A second chance at success
Our view: Enticing college dropouts to re-enroll and complete their degrees is an investment in Maryland’s future
Years ago, then-Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso launched an initiative aimed at luring students who had dropped out of high school to return to the classroom. As an educator, Mr. Alonso was well aware of the difference a high school diploma can make in terms of a student’s future employment prospects and potential earning power. He also knew that students often drop out because of circumstances beyond their control. If the schools reached out to re-engage them, he believed, many could be encouraged to re-enroll and complete their coursework.
In today’s world, though, a high school degree will only get you so far. Most students will also need vocational training or a college education to succeed. That’s why Morgan State University should be commended for following in Mr. Alonso’s footsteps, pioneering an innovative program designed to entice college students who have dropped out before graduating to come back and finish their degrees. As The Sun’s Carrie Wells reported this week, the program at Morgan has been embraced by the state and is now being replicated at several other public universities and community colleges in Maryland.
Currently only about 44 percent of students who enter college straight from high school graduate in four years. A major reason students drop out or fall behind in their studies is because many of them — particularly poor students of color — need to work in order to support themselves and pay for tuition and other expenses; some have families to care for as well.
Yet the economic consequences of dropping out of college can be devastating. The median salary for adults between 25 and 32 with a college education is nearly double that for workers with just a high school diploma, and the gap is getting wider. Young people without college degrees who used to be able to achieve a middle-class lifestyle from well-paying manufacturing jobs that didn’t require postsecondary training are now struggling to make ends meet, even in dual-income households. As income inequality in the U.S. economy becomes increasingly polarized between the “haves” and “have-nots,” workers without college degrees are suffering the most.
That sad reality is evident in Baltimore, where a booming steel industry once employed thousands of unskilled workers whose union salaries offered a ticket to upward mobility. Now the factories are shut and those jobs are gone, never to return. Even if the environmental cleanup and revitalization efforts planned for the old Sparrows Point site are successful, the new jobs brought by Bethlehem Steel’s successors will likely require some sort of postsecondary education. The transition to a 21st-century economy is leaving behind people without those credentials.
Despite promises by politicians like presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to “make America great again” by bringing back millions of low-skilled manufacturing jobs, that is unlikely to happen. The deep structural changes that the U.S. economy currently is undergoing are likely irreversible.
What the country needs instead of looking to the past is to nurture the kind of highly educated workforce that can successfully compete in today’s global marketplace. Helping as many young people as possible restart their academic careers and go on to earn college degrees is one way of achieving that goal. America’s greatest asset has always been its tremendous human capital, and that’s what we ought to be investing in now and for years to come.