Access the Report here.
Image: farconville / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Here's what I consider a key excerpt:
Increase in Democratic nations: In 1950, just over 25 percent of countries in the world could be characterized as electoral democracies (Diamond 2011). In 2010, 59 percent of countries could be characterized in this way (Puddington 2011). Moreover, “in 1975 the number of countries that were ‘not free’ exceeded those that were ‘free’ by 50 percent, [but] by 2007 twice as many countries were ‘free’ as were ‘not free’ (Goldstone 2010, 1). According to an official statement released by the Arab Network for the Study of Democracy, the Arab Spring of 2011 brought people in seven countries to the streets united by three notions: freedom, dignity, and justice (Lee 2011). These shifts offer significant opportunities for revitalizing all democracies,both old and new, as modern democracies learn collectively how to recalibrate democratic processes to meet the new demands of a globalized age.
Intensified Global Competition: After World War II, the United States competed only with the Soviet Union for global domination as other nations were busy either putting their devastated economies back in order or developing them. Today, powerful new economies exist on every continent. The European Union is challenging US economic domination, and there is a decided tilt toward the Asian markets of China, India, and Japan. In this globalized world, the budgets of many multinational companies are larger than those of many countries, and they are not bound in their practices by any one nation.
Dangerous Economic Inequalities: While the United States had been moving toward a diamond-shaped economy with a larger middle class, recent years have seen an increased gulf between rich and poor across US households. Economist Edward N. Wolff notes, for example, that between 2007 and mid 2009 there was “a fairly steep rise in wealth inequality [where] the share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent” (Wolff 2010, 33). In sum, as of 2009, nearly 90 percent of wealth was concentrated among the top 20 percent of US households, while just over 10 percent of wealth was spread across the remaining 80 percent. One result of this hyper-consolidation of wealth is that for the first time in US history, the younger generation is not on a trajectory to achieve their parents’ economic level. These same economic inequalities are even more dramatic in a global context. According to former UN Humanitarian Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland. “The richest individuals are richer than several of the poorest nations combined—a few billionaires are richer than the poorest two billion people” (http://ucatlas. ucsc.edu/income.php). Economist Branko Milanovic (2000) has found that the ratio of the average income of the top 5 percent of the world’s population to the bottom 5 percent increased from 78 to 1 in 1988 to 114 to 1 in 1993. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, a whole region has been left behind: it will account for almost one-third of world poverty in 2015, up from one-fifth in 1990 (United Nations Development Programme 2007).
Demographic Diversity: The United States is “the most religiously diverse nation on earth” (Eck 2002, 4), and is more racially diverse than ever. By 2045 communities of color will constitute at least 50 percent nationwide (Roberts 2008), as is already the case in some states. Immigrants now make up 12.5 percent of the US population (Gryn and Larsen 2010). Intensified immigration and refugee populations swirling around the entire globe have resulted in similarly dramatic demographic shifts on almost every continent. Having the capacity to draw on core democratic processes to negotiate the increased diversity will secure a stable future.
technological Advances: In 1945, televisions were a rarity and many sections of the country were just getting telephone lines and electricity. The impact of computers and information technology today is reminiscent of the transformation wrought by the Industrial Age: all facets of everyday living are affected, from communication to health care, from industry to energy, and from educational pedagogies to democratic practices. The Internet— particularly the development of social media to organize groups of people around commonly shared values—influences democratic engagement and activism, as dramatically illustrated by the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2008 US presidential election.
While the historical dynamics that shaped the Truman Commission’s findings may differ from today’s political and social environment, a number of stubborn problems that existed then continue to erode the foundation of our democracy. The most pressing of these are unequal access to college and economic lethargy.
Although access has increased dramatically, unequal access continues to plague democracy’s ability to thrive. Students are underprepared for college because of what writer and educator Jonathan Kozol (1991) refers to as “the savage inequalities” of the nation’s K–12 system. The poorer the young person, the less likely he or she will go to college. Yet SAT scores, which directly correlate with income, continue to determine many students’ qualifications to attend college. Failure to graduate from high school shuts off college as an option for nearly 30 percent of our nation’s young people; researchers James Heckman and Paul LaFontaine (2007) note that high school graduation rates have leveled or declined over four decades, and the “majority/minority graduation rate differentials are substantial and have not converged over the past 35 years.”
In a new foreword to The Drama of Diversity and Democracy: Higher Education and American Commitments, Ramón A. Gutiérrez illustrates Latinos’ attrition along the educational pipeline in the United States. While they are the fastest growing racial minority, surpassing the percentage of African Americans, education is not providing a democratic pathway to economic independence or social mobility. Drawing on research by Armida Ornelas and Daniel Solórzano, Gutiérrez explains that “of every one hundred Latinos who enroll in elementary school, fifty-three will drop out,” and of the forty-seven who graduate from high school, “only twenty-six will pursue some form of postsecondary education” and “only eight will graduate with baccalaureate degrees” (Gutiérrez 2011, xvi).
In the face of troubling discrepancies among racial and socioeconomic groups, there is some good news in the longer term regarding the nation’s increasing college graduation rates. In 1940, only 24 percent of the population 25 years and older had completed high school, and just under 5 percent held a bachelor’s degree (Bauman and Graf 2003). Seventy years later, those numbers have progressed dramatically. “Of the 3.2 million youth age 16 to 24 who graduated from high school between January and October 2010, about 2.2 million (68.1 percent) were enrolled in college in October 2010” (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011). Overall college graduation rates have also improved: the Digest of Education Statistics 2010, for example, reports that for those seeking the bachelor’s degree, the rate of graduation within four years has reached 36.4 percent. Within six years, it jumps to 57.2 percent. For those seeking an associate’s degree, the graduation rate within six years is 27.5 percent (Snyder and Dillow 2011). According to the 2011 Education at a Glance report completed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the labor force in the United States is among the world’s top five most highly educated. However, OECD’s report explains, “The US is the only country where attainment levels among those just entering the labor market (25–34 year-olds) do not exceed those about to leave the labor market (55–64 year olds).” As a result, “among 25–34 year-olds, the US ranks 15th among 34 OECD countries in tertiary attainment” (OECD 2011, 2). In other words, the educational attainment level in the United States has remained relatively flat while other countries have rapidly increased and surpassed us. An attainment rate that qualified the United States to be near the top of the world several decades ago is not a guarantee of retaining world leadership educationally.
Neither graduation rates nor attainment rates that were sufficient in the past are satisfactory today, when two-thirds of future jobs will require some type of postsecondary credential. There is a strong link between educational level and preparedness for a newly demanding workplace, just as there is a strong link between educational level and other civic indicators, including voting. A high-quality education, workforce preparation, and civic engagement are inextricably linked. A college education—who has access to it, and who completes the degree—affects personal ambitions, the economy, and civic participation.
After World War II, the United States invested in higher education as a vehicle to jump-start economic expansion. The community college sector in particular was dramatically expanded to provide people with new access to college and new technical skills. In today’s economy, higher education is once again viewed as a way graduates can achieve greater economic mobility and our lethargic economy can be stimulated.
In 1947, with the world in shambles, new structures, alliances, and programs were created in an attempt to avert future catastrophic wars, to reconstruct multiple economies, and to establish common principles of justice and equality. As the Truman Commission demonstrates, political and educational leaders agreed that higher education was needed to educate students for international understanding and cooperation to secure a sustainable future. Although today’s world is more globally integrated financially, culturally, and demographically, it is also fraught with civil and regional wars, clashing values, and environmental challenges wrought by rapacious consumption and carelessness. Citizens who have never examined any of these issues will be left vulnerable in the face of their long-term consequences. How to achieve sustainability—understood in its broadest definition as including strong communities, economic viability, and a healthy planet—is the democratic conundrum of the day. If it is not solved, everyone’s future well-being will be in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, students’ economic options are heavily influenced by two long-term trends: the requirement of a college credential for the twenty-first century employment market, and the inadequacy of federal and state funds that could make higher education more widely available. After World War II, the majority of jobs in the United States did not require a college degree, yet many—especially in unionized fields—offered a middle-class living wage and benefits. Today, a college degree is the credential that a high school diploma once was.
According to a 2010 report, Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2018, of the 46.8 million new and replacement job openings in 2018, 34 percent will require a bachelor’s degree or better, while 30 percent will require at least some college or a two-year associate’s degree. (Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl 2010, 110). As the report’s authors describe this societal sea change, “...postsecondary education or training has become the threshold requirement for access to middle-class status and earnings in good times and bad. It is no longer the preferred pathway to middle-class jobs—it is, increasingly, the only pathway” (110).
This higher educational bar is imposed as colleges and universities continue to cope with the effects of the recession and budget deficits at both state and federal levels. Higher education is often the vehicle that states use to balance their budgets. The sector does well in good times and is hit harder in lean ones. According to a 2011 report issued by the National Conference of State Legislatures, total state support for higher education institutions fell by 1.5 percent in FY 2009. Without federal funding from the American Reinvestment and Renewal Act (ARRA), this decline would have been 3.4 percent. In 2010, twenty-three states decreased state support of public higher education institutions, even after receiving ARRA funds. Eight of these states reported drops in higher education funding exceeding 5 percent (National Conference of State Legislatures 2011).
These compounding factors produce our crucible moment today. The country, the economy, and the world demand a different kind of expertise than was required of graduates after World War II. The kind of graduates we need at this moment in history need to possess a strong propensity for wading into an intensely interdependent, pluralist world. They need to be agile, creative problem solvers who draw their knowledge from multiple perspectives both domestic and global, who approach the world with empathy, and who are ready to act with others to improve the quality of life for all. Another name for these graduates is democratic citizens.
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What this excerpt hardly hints at:
1. As of October, we are seven billion, and population keeps right on increasing apace.
2. Computer-driven technology is eliminating more jobs than it is creating.
Yes, call me a prophet of doom... Poe's raven ("never more"). I'll say this anyway. In my humble opinion, there is no way that education is going to keep the younger generation, as a whole, out in front of technological advances.
The simple truth, that we are all reluctant to admit to ourselves --- much less say out loud --- is that an ever-increasing percentage of the world's human population is redundant. More and more hands are not needed, and so, go unengaged.
The section of the Report reproduced above concludes, "The kind of graduates we need at this moment in history need to possess a strong propensity for wading into an intensely interdependent, pluralist world. They need to be agile, creative problem solvers who draw their knowledge from multiple perspectives both domestic and global, who approach the world with empathy, and who are ready to act with others to improve the quality of life for all. Another name for these graduates is democratic citizens"
How many of your students fit this description? How many of your neighbors? How many of the folks you deal with every day?
How many can learn to be this way?
And even if they all can, will there be jobs and/or other economic opportunities for all of them?
I feel fairly certain that the answer to this question is "no."
And so, those who fit this description will join the elite, affluent minority at the top... while the majority continue to drop behind.
Pretty pessimistic, huh? Sorry about that. I believe that until we face up to the fact that what worked well in 1947 --- the model this report keeps harking back to --- is woefully insufficient today, we won't even be addressing the real problems, much less solving them.
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