Don’t Just Promise a Degree. Deliver Equal Value.
When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Value Commission released its report last week, it offered a bold new way to think about achieving equitable value across U.S. higher education.
A culmination of two years’ worth of work with the help of 30 postsecondary education experts and national leaders and in partnership with the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the report sought to answer the question, “what is college worth?”
For the majority of people, graduating from college means better lifetime earnings and personal well-being, generational economic and social mobility, and other important measures of public good. But those outcomes aren’t the same for everyone. In fact, they widely vary based on a person’s race and ethnicity, gender, where they’re from, and what type of institution they attend.
Black households headed by college degree holders still have substantially less wealth than White families headed by a high school dropout. While Black adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher earn 21 percent less than their White peers, Latinx adults earn 25 percent less.
These inequities perpetuate the systemic injustices—made devastatingly worse because of the pandemic—and the discrimination that millions face every day.
Building a better society with more equitable futures means more equitable post-college outcomes. And that requires more than a cliched promise to “meet students where they are;” it demands that institutions redesign themselves so students can become more than they—or the current statistics—ever imagined.
‘An Equitable Outcomes Crisis’
For decades, social statisticians, educators, foundations, policymakers, and the American people have proven the value of postsecondary education. As a former university president and faculty member, I saw it firsthand in the lives of thousands of students and their families.
While at Purdue University, I worked on the first Gallup-Purdue Index (now Strada-Gallup Alumni Survey) that measured college graduates’ experiences, such as internships or relationships with professors, with their long-term success in the workplace and their personal lives. Today, across a national sample, that survey shows graduates are more likely to be thriving in five key elements of well-being if a professor cared about them as a person. (Note, Gallup’s “career well-being” is now measured as “purpose.”)
From the Postsecondary Value Commission’s work, we know post-college outcomes differ based on where someone goes to school, whether they are low-income, a woman, or identify as Black, Latinx, or Indigenous.
These students are less likely to have access to support to help them succeed and more likely to attend institutions (like for-profit or underfunded two-year colleges) that offer a lower chance of graduating, higher debt burden, and a degree program with lower lifetime earnings and less opportunity for economic or social mobility.
There’s no shortage of institutions recruiting these students, which means we’re not only solving an access or completion problem, but an equitable outcomes crisis.
That’s why colleges and universities must rethink their design and processes to fit students’ lives, especially for first-generation and low-income students and people of color. These students innately have everything they need to succeed, but in too many cases, their school is built for someone else.
The Postsecondary Value Commission’s action agenda provides new policies and practices through a “value-centered lens,” many of which will help university leaders innovate student- and value-centered practices in ways that have the highest potential for positive—and equitable—change.
Designing for Students Not Currently Enrolled
It also means we must think as much about the students who currently aren’t enrolled in postsecondary institutions as those who are.
The pandemic forced many colleges and universities to find new ways to teach students where they live and work, thereby increasing their own capacities and those they serve. Even before COVID-19, we could look to ASU Online, University of Maryland Global Campus, Purdue Global, Southern New Hampshire University, or Western Governors University as national models for extending opportunities to earn high-quality degrees far beyond their physical campuses.
But too often, I see two- and four-year public institutions keep or design systems, rules, and programs for their convenience—not their students. The result is people trying to navigate a complex system that wasn’t set up for them. That’s not how to attract or ensure success for the promising students that are currently sitting on the sidelines, especially in a world of declining enrollments.
One recent study showed a quarter of last year’s high school seniors delayed their college plans. Another reported a nearly 20-percentage point drop in the likelihood they’d attend a four-year school—opting instead for career training or post-college employment.
If we’re going to convince these promising students—who are disproportionately low-income and students of color—that college is “worth it,” we better start thinking about people for whom the university is not designed. (I recently asked a similar question to my connections on LinkedIn and got some fascinating responses.)
And that means designing education systems and practices that don’t just promise a credential but an equitable future.
Dale Whittaker is a Senior Program Officer in Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A former executive at several of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing public research universities, he now works with other rapidly growing institutions with national and global footprints to help them innovate at scale to provide more degrees for more people with greater equity.
