Frank Bruni provokes with his Op-Ed piece today in the New York Times, “The Imperiled Promise of College.” While we in community colleges can take cold comfort in the fact that education at our schools is still affordable, the promise of increased wages at the end of the journey is at risk. Students today compete globally for jobs. There are no guarantees of easy entry into the work force upon graduation.
Two answers from Bruni: help students understand that majors matter, and some majors will lead to better jobs than others; and keep college affordable. Couple this with another NYTimes piece, “Brain Drain Feared as German Jobs Lure Southern Europeans,” and you get a sense that talented graduates will go where the jobs are. Others are left to sort through a diminishing set of options. All of this argues that College to Careers may give part of the answer. And that there are no easy answers.
