

Additionally, teaching-oriented schools are more likely than research-oriented schools to recognize RoTL. While this makes outward sense, Siddiqui wonders why prolific faculty who produce innovative scholarship on pedagogical issues that are critical to business education cannot “be hired, promoted, and awarded just like discipline-based researchers” at research-oriented institutions.

What Perpetuates the Stigma?

Siddiqui and Lento point to several factors that could be driving the lack of recognition of RoTL among AACSB-accredited schools:

No consensus about teaching quality.  Although many individual educational institutions have defined teaching effectiveness based on existing research, business schools have not yet established a shared definition of what constitutes effective teaching. However, the co-authors emphasize, more dedicated research could produce findings that inspire a common language around teaching and learning.

The complex nature of determining teaching quality. Schools often evaluate the quality of faculty’s research by whether the work appears in academic journals that are rated highly by certain  journal quality lists . However, they find they cannot use a similar approach to evaluate the quality of faculty’s teaching, says Lento. “The evaluation of teaching effectiveness is much more complex and requires many more sources of information, possibly compiled into a teaching dossier that is unique to an educator.”

A lack of attention in business doctoral programs. Most doctoral programs train young researchers to study topics related to their disciplines of choice. As a result of this early training, RoTL “may come with a stigma as it is outside of traditional discipline-specific research,” Lento says.

Lento admits that the reasons listed above are speculative. He and Siddiqui would like to see other researchers conduct follow-up studies that take deeper dives into the broader stigma surrounding RoTL.

Changing Mindsets, Taking Action

In the meantime, Siddiqui and Lento call on business school administrators and faculty to work together to create a “shared and precise definition of teaching effectiveness.” Educators can start by defining teaching quality within their own institutions.

From there, Siddiqui and Lento say that schools can take any or all the following actions to change mindsets about RoTL:

• Set appropriate objectives, incentives, and evaluation mechanisms.
• Create and nurture communities of practice that help like-minded faculty pursue research focused on solving issues they face in their classrooms.
• Consider weighing education research in peer-reviewed articles more heavily, particularly for faculty in teaching-focused roles.
• Recognize RoTL for accreditation and tenure and normalize it as a legitimate form of scholarship.
• Make seed funds available to faculty who pursue RoTL.
• Give awards and incentives to faculty who use research-informed teaching in their classrooms.
• Consider hiring tenure-track academics who also are expert educators with an expressed interest in pursuing RoTL. These scholars can investigate and develop “research-informed teaching tools ready to be put into practice in almost any business classroom,” says Siddiqui. This outcome, she emphasizes, is an indication of how RoTL contributes to the advancement of business disciplines.
• Encourage and teach RoTL in doctoral programs, with the aim of improving and advancing the quality of teaching at business schools.

Siddiqui points out that information on the websites of AACSB-accredited schools “are replete with research centers, research chairs and scholars, core research focus areas, research awards, annual research celebration reports, intellectual contributions, and grant-funding awards.”

There is no reason, she says, that schools could not also highlight information about their teaching philosophies, teaching awards, student feedback, educational leadership and professional development, and faculty research on teaching and learning.

Two B-School Perspectives

So far, Siddiqui and Lento’s paper has captured the attention of other like-minded educators in the business school community. This includes Nicola Charwat, associate dean of teaching and learning and senior lecturer of business law and taxation at Monash University’s Monash Business School (MBS) in Caulfield East, Australia.

MBS prioritizes scholarship on teaching and learning (SoTL) where appropriate, she says, through efforts that include identifying quality education-oriented journals and valuing publication in those journals equally to publication in discipline-based journals. The school uses “a consultative process” to identify journals specializing in teaching and learning that are equivalent to discipline-based journals rated as A*, A, B, and C on the quality list compiled by the Australian Business Deans Council.

“We have also instituted a Business Education and Research Group, which has been awarding both practice- and research-output-focused grants to staff for three years,” Charwat says. “Alongside these efforts, of course, there are moves in the university in line with the broader trend of raising the profile of teaching and ensuring its status is on par with other work of the university.”

Educators in STEM disciplines have long recognized educational research in tenure decisions and regularly reward academics who pursue RoTL in their disciplines.

Despite these changes, Charwat notes that the perception remains that accomplishments related to educational research are “somehow lesser” than those related to discipline-related scholarship. Additionally, many faculty remain uncertain about how to approach educational research. In response, MBS has built communities of practice dedicated to teaching and is now working “to increase awareness of and opportunities to undertake SoTL and education research,” Charwat says.

Charwat says that the questions raised in Siddiqui and Lento’s paper are “essential” to business education, and that their article “has prompted us to start exploring the patterns of our own SoTL and education research.” MBS faculty, she adds, might also pursue a similar study focused on AACSB-accredited schools in Australia. 

Another educator who read the article with interest is Martin Lockett, former dean and professor of strategic management at Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China) in Zhejiang. Lockett explains that NUBS China uses the Academic Journal Guide , which is produced by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), to support tenure decisions and to classify faculty under AACSB accreditation standards.

But in the CABS guide, only four journals focused on teaching and learning are rated as 3, 4, or 4*, which are the targets that NUBS China uses to qualify faculty as Scholarly Academics under AACSB accreditation or for internal recognition of quality research, Lockett says.

This has led to worry among the school’s teaching-oriented faculty that if they focus on RoTL, they risk being classified as “additional faculty,” unless they can consistently publish in the few education-focused journals listed by CABS. That concern, Lockett says, deters most faculty from pursuing RoTL in any substantial way.

While this scenario is all too common at institutions with research-focused missions, it is not mandated by AACSB accreditation standards, emphasizes Stephanie Bryant, AACSB’s chief accreditation officer. She clarifies that whether a business school considers educational scholarship for the purpose of accreditation or tenure is its choice, based on the parameters it has set for its individual mission. “The standards do not say anywhere, or imply, that educational research is not valued,” Bryant stresses. The devaluation of RoTL, she adds, “is a school perspective.”

Time to ‘Balance the Scales’

The stigma surrounding RoTL at AACSB-accredited business schools could be lifted, say Siddiqui and Lento, if administrators acknowledge the benefits that fostering cultures of teaching and learning bring to all business school stakeholders. These advantages include a wider scope of scholarship and more evidence-based pedagogical tools for faculty, richer learning experiences and better learning outcomes for students, and more well-rounded job candidates for employers.

Educators in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines already know this, says Siddiqui. STEM departments have long recognized educational research in tenure decisions and regularly reward academics who pursue RoTL in their disciplines.

As one example, Siddiqui points to Carl Edwin Wieman, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize in Physics. Wieman established the  Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative  at the University of British Columbia in Canada to encourage evidence-based teaching methods focused on improving undergraduate science education. Since its inception, the initiative has hired fellows who are interested in conducting education research, particularly based in the disciplines in which they have earned their doctorates. It also has inspired the creation of teaching materials in science education, a dedicated website, and a sister initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States.

Business schools, says Siddiqui, could achieve comparable results by raising awareness of the importance of RoTL, disseminating RoTL findings beyond peer-reviewed journals, and driving research-informed teaching methods that advance business education.

This year, the co-authors published a second paper that finds that scholarly and practice academics who developed rigorous research skills in their doctoral programs and who publish discipline-based research are more likely to pursue RoTL research. Here, Siddiqui and Lento more directly call on business school deans to reward and incentivize this line of research by creating communities of practice and expanding their journal ranking frameworks to include relevant peer-reviewed publications.

It is imperative, Siddiqui and Lento argue, that business schools place studies based on classroom settings on equal footing with studies based on corporate settings. “Research on teaching and learning balances the scales,” Siddiqui says, “by utilizing evidence-based, efficient, and effective teaching to foster deep learning amongst diverse student audiences.”

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Education | Is higher education worth the cost? New study says it depends on the school

New survey ranks how valuable higher education in california is for low and moderate income learners.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, set out to answer that question when he commissioned the HEA Group to analyze how long it would take low and moderate income students to recoup the costs of attending colleges — from four-year institutions and community colleges to trade schools.

“We believe that we are in a crisis moment, particularly when it comes to higher education opportunities,” Oakley said. “We all know that the cost of attendance continues to rise. The public is asking questions about the value of a degree. There are a lot of conversations about whether or not your college degree still has the same value that it once promised.”

Oakley, who is the former chancellor of the California Community Colleges, said higher education is one of the largest investments that students and their families will make in their lifetime, so they should see a return on that investment.

The “Golden Opportunities” study by HEA uses data from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to determine how long it takes 731,000 low and moderate income students at 292 higher ed institutions in the state to recoup their cost of attendance. Students whose family income is less than $75,000 a year are defined as low and moderate income.

The study calculated the net annual cost of attendance – books, housing, transportation and tuition – after all scholarships and grants are awarded. Then, HEA multiplied that figure by the number of years it would take a student to receive their credential: four years for a bachelor’s, two years for an associate’s and one year for a certificate. The data was based on pre-pandemic years.

The HEA Group found that generally, students who received associate’s degrees were able to recoup their educational costs quicker than students who received bachelor’s degrees or certificates.

According to the study, San Jose State University costs $47,769 for a low/moderate income student to attend. Graduates made $45,924 more annually than a student with no college experience. Under that scenario, the former student would recoup their costs of attendance in one year.

A student at De Anza Community College in Cupertino paid $9,117 to attend, and would earn $30,766 more on average than a high school grad without a college degree. In that case, the report found, the former student could get back their cost of attendance in less than six months.

But a student who attended Menlo College in Atherton would have to spend nearly four years earning a salary of $56,512 – barely $30,000 more than a high school graduate without a college degree – before they could recoup the $115,852 it cost to attend the private school.

Michael Itzkowitz, founder and president of the HEA Group, said the analysis aimed to get a bird’s eye view on what kind of economic outcomes colleges and universities are providing students.

“The number one reason why students attend higher education today…is for greater employability and to obtain a financially secure future,” Itzkowitz said. “The number one reason why students don’t attend college is because of cost.”

Itzkowitz said the survey found that most higher ed institutions in California (79%) allowed for low and moderate income students to regain the cost of attendance in five years or less, and nearly a third allowed students to recuperate their costs in under a year.

But 24 schools showed that students received no economic benefit from enrolling in college and earned even less than a typical high school graduate. Many of those schools were cosmetology schools or technical colleges.

“I’d argue that they may actually be worse off financially after they attend, being that they’re earning so little and they paid so much to earn their (credential),” Itzkowitz said.

Graduates of UC Berkeley, another highly selective Bay Area university, earned $60,440 more than the average high school grad. UC Berkeley also saw nearly a third of its students qualify for the Pell Grant, allowing them to recoup their cost of attendance in less than a year, the report found.

Oakley said that College Futures and the HEA Group hope to dive deeper into how race, ethnicity, gender and areas of study factor into students’ return on investment. The study’s data also doesn’t factor in how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted students.

“California remains one of the best states in terms of providing quality access to post-secondary education in the country,” Oakley said. “That being said, we still have a long way to go.”

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Article on the Importance of Education in 100 to 350 Words

• Updated on  
• Jan 9, 2024

Education entails acquiring knowledge to have a greater understanding of the various disciplines that will be used in our everyday lives. ‘ Education ’ refers to the information we gain and experience outside of books or classrooms, as well as the knowledge that we receive and experience in schools, our homes, and as members of society. Our ideas on life alter as a result of learning, education is crucial for personal development and growth in society . In this blog, we will see why we need education for growth and will also look at some articles on the importance of education.

This Blog Includes:

Importance of education, mental aspect of education’s importance, the power of being an educated individual, how can your education benefit your society, articles on importance of education, article on importance of education: 100 words, article on importance of education: 200 words, article on importance of education: 350 words, article on importance of women’s education.

Also Read: Essay On Education System

Also Read: Importance of Education in Development

The value of education at a much younger age. Our first tryst with learning begins at home, and our first teachers are our parents, grandparents, and often siblings. The importance of education lies in its continuity, learning is a lifetime process that will stop with our death. It is the foundation for the development of a healthy individual and society. Our world cannot have a bright future if our culture lacks education.

Education is the key to change. It is an important tool that allows a person to understand his or her rights and responsibilities to his or her family, society, and nation. It improves a person’s ability to view the world and to fight against misdoings such as injustice, corruption, and violence, among other things.

Education is meant to hone talent, sharpen our mindsets and educate us on a myriad of things. In school, we cover a variety of topics such as history, arithmetic, geography, politics, and so on. These subjects sharpen children’s minds and allow the kid to absorb knowledge from all subjects, and his or her mental level is increased. Here are some cognitive benefits of learning and education that ensure growth and development in children:

Education’s importance in our lives provides us with stability in our everyday lives. Everything may be split, but not your education, you must be told. You can improve your chances of getting a better job with the aid of your degree and expertise.

Financial Security

Our financial stability is helped by education. Higher-qualified individuals receive higher-paying employment in this era, allowing them to guarantee their future.

Self-dependency

Education teaches us to be self-sufficient in our daily lives. A person’s education is his alone, and with it, he may feel safe and self-sufficient.

Equality is a right that everyone deserves. If everyone had the opportunity to pursue higher education, there would be a greater likelihood that everyone would earn a large sum of money, and there would be fewer disparities across social classes. It aids in the pursuit of equality.

Confidence is one of the finest aspects of success. Education boosts a person’s self-assurance. You can go further into a topic that you are already familiar with. With the information you’ve obtained through your schooling, you can converse about that issue far better than others.

If you are a Class 12 student, here are some important blogs for you:

Knowledge and education is power. Education enables individuals. Enables them to innovate, understand, adapt, and overcome. Everything we learn helps us in life in one way or the other. It helps make our life convenient and easy. Good education is basically the knowledge that gives people perspective and information about things which can range from being as simple as fixing a water pipe to building a rocket destined for moon. When we are educated, we can adapt to each and every aspect of life better and it also helps us overcome many hurdle of life and gives perspective about a lot things such as finance, planning, etc. All this can make any individual feel powerful because there remains nothing in life that they cannot tackle.

Every nation’s integral part is it’s society and the growth an development of the same is dependent upon the individuals which in turn helps the social and economic progress of the nation. The education system has been evolving from the very first day and now it has several mods and means of the same. It is quite correct to say that any amount or money spent of being educated never goes waste. The more you learn, the you will be able to grow in life. Every aspect of education will one way or the other, help you in your life. And when an individual is educated, he/she can significantly contribute to the growth of the society and the nation, much more than a rich person. Education helps develop characters, personalities and social behaviours. It helps shape the way people think and act. An ultimately it lead to how a society will grow. For this to happen, it is essential that all of the people understand the importance of education.

The process of learning and increasing abilities through courses, literature, training and other mediums is known as education. It assists us in developing our talents and seeking employment to suit our requirements and obligations.

Education is vital to one’s success in life. It is essential for an individual’s entire growth. The process of learning and improving one’s skills is referred to as education. Wisdom and the ability to handle challenges come with knowledge. Education enhances one’s quality of life while also granting social recognition. Though education is essential for everyone, the need for it is most acute during childhood. Starting with children under the age of 10, school education is critical. It serves as a solid basis for their life skills and goals. A person who lacks education is powerless and vulnerable. H/She will find it difficult to deal with life’s challenges.

Related Reads:

Education is a valuable tool for gaining learning and wisdom. Though books are essential to education, the notion encompasses more than just books and bookish knowledge. It isn’t required for education to be only based on books. 

The most important goal of education is to help people with how to read and write. The first step toward literacy is reading and writing. Education provides a person with endless opportunities for growth and advancement. People who have had an education tend to be more calm and self-assured. People who have been educated are disciplined and understand the importance of time. Education allows a person to be more expressive and opinionated. H/She was able to readily communicate his/her viewpoints, which were supported by a clear aim and rationale.

Education benefits not just the individual but also the community. The most important aspect of education is that it goes from one individual to another, then throughout society, and eventually throughout the country. An educated individual makes an effort to teach and inspire everyone with whom he or she comes into contact. Education brings one up to speed on technological advancements as well. A well-educated person can easily adjust to technological developments. Education, more than anything else, is a source of hope. The desire for a better life; the desire for a wealthy and poverty-free existence.

Must Read: Importance of School Education

Human education is a critical instrument in their lives. It is a significant distinction between a civilized and an undisciplined individual. Even if the country’s literacy rate has increased in recent years, more individuals need to be made aware of the importance of education. Every child, whether a male or a girl, must attend school and not drop out. Education is beneficial not just to the individual but also to society. A well-educated individual is a valuable asset to society, contributing to its social and economic development. Such a person is always willing to assist society and the country. It is true to say that education is a stairway to a person’s and a nation’s achievement.

Education makes a person productive, allowing him or her to contribute to society in a positive way. It teaches us how to face many challenges and conquer them. A well-educated individual understands how to act in a polite and non-offensive manner. It shows us how to live a disciplined life while yet making a respectable living. Our future is built on the basis of education. Education is also the sole weapon that may be used to combat numerous issues such as illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, and so on. A person’s education makes them more sensitive to the predicament of their fellow beings. A well-educated individual not only comprehends the issues but also possesses the essential abilities to address them.

An educated individual possesses competent skills and is more capable than someone who is uneducated. However, it is incorrect to think that education alone ensures success. Indeed, success necessitates a solid education, as well as devotion, attention, and hard effort. An educated individual is more sensible and capable of rational thought.

Education allows a person to become self-sufficient. An educated individual does not rely on others and is capable of meeting his or her own requirements. A well-educated person also educates their family, and education benefits, not just the individual but also society and the nation. Education has a significant influence on our outlook, making us more optimistic about life and its objectives.

Also Read: Importance of Education in Child’s Life

There was a period when it was considered that women didn’t need to be educated. We’ve now realized the importance of women’s education . The modern era is the phase of women’s awakening. In every aspect of life, women are striving to compete with males. Many individuals reject female education, claiming that women’s rightful domain is the home, and therefore that money spent on female education is squandered. This viewpoint is incorrect since female education has the potential to bring about a silent revolution in society.

Female education has numerous advantages; educated women may contribute significantly to the country’s growth by sharing the burdens of males in several fields. They may contribute to society as teachers, lawyers, physicians, and administrators, as well as play a key part in wartime. In this time of economic distress, education is a blessing for women. The days of wealth and prosperity are long gone. Middle-class families are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet these days. Female education is important for a country’s growth, thus it should be supported.

Everyone has hope for a better life if they have an education. It’s a type of magic that works in a person’s life to make it far better than it would be if he didn’t have knowledge. To sum up the blog, we believe that everyone should be educated so that they can contribute to making our country proud. Increasing literacy rates can prevent tens of thousands of crimes. Every country should encourage its citizens to receive an education.

Also Read: Importance of Education for Growth and Betterment

Related Articles

Education is a valuable tool for gaining learning and wisdom. Though books are essential to education, the notion encompasses more than just books and bookish knowledge. It isn’t required for education to be only based on books.  The most important goal of education is to help people with how to read and write. The first step toward literacy is reading and writing. Education provides a person with endless opportunities for growth and advancement.

Education teaches us the importance of teamwork, communication, and interpersonal relationships. Education plays an important role in building intellectual and mental development. Education enhances creativity and allows us to express ourselves through various mediums and discover our unique talents. Education serves as a powerful tool for breaking the cycle of poverty

Moral education teaches us important values such as Respect, honesty, compassion, hard work, kindness, gratitude, sharing, cooperation, etc.

This was all about articles on the importance of education! We hope the information provided was helpful! For more information on such informative topics for your school, visit our school education page and follow Leverage Edu .

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The unexpected explanation for why school segregation spiked

On eve of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a study finds policy choices explain the rise in segregated schools.

It’s well documented that after falling for years, school segregation has risen again in the United States. But why? New research by academics at the University of Southern California and Stanford University concludes that some popular theories are not to blame.

Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, a study being released Monday shows a pronounced increase in school segregation since 1988, particularly in large school districts with significant numbers of Black students.

Overall, school segregation between Black and White students has increased by 25 percent since 1991 in the 533 large districts serving at least 2,500 Black students — a significant increase but nowhere near the decline that occurred in the aftermath of Brown , according to the study. (Of note: the paper makes clear that most of the school segregation in the United States is driven by demographic differences between districts , not within them.)

A school district that was entirely segregated would score 1.0 on the researchers’ segregation scale, whereas a perfectly integrated district, where every school perfectly matched the overall district’s demographics, would score 0.0.

Looking at the nation’s 100 largest districts, segregation was 0.45 in 1968. That fell to 0.17 by 1986 and then rose to 0.28 by 2019, researchers found. So while schools are nowhere near as segregated as they were before courts began enforcing the Brown decision, segregation has risen in recent decades.

Researchers offered the example of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools system in North Carolina, where segregation was absolute — a score of 1.0 — in 1950, before Brown . By 1968, it remained a still-high 0.66 — at that time, the average White student’s school was 10 percent Black, while the average Black student’s school was 76 percent Black (the difference between 10 and 76 produces the score of 0.66).

Then, in 1971, after the courts ordered a desegregation plan in another landmark court case, this one involving the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district , the segregation score there shrank to just 0.03. (The average White student’s school was 31 percent Black; the average Black student’s school was 34 percent Black.) By 1991, it was still low at 0.10 before rising again. In 2022, segregation had reached 0.44.

The study finds that the rise nationally was not driven by increasing housing segregation. Housing segregation certainly helps explain school segregation. But since 1991, housing has become less segregated.

The study also finds that rising school segregation is not driven by racial economic inequality because racial economic inequality also declined over this period.

Both of these trends “would have led to lower school segregation, had nothing else changed,” said the paper by Ann E. Owens, a sociologist at USC, and Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford.

So what does explain the rise?

Rather than systemic forces that are difficult to change, these trends are driven by policy choices, they conclude. The researchers point to two specific policies: federal courts releasing school districts, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, from obligations to desegregate schools beginning in significant numbers in the late 1990s; and school-choice policies that let parents pick what school their children attend.

“It’s not these big structural factors that are outside the school districts’ control that are driving this,” Reardon said in an interview. “It’s things that are under the control of the educational system.”

Court-ordered desegregation plans implemented based on the Brown decision had reduced segregation. But then judges began lifting those orders. “If you switch from an active desegregation effort and go back to neighborhood schools, school segregation is going to go up a lot,” Reardon said.

Had those court orders not been lifted, the study estimates that school segregation would have grown 20 percent less than it did.

At the same time, choice systems such as the introduction of charter schools allowed parents more control — and many used that to choose schools with students like their own. The new study specifically looked at the growth of charter schools and found that if charter schools had not expanded, school segregation would have grown 14 percent less.

These two factors account for all of the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019, the paper found.

The rising segregation numbers “appear to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions,” the paper concludes. “They are not the inevitable result of demographic changes — and can be changed by alternative policy choices.”

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Billionaire Investor Ken Griffin Calls on Harvard to Embrace ‘Western Values’

FILE PHOTO: Ken Griffin, founder and CEO, Citadel, speaks at the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024. REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo

(Reuters) -Billionaire investor Kenneth Griffin called on his alma mater Harvard University on Saturday to embrace "Western values", saying that the turmoil across college campuses was the product of a "cultural revolution" in U.S. education.

Griffin, founder of U.S. hedge fund Citadel, told the Financial Times in an interview that the U.S. had "lost sight of education as the means of pursuing truth and acquiring knowledge" over the past decade.

"Harvard should put front and centre (that it) stands for meritocracy in America...," Griffin said, adding that schools should "embrace Western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world."

Griffin who has donated more than half a billion dollars to Harvard University said in January that he has halted donations to the school over how it handled antisemitism on campus.

War in Israel and Gaza

"What you're seeing now is the end-product of this cultural revolution in American education playing out on American campuses, in particular, using the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed," Griffin told the FT.

"The protests on college campuses are almost like performative art..," he said.

"Freedom of speech does not give you the right to storm a building or vandalise it," he added.

"That's not freedom of speech. That's just anarchy."

Griffin's remarks come amid arrests of dozens of pro-Palestinian activists at universities across America in the latest crackdowns on demonstrations roiling U.S. campuses.

The protesting students are demanding a cease-fire in Israel's incursion into Gaza and have demanded their schools divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Since the first mass arrests at Columbia University on April 18, at least 2,600 demonstrators have been detained at more than 100 protests in 39 states and Washington, D.C., according to The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization.

Griffin, who started trading in his Harvard dormitory, spoke at the Managed Funds Association conference in Miami in January about America's elite universities and criticized the education at the universities blaming the "DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) agenda."

(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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Tags: Iran , funds , United States , Israel , Middle East , education

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Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin says college protests are the result of a ‘cultural revolution’ and Harvard should ’embrace our Western values’

Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel, wader deeper into the national debate about American colleges and the protests that have consumed many campuses over Israel’s war in Gaza.

In an interview with the Financial Times , the Harvard alum and mega-donor decried the social justice “narrative” at some schools.

“What you’re seeing now is the end-product of this cultural revolution in American education playing out on American campuses, in particular, using the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed,” Griffin said, comparing protests to “performative art” that doesn’t help Palestinians or Israelis.

Campuses nationwide have been roiled since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s response in Gaza. In the U.S., thousands have been arrested at colleges , while presidents at Ivy League schools have stepped down, including at Harvard, and graduation ceremonies have been canceled.

Griffin and others on Wall Street have been weighing in on the protests, especially at elite colleges. In January, he called Harvard students “whiny snowflakes” and halted his donations to the school, which have topped $500 million. On Monday, he said the protests were the result of a “failed education system,” adding that the situation at Harvard looked better than at Columbia, where police raids last month cleared out protesters and their encampment .

When asked by the Financial Times what Harvard should do next, Griffin replied, “Harvard should put front and center [that it] stands for meritocracy in America and will educate the next generation of leaders in American business, government, healthcare, and the philanthropic community. Harvard will embrace our Western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world, foster those values with students, and ask them to manifest these values throughout the rest of their life.”

Harvard did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Fellow hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has similarly been critical of college protests as well as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. But at the Milken Institute Global Conference this past week, he reportedly faced sharp backlash from both panelists and audience members, who told Bloomberg that his views were detrimental to the progress of women and people of color in America .

Some businesses have  already vowed  that they  won’t hire students  who participated in the protests, while others have  voiced their support .

Recently, recruiting experts who spoke to  Fortune  were split on what effect the protests will have on students’ ability to get hired, if any. 

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden earlier this month  defended the right of students  to protest peacefully but rejected their demand to change his approach on Gaza and also said “order must prevail” at schools.

A forthcoming White House report on the use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza is expected to be critical of Israel but doesn’t conclude that Israel violated the terms for their use.

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Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

For most people, the new economics of higher ed make going to college a risky bet.

Credit... Illustration by Sean Dong

Supported by

By Paul Tough

Paul Tough is a contributing writer for the magazine who has written several books on inequality in education.

• Sept. 5, 2023

A decade or so ago, Americans were feeling pretty positive about higher education. Public-opinion polls in the early 2010s all told the same story. In one survey, 86 percent of college graduates said that college had been a good investment ; in another, 74 percent of young adults said a college education was “very important” ; in a third, 60 percent of Americans said that colleges and universities were having a positive impact on the country. Ninety-six percent of parents who identified as Democrats said they expected their kids to attend college — only to be outdone by Republican parents, 99 percent of whom said they expected their kids to go to college.

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In the fall of 2009, 70 percent of that year’s crop of high school graduates did in fact go straight to college. That was the highest percentage ever, and the collegegoing rate stayed near that elevated level for the next few years. The motivation of these students was largely financial. The 2008 recession devastated many of the industries that for decades provided good jobs for less-educated workers, and a college degree had become a particularly valuable commodity in the American labor market. The typical American with a bachelor’s degree (and no further credential) was earning about two-thirds more than the typical high school grad, a financial advantage about twice as large as the one a college degree produced a generation earlier. College seemed like a reliable runway to a life of comfort and affluence.

A decade later, Americans’ feelings about higher education have turned sharply negative. The percentage of young adults who said that a college degree is very important fell to 41 percent from 74 percent. Only about a third of Americans now say they have a lot of confidence in higher education. Among young Americans in Generation Z, 45 percent say that a high school diploma is all you need today to “ensure financial security.” And in contrast to the college-focused parents of a decade ago, now almost half of American parents say they’d prefer that their children not enroll in a four-year college.

The numbers on campus have shifted as well. In the fall of 2010, there were more than 18 million undergraduates enrolled in colleges and universities across the United States. That figure has been falling ever since, dipping below 15.5 million undergrads in 2021. As recently as 2016, 70 percent of high school graduates were still going straight to college; now the figure is 62 percent.

Outside the United States, meanwhile, higher education is more popular than ever. Our global allies and competitors have spent the last couple of decades racing to raise their national levels of educational attainment. In Britain, the number of current undergraduates has risen since 2016 by 12 percent. (Over the same period, the American figure fell by 8 percent.) In Canada, 67 percent of adults between 25 and 34 are graduates of a two- or four-year college, about 15 percentage points higher than the current American attainment rate.

Britain and Canada are not the outliers on this point; we are. On average, countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have increased their college-degree attainment rate among young adults by more than 20 percentage points since 2000, and 11 of those countries now have better-educated labor forces than we do, including not only economic powerhouses like Japan and South Korea and Britain but also smaller competitors like the Netherlands, Ireland and Switzerland. Americans have turned away from college at the same time that students in the rest of the world have been flocking to campus. Why? What changed in the last decade to make a college education — and higher education as an institution — so unappealing to so many Americans?

When it comes to higher education worldwide, the United States is an outlier in more ways than one. In Canada and Japan, public-university tuition is now about $5,000 a year. In Italy, Spain and Israel, it’s about $2,000. In France, Denmark and Germany, it’s essentially zero. A few decades ago, the same thing was true in the United States; government funding covered much of the cost of public college. Now students and their families bear much of the burden, and that fact has changed what used to be a pretty straightforward calculation about the economic value of college into a complex math problem.

Economists have a term for the gap that exists between the incomes of college graduates and high school graduates: the college wage premium. It reflects the relative demand in the labor market for college-educated workers. When employers want more college graduates, the premium goes up; when there is a surplus of college grads, the premium goes down. After World War II, the G.I. Bill flooded the American labor market with college diplomas, and for a few decades, the gap between the median income of high school graduates and that of college graduates remained pretty narrow; having a college degree produced an income boost of 30 percent or so. But in the early 1980s, the college wage premium began to rise steadily. In the early 2000s, it surpassed 60 percent, and ever since, it has hovered around 65 percent.

In theory, today’s sky-high college wage premium should mean a surge of young people onto college campuses, not the opposite. But as a measure of the true value of higher education, the college wage premium has one important limitation. It can tell you how much college graduates earn , but it doesn’t take into account how much they owe — or how much they spent on college in the first place.

For a long time, there were no good alternative measures to the college wage premium. But a few years ago, a group of economic researchers in St. Louis introduced a new one: the college wealth premium. Unlike the college wage premium, the college wealth premium looks at all your assets and all your debts: what you’ve got in the bank, whether you own a house, your student-loan balance. It addresses a simple but important question: How much net wealth does a typical college graduate accumulate over their life span, compared with that of a typical high school graduate?

These three researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — Lowell Ricketts, William Emmons and Ana Hernández Kent — used the Fed’s survey of thousands of American households to consider the financial advantage that college graduates receive. When they analyzed the data through the lens of wealth, as opposed to income, the benefits to a college degree began to evaporate.

They split Americans into age cohorts based on the decade of their birth and categorized them by race and ethnicity. Then they used statistical regressions to predict the average wealth that families in each cohort would accumulate over a lifetime. When they looked at the college wage premium for each cohort — the standard measure — they found that it mostly held up across those divisions. In every racial group and generation, the college graduates were earning more money.

Then the researchers looked at the wealth premium, and a different picture emerged. Older white college graduates, those born before 1980, were, as you might expect, a lot wealthier than their white peers who had only a high school degree. On average, they had accumulated two or three times as much wealth as high school grads of the same race and generation. But younger white college graduates — those born in the 1980s — had only a bit more wealth than white high school graduates born in the same decade, and that small advantage was projected to remain small throughout their lives.

The data for Black families showed the same pattern, but with an even more pronounced downturn. As with the white graduates, older Black college grads were enjoying sizable wealth advantages over their less-educated peers, with generally two or three times the assets of comparable Black high school grads. But Black college graduates born after 1980 were experiencing almost no wealth premium at all. In fact, the researchers found that the wealth premium for Black grads disappeared even earlier than it did for the white graduates. Black college graduates born in the 1970s weren’t receiving any substantial wealth benefit, either, only those born in the 1960s and earlier. Latino families followed a similar pattern. If they were headed by someone born after 1980, they had accumulated no significant additional resources beyond those of a comparable family headed by a high school graduate.

When the researchers looked at young Americans who had gone on to get a postgraduate degree, the situation was even more dire. “Among families whose head is of any race or ethnicity born in the 1980s and holding a postgraduate degree, the wealth premium is ... indistinguishable from zero,” the authors concluded. “Our results suggest that college and postgraduate education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment.”

These are startling data, and they present a kind of paradox. Millennials with college degrees are earning a good bit more than those without, but they aren’t accumulating any more wealth. How can that be?

Lowell Ricketts told me he had a pretty good idea of the cause, even though the group’s data couldn’t be conclusive on this point. The likely culprit, he said, was cost: the rising expense of college and the student debt that often goes along with it. Carrying debt obviously diminishes your net worth through simple subtraction, but it can also prevent you from taking important wealth-generating steps as a young adult, like buying a house or starting a small business. And even if you (or your parents) were able to pay your tuition without loans, the savings you used are gone when you graduate, and thus are no longer available to serve as a down payment on a starter home or the beginning of a nest egg for retirement.

A few decades ago, tuition costs were manageable for many Americans. But since 1992, the sticker price has almost doubled for four-year private colleges and more than doubled for four-year public colleges, even after adjusting for inflation. Today the average total cost of attending a private college, including living expenses, is about $58,000 a year. After financial aid, the average net price for private-college students is about $33,000 a year; at public institutions, it is about $19,000. Those averages conceal a great deal of variation, however; at the University of Michigan (a public university), tuition, fees and expenses for out-of-state juniors and seniors total more than $80,000 a year.

Over the last decade and a half, more and more young Americans have turned to loans to cover those rising costs. In 2007, total student debt stood at $500 billion. Today it is $1.6 trillion, and for many borrowers, their debt is becoming a serious burden. Among student borrowers who opened their loans between 2010 and 2019, more than half now owe more than what they originally borrowed.

When you do take cost and debt into account, the financial benefits of college begin to look quite different. Douglas Webber, who was a professor at Temple University until he joined the Federal Reserve Board last year as a senior economist, has spent the last decade looking for new ways to calculate the value of a college degree. For Americans in the aggregate, he has found, the college wage premium remains robust. On average, more education still means more income. What has changed, he has written, is that the premium now varies much more than it used to among individuals and groups: The “downside risk” to enrolling in college, he argues, has become “nontrivial.” When you look at Webber’s data, higher education no longer resembles a safe, reliable blue-chip investment, like buying a Treasury bill. It’s now more like going to a casino. It’s a gamble that can still sometimes produce a big windfall, but it can also bring financial disaster.

A few years ago, Webber set out to try to make sense of that variability. For whom does college pay off, and for whom does it not? He analyzed the data by college major, by academic ability and by tuition costs, and was able to show in more detail exactly who was winning at the higher education casino and who was losing.

Start here: If your tuition is free and you can be absolutely certain that you’re going to graduate within six years, then you enter college with a 96 percent chance that your gamble is going to pay off, meaning that your lifetime earnings will be greater than those of a typical high school graduate.

The problem, though, is that many students who start college don’t graduate — about 40 percent of them, by one estimate. When Webber factors in that risk, your chances of coming out ahead of the typical high school grad start to shrink. If tuition is still free, you now have about a 3 in 4 chance of winning the bet.

The second problem is that going to college isn’t free. If you’re paying $25,000 a year in tuition and expenses, Webber calculated, your chance of coming out ahead drops to about 2 in 3. At $50,000 a year in college costs, your odds are no better than a coin flip: Maybe you’ll wind up with more than the typical high school grad, but you’re just as likely to wind up with less.

Webber next considered the impact of a student’s major. If you choose a business or STEM degree, your chance of winning the college bet goes back up to 3 in 4, even if you’re paying $50,000 a year in tuition and expenses while you’re in college. But if you’re majoring in anything else — arts, humanities or social sciences — your odds turn negative at that price; worse than a coin flip. In fact, if your degree is in the arts or humanities, you’re likely to lose the bet even if your annual college expenses are just $25,000.

Last month, Webber and a colleague published some new research that identified the people who are making out the worst at the casino: students who borrow money to attend college but don’t graduate. In Federal Reserve surveys, half the borrowers who didn’t finish their degrees said they were “just getting by” or “finding it difficult to get by.” Two-thirds said they would have a hard time coming up with $400 to cover an unexpected expense. Financially, they were not only doing much worse than college graduates; they were doing worse than adults who had never gone to college at all. For these former students, the college wage premium had turned upside down.

When you look at the polling trends on higher education over the past few decades, you notice one other striking development. A decade ago, there was not much difference between members of the two political parties when it came to their opinions about higher education. Then around 2015, that consensus shattered, and Republican sentiments suddenly nose-dived. In an ongoing Pew survey, the portion of Republicans (and those who lean Republican) saying colleges and universities had a negative effect on the country rose to 58 percent from 37 percent in just two years, between 2015 and 2017, while the responses of Democrats (and those who lean Democrat) held steady. The Republican decline persisted: In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 19 percent of Republicans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education, down from 56 percent in 2015.

When pollsters ask Republicans to expand on why they’ve turned against college, the answer generally has to do with ideology. In a Pew survey published in 2019, 79 percent of Republicans said a major problem in higher education was professors’ bringing their political and social views into the classroom. Only 17 percent of Democrats agreed. In a 2017 Gallup poll, the No. 1 reason Republicans gave for their declining faith in higher ed was that colleges had become “too liberal/political.”

The question of how liberal is too liberal is obviously a subjective one, but there is some objective data to substantiate the leftward lean of American college campuses. The Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A., which regularly surveys students, found last year that three times as many American college freshmen identified as liberal or far left as said they were conservative or far right. Among college faculty, the ratio is even more pronounced, and it has been growing more unbalanced over time, shifting from a 2-to-1 left-right ratio in the mid-1990s to a roughly 5-to-1 ratio in the early 2010s. Then there are the administrators. A separate poll from 2018 found that among student-facing university administrators, 12 times as many defined themselves as liberal as defined themselves as conservative.

This leftward shift on American campuses corresponded with a realignment in the American electorate. In 2012, a majority of voters with a bachelor’s degree (and no further credential) chose Mitt Romney for president over Barack Obama; in fact, B.A. holders were the only educational cohort Romney won. Obama made up for his losses among college grads by winning a majority of voters with only a high school diploma. Four years later, the education skew flipped: Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton among noncollege graduates, but he won only 36 percent of voters with college or graduate degrees.

Frederick Hess, an education-policy analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says that this political realignment has contributed to the growing public-opinion divide on higher ed. As the Democrats have become the party of the college-educated, and as higher education has become dominated by left-leaning staff and students, Hess says, Republicans have grown more skeptical that colleges are environments where either their ideas or their children are welcome.

Hess’s more pointed critique, though, is a populist one, and it reflects sentiments that can be found these days on the left as well as the right. Economists have shown that higher education as a whole has become more stratified by income and class over the last 20 years. After the Great Recession, state governments cut their funding for public colleges, and the colleges responded by raising tuition and cutting spending on instruction and student services. Many private colleges, meanwhile, competed to attract more affluent students, which often meant becoming more selective in admissions, spending more on facilities and amenities and raising tuition in order to pay for it all.

Hess says many conservatives have grown skeptical that students are learning much at these selective institutions. Instead, he says, college has become simply a place for students to collect a gold-plated credential.

“It’s a racketeering situation,” Hess said when we spoke last month. “In many elite occupations, the price of admission is now an elite degree. That’s true whether it’s a posh D.C. think tank or a big consulting firm or a fancy journalistic outlet.” For many students, Hess said, the point of an expensive college education is not to gain practical job skills. “It’s just a really expensive toll that lets you jump the queue and get the good jobs.”

In July, the economists Raj Chetty, John Friedman and David Deming helped illuminate exactly how that system works when they published the most recent in their series of research papers analyzing the intersections of social class and higher education. They examined admissions practices among what they call Ivy-Plus colleges (the Ivy League plus a few comparably selective institutions) and found a pervasive pattern of affirmative action for the very wealthy. According to their data, the children of the richest American families are twice as likely to be admitted to an Ivy-Plus college as middle-class students with the same standardized test scores.

Chetty and Friedman and Deming showed that these institutions employ a variety of admissions practices that put a thumb on the scale for the rich and powerful: They soften admission standards for the children of alumni, and especially the children of wealthy alumni; they put extra weight on the extracurricular accomplishments and recommendation letters that students collect at exclusive private schools; and they recruit athletes from wealthy families. (It’s no accident that Ivy-Plus colleges field teams in sailing, squash, fencing and horseback riding.)

The “racket,” as Hess puts it, continues after college, when graduates of these institutions are three times as likely as similar non-Ivy-Plus students to be hired by a prestigious firm and 60 percent more likely to earn a salary high enough to land them in the top 1 percent of earners. Chetty and Friedman and Deming — all of whom work at Ivy League universities — put it starkly: “We conclude that highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations.”

The college casino is not entirely a game of chance. Your odds of coming out ahead depend largely on who your parents are.

The college casino, in other words, is not entirely a game of chance. Your odds of coming out ahead depend largely on who your parents are. If you possess the social and financial advantages necessary to gain admission to one of the nation’s most selective colleges, you’ll probably make out fine, even if the table stakes do seem awfully high. Most American college students, however, don’t have access to the benefits that those selective colleges produce. Only about 10 percent of students today are enrolled at a college that admits fewer than half its applicants. The rest of the American collegegoing population attend mostly less selective public institutions, local community colleges or for-profit schools. Students at those institutions are more likely to be rural, Black or Latino, working class or low income or all of the above. They are less likely to graduate and more likely to incur debt they can’t pay back. For them — a large majority of American college students — the risks they face when they walk into the casino are considerably higher.

With those odds, it is not a surprise that young Americans, especially, are eager to believe that they will be able to thrive in the job market without having to worry about college. Remember that 45 percent of Generation Z respondents this year told pollsters that they believe that a high school diploma will be enough to ensure financial security.

The reality, though, is that in the decade ahead, opportunities for those without a postsecondary credential are projected to shrink even further. It is true that there are still some well-paying jobs that don’t require a degree — plumbers make a median of almost $60,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — but the B.L.S. predicts that fewer than 10,000 new plumbing jobs will be created in the United States between now and 2031. The fastest-growing jobs available to those with only a high school diploma, meanwhile, are mostly low-wage service jobs: home health aides (924,000 new jobs by 2031), food-service workers and waiters (570,000 new jobs), restaurant cooks (419,000 new jobs) and warehouse workers (358,000 new jobs). None of these jobs have a median salary above $31,000 a year.

At the same time, economists expect demand for American college graduates to keep rising faster than colleges can keep up, which means the college wage premium is likely to increase as well. A 2018 report by the consulting firm Korn Ferry projected that by 2030, the American labor market would face a significant shortage of workers with associate and bachelor’s degrees — a shortage of 6.5 million college grads, to be precise. More recently, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as the chief economist of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote, with Tom Lee, a series of papers predicting an even greater shortage: 8.5 million missing American B.A. holders by the end of the decade.

For the nation’s more affluent families (and their children), the rules of the higher education game are clear, and the benefits are almost always worth the cost. For everyone else, the rules seem increasingly opaque, the benefits are increasingly uncertain and the thought of just giving up without playing seems more appealing all the time.

But just as individual students pay a cost in lost wages when they opt out (or drop out) of college, there is a larger cost when millions of students do so — especially as other nations keep charging ahead. Holtz-Eakin and Lee calculated the price to the American economy of the millions of missing college grads they are projecting: $1.2 trillion in lost economic output by the end of the decade. That is one cost we are likely to bear together, winners and losers alike.

Paul Tough is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author, most recently, of the book “The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us.” He first wrote about higher education for the magazine almost a decade ago, and his article in this issue investigates how the national mood about college has evolved over time. Sean Dong is a motion and 3-D designer in Baltimore. His work often condenses stories of intricate subjects into brief looping animations.

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