EDUCATION, LABOR SKILLS, AND NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESSby As minorities, particularly Hispanics, become a higher proportion of the United States ' population, the challenge becomes greater for social and educational institutions to increase the numbers that finish high school and enroll in and finish college. With the country's aging population and the intense competition for skilled labor from countries such as India and China , the only way for the United States to meet its labor requirements as well as to fulfill the social and human potential of its population is to do better than it has in finding ways to make minority education effective. Educational Attainment Although the current news is somewhat hopeful, it unfortunately becomes deeply discouraging the further one looks into the future. On the one hand, the percentage of the population attaining a high school degree or more has increased steadily over the last twenty years. Rates for completion of high school for all but Hispanics have exceeded 80 percent. TABLE 1
However, a high school degree increasingly is insufficient to gain access to better jobs. Of the groups looked at in Table 2, none, including whites, have college degree levels at even 30 percent. TABLE 2
Value-added of a college degree The lack of a college degree constrains both individual and national competitiveness. According to the U. S. Census, over an adult's working life, high school graduates earn an average of $1.2 million; associate's degree holders earn about $1.6 million; and bachelor's degree holders earn about $2.1 million. Although the cost of higher education is significant, these statistics support the contention that given the gain in earnings between those who earn a bachelor's degree and those who do not, the individual rate of return on investment in higher education is sufficiently high to warrant the cost. (http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-3/value.htm) However, this key college graduation threshold, as shown previously in Table 2, is not being met by a sufficient number even of the white population. Over-all just over 25 percent of the total U.S. population attained a college degree in 2003, with the Hispanic population lagging even further behind with only 11.4 percent graduating from college. The educational challenge of immigration Current immigration, instead of making up for the educational deficit, is adding to it. Hispanics by far represent the largest number of immigrants and minority in the United States . Hispanics accounted for half of the population growth in the United States between 2000-2002 resulting from both continued immigration and high birth rates. There were 38.8 million Hispanics in July 2002, or 13 percent of the national total. However, they also represent the least educated. The immigrant population over-all is fairly well-educated, and has helped to address the need for those qualified to fill jobs particularly in science and engineering. Of the immigrant population, 60 percent have a high school degree and 25 percent (roughly the same percent as Americans over-all) have a college degree. However, these education levels are heavily concentrated among the non-Hispanic population as shown in Table 3. TABLE 3 (excerpted Elizabeth Grieco, Migration Policy Institute,
The challenge of minority educational achievement The lack of educational attainment among minorities, immigrants (and whites) presents an enormous challenge to the country's educational institutions. Although this challenge exists for all groups, it may be particularly formidable for Hispanics. According to the Educational Testing Service, by 2015 there will be 2 million additional minority students enrolled in colleges representing 37.2 percent of total enrollment up from 29.4 percent in 1995. One million of these minority students will be Hispanics increasing from 10.6 percent of the total number of undergraduates in 1995 to 15.4 percent in 2015. This increase will occur primarily in the states of California , Texas , Florida , and New York . (see, Achieving Equity as Generation Y Goes to College: New Data , www.diversityweb.org/digest/sp.sm00/geny.html Nevertheless, the ETS report also suggests that in 2015, the same gap that currently exists between the proportion of African American and Hispanics in the college-age population and their proportion of college enrollees will have either remained the same or increased. TABLE
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Achieving Equity as Generation Y Goes to College: New Data , www.diversityweb.org/digest/sp.sm00/geny.htm More minorities will be going to college, even with the gap, and, therefore, college enrollment will become more diverse. Will colleges have the capacity to provide an effective educational experience for these students? As Debra Humphreys puts it in her summary of the Crossing the Great Divide report (see citation above), “…Colleges and universities…still have a long way to go before they will achieve a diversity of their faculty and administrative ranks comparable to the diversity of their student bodies. In addition, creating an effective learning environment for all students on a diverse campus is still a significant challenge.” The failure of the educational system to enroll higher proportions of college-age students, and given the major changes in the population over-all in the next 10 years this means more of the minority college-age population, will have a profound affect on the country's capacity to maintain a robust domestic economy as well to compete globally. This is clear, for example, if we look at one aspect of the labor market, science and engineering. The lack of sufficient college graduates in math, science, and engineering threatens to put the country at a severe competitive disadvantage relative to other developed countries. Two conflicting trends are accelerating in the science and engineering labor market. On the one hand, the number of jobs requiring science and engineering skills is growing by about 5 percent a year compared to job growth of about 1 percent elsewhere, and on the other hand the number of those with the skills to fill such jobs is declining. Implications for diversity programs.
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