What do we really mean when we say college isn’t for everyone? | Alex Bernadotte | TEDxBYU

[Music] [Applause] I'd like to start with a request please raise your hand if you are either currently enrolled in college or if you have a college degree okay my very scientific scan of the room tells me that about 95 to 98% of you raised your hand thank you so much for indulging me my name is Alex Bernadotte and I am the founder and CEO of beyond 12 an organization that is dedicated to helping students graduate from college and when I tell people what I do with increasing frequency I am asked to debate the following question is college for everyone now before I answer I typically ask a question of my own do you have a college degree and in all of the rooms in which I have debated this question the answer is almost always yes and with our college degrees we sit on the right side of some very powerful statistics according to the Census Bureau if you have some college but no degree you will earn 18 percent more than your peers with just a high school diploma and if you have a four-year degree you will earn 62% more some economists estimate that this is more than a million dollars in lifetime earnings college graduates are also reported to experience better health and life expectancy lower rates of unemployment increased person and professional mobility so I've started to wonder what makes people who worked really hard to achieve something and who are clearly benefiting from it turn around and tell others that the thing that they worked really hard for really wasn't worth it now some famous college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are often uses examples to demonstrate that the path to the c-suite isn't paved with college success but let's be real an Ivy League institution is a pretty powerful place to drop out of the networks you create or that you had before going the courses that you take before you make the decision to leave and the safety net you have at home are often critical to your future success and while we are having this conversation in some small pockets of Silicon Valley we're hiring managers or luring engineering students into the tech field what's really interesting about this question in this conversation is that more often than not we're asking it about students who come from under-resourced communities communities like Compton and Detroit communities like Dorchester and Oakland regions of the country like the flatlands of South Carolina and the northern Mississippi Delta so what we're really asking isn't is college for everyone but rather is college for those students is college for the student I once was I was born in port-au-prince Haiti and I grew up in inner-city Boston I was raised by my parents and my beloved grandmother mommy Claire who you see behind me in the center and by the way mommy Claire is still alive she is going to be 103 years old in June even though my parents didn't go to college they stressed the importance of an education and a college degree in particular is key to moving me and our family out of poverty one day when I was in the seventh grade my mom overheard a group of doctors talking about where they were sending their kids to college and she came running home she was so excited and said okay I got it you have to go to this thing called an Ivy League and you have to go to this place called Dartmouth and that's exactly how the good dream of a specific college was born it was through that overheard conversation in the emergency room of Kearney Hospital in Dorchester Massachusetts where my mom worked as a phlebotomist so I worked really hard in high school and I graduated at the top of my class when the acceptance letter from Dartmouth came we treated the moment almost as if we had won the lottery and we assumed that the most difficult part of the journey was behind us we were so wrong I completely bombed my freshman year even though I had a resume that indicated incredible preparation I struggled with every aspect of college life from the academic and the financial to the social and emotional after the fall of my sophomore year I was placed on academic probation and asked to take a leave of absence with generations of sacrifice and my entire family's hopes and dreams hanging in the balance I was in crisis luckily I was able to turn things around with the support of my family and with the help of my mentor I regained my footing I graduated from Dartmouth in four years and I land at Stanford for graduate school my degree didn't just change my trajectory it changed the trajectory of my entire family I was the first in our family to go to college but I wasn't the last I paved the way from my younger sister my younger cousins and so many more in our community and today we are repaying the sacrifices of our elders by helping to support them financially and in other ways my six-year-old is already wearing Dartmouth and Stanford t-shirts and guess where he's telling me he's going after high school I founded an organization that has added 31 new jobs to the US economy and 50% of our staff are first-generation college-goers going to college changed my worldview I became a critical thinker a better writer I found my passion and my voice for social justice and I became an activist while my story has a happy ending each year 700,000 students with backgrounds and stories similar to mine embark on their college journeys believing like I did that they are prepared for the road ahead but the statistics tell us otherwise the vast majority will not graduate from college is college for those students now the question I get just as often as the is college for everyone question is did you know that welders make six figures and they don't need a college degree and that's a very viable alternative and a wonderful career if in fact you want to be a welder but even if you do we know that we are losing manufacturing jobs really quickly in our economy and I get it our colleges and universities are broken the system is broken and I agree first even though we're sending more and more students to college too few particularly those from under-resourced communities are graduating only 9% of students from the lowest income quartile can expect to earn a bachelor's degree by their mid-20s versus 77% of their higher income peers african-american students earn bachelor's degrees at 1/2 and latino students at one-third the rate of white students second the rising cost of higher education leads us to ask legitimate questions about the ROI of a college degree according to the College Board the average price of a four-year degree is between 100,000 and 250,000 dollars College has become much more about whether you can afford to be there and third we know that our system of higher education isn't equipping our students with the skills they need to be successful in the workforce a recent survey by pay scale discovered that even though nine out of ten recent college graduates believe that they are prepared for the workforce only 50% of employers in our country agree colleges and universities must change they must become more accessible more inclusive more affordable and more relevant they have to create courses of study that allow all students to thrive in a competitive global technology driven economy the fact remains however that a college degree is still the currency of validation in our country since 2010 95% of all new jobs went to workers with at least some college now the challenges I described with our higher education system certainly lead to valid questions about whether college is the only path to help us close these workforce gaps but for decades our only alternatives have been non college paths like vocational training and apprenticeships a recent study by the New America Foundation found that 83% of people across party lines support increased government funding for apprenticeships but when asked what they would recommend to a child in their own lives only 25% said that they would recommend apprenticeships while 50% said that they would recommend a four-year college degree so there is a disconnect between what Americans think is good for other people's children and what we think is good for the children in our own lives it is dangerous for us to continue to have this conversation about the value of a college education with rooms full of college graduates with the benefit of hindsight and the privilege of choice we are debating the value of a proven path out of poverty without the voices of those who are living the alternative rather than excluding some students from the benefits of a college education let's focus on fixing a broken system first let's fix the disconnect between our k12 system our higher education system and our work force the curricular standards required to graduate from high school and those expected of students in college and the skills expected of workers as we transition into the workforce are completely misaligned second let's address those abysmal college dropout rates by amplifying student support services that are proactive let's use a combination of Technology and human coaching to really help guide our students to a college degree third let's address the rising cost of higher education by reforming our student aid programs so that they are more responsive to current students needs and let's incentivize colleges and universities for the degrees earned rather for the students who enter college lastly let's embrace new models of higher education that create a tighter pipeline between higher education and career but let's make sure that they are rigorous and that they provide our students with the academic and the non-academic skills that we know they need to be successful in today's workforce if students decide not to go to college let it be because they have made the choice they understand the array of choices before them and they have made a well informed and well educated decision based on their passions their interests and their skills rather than because our education system fails them and we were looking to bail them out so let's get back to the question at hand let's get back to the question at hand is college for everyone no but the opportunity to go to college should be because if you say no to that question you are saying no to the student I once was and to the millions of college students like me on campuses everywhere if we don't support all students in their journey through college we will lose their diverse and amazing for voices in our classrooms in our boardrooms in our political offices in our social agenda in the very fabric of our country and I would argue that we need their voices now more than ever thank you [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 79,537

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Classroom, Education reform, Higher education, Innovation, Poverty, Social Change, Social Entrepreneurship

Id: eXw9o4j43iY

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Tue May 01 2018