We’re in a first-class economic crisis right now. Because economic activity is declining and unemployment is rising, you would think that, listening to our state and national leaders, all we have to do is stimulate the economy and create jobs.
But if we don’t educate our people properly, our economic crisis won’t be brief, it will be permanent. To a shocking degree, graduating from college is an experience increasingly enjoyed just by the children of families in America’s top income quintile (well over 50 percent versus fewer than 10 percent in the bottom quintile). Yet, a college education is the best means we know to achieve higher income and stay employed or get re-employed, not to mention increasing the odds of voting, living longer and staying out of prison. A college education is not a guarantee, but it’s a darned good bet.
In the global economy, education is destiny for most individuals. So it’s alarming that America has fallen in recent years to No. 10 from No. 1 in international college graduation rankings. We are now behind nations such as Canada, Japan and Belgium.
Remarkably, some say the answer is simply to get rid of a college education as a job credential. This would be like improving the race times of America’s marathoners by shortening the course to 20 miles, while the rest of the world sticks with 26.2.
The real answer is to fix America’s — and Illinois’ — horribly leaky education pipeline.
Millions of young people — 15 percent of America’s children — never even graduate from high school. Two in five people age 25 to 34 have graduated from college, a figure that has stagnated in recent years. And while college is not for everyone, the alternatives to college that will lead to high paying jobs and employment security are not clear and compelling.
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What are we to do about this enormous threat to individual futures and American economic security and prosperity?
If we could advise only one thing, it would be (paraphrasing Nobel laureate and University of Chicago economist James Heckman) to start every child off strong — from birth through age 7 — in terms of prenatal care, love and affection, safety, nutrition, health care, play, talk, reading and personal attention. A strong start from the earliest age — even more than improved elementary and high schools — is the key to increasing college attendance and graduation.
What about the grossly uneven quality of American schools? What about school funding and teachers unions and charter schools? What about college affordability? In other words, what about the big education controversies of our day?
They are all important. But none is as important in fixing the leaky education pipeline as getting kids — all our kids — off to a strong start. These things matter, but they will matter less if the children navigating our uneven education system are themselves better prepared for school and less in need of remedial work.
For the money, quality parenting and quality early childhood education will do more than anything else to increase the number of Americans attending and graduating from college. Properly educating our young people means starting not in kindergarten, but at birth.
Our future — the one beyond the next two years — depends on it.
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B. Joseph White is president of the University of Illinois. Cornelia Grumman is vice president and director of the First Five Years Fund at the Ounce of Prevention, a Chicago-based national advocacy organization for early childhood development programs.