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The propensity to believe that good things are likely to happen fuels the enduring belief in the American Dream, including the expectation that each generation will enjoy a better quality of life than the previous one. This report is part of a series on young people's pathways to good jobs. In it, the researchers examine how the route from youth dependency to economic independence in young adulthood has changed over time. It explores how the likelihood of having a good job is affected by (1) educational attainment; (2) field of study; (3) occupation; (4) full-time work; (5) access to high-quality work-based learning; and (6) socioeconomic status. These elements work together to perpetuate inequality of opportunity for young Americans. In this report, the researchers focus on overall historical trends and socioeconomic gaps in opportunity. [For the companion report, "The Uncertain Pathway from Youth to a Good Job: How Racial and Gender Bias Impede Progress toward Good Jobs," see ED624516.]

Many Americans would agree that all people should have equal educational opportunity and equal pay for equal work. And yet, inequality in postsecondary education access, college completion, and post-college outcomes such as wages stubbornly persists, along with the impression that achieving equal outcomes would be too expensive and would take too much time to accomplish. A thought experiment that the authors conducted in partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission demonstrates that equality in postsecondary education would have considerable value to society. While equalizing educational attainment would be costly and time-intensive, balancing the costs with the potential societal benefits shows that an investment in postsecondary equality is money well spent. The top-line finding of the analysis is that equalizing postsecondary educational attainment by economic status and race/ethnicity would require an initial public investment of $3.97 trillion. The fiscal case for the societal value of economic and racial/ethnic justice in postsecondary education is even stronger today than it was before COVID-19 devastated American life. As higher education is forced to rethink its business model, it has the opportunity to more fully realize the potential of educational equity and recommit to enhancing the public good. Racial and economic justice need to be central goals, not secondary concerns or politically correct conceits unsupported by action, as postsecondary institutions reinvent themselves for the current era. [For the full report, see ED612641.]

Affirmative action critics argue that race-conscious admissions policies are keeping Asian American enrollment numbers unfairly low because Asian American students are held to higher admissions standards than applicants of any other race or ethnicity. "Selective Bias: Asian Americans, Test Scores, and Holistic Admissions" evaluates the common arguments made by them and Students for Fair Admissions, which is suing Harvard University and has lawsuits pending against the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas at Austin over their admissions practices. The report finds no strong evidence of discrimination against Asian American applicants in admissions to highly selective colleges.

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Dollars and Sense of Free College." Policymakers have debated the specifics of free-college programs--including whether free-college eligibility should extend to students at four-year public colleges as well as community colleges, and whether it should be universal or targeted to low-income and middle-income students. Free-college proposals generally reflect support for some form of publicly funded program that makes college attendance affordable for a majority of students. Joe Biden endorsed a free-college plan that was originally part of the party's platform in the previous election. This plan would make public community colleges tuition-free for all students. It also would make four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free for students with family incomes under $125,000, which would mean that approximately 80 percent of in-state undergraduate students at public four-year colleges and universities would not have to pay tuition. The federal government and state governments would share the costs of this program, with the federal government contributing $2 for every $1 contributed by a state. While the Biden plan has immediate relevance to the 2020 election, there are other ways to design free-college plans. This report discusses a variety of free-college models and assesses their relative costs and benefits. [For the full report, see ED608985.]

Free college has been gaining traction as a public policy option in recent years and has been adopted in some form by at least 15 states. Enthusiasm for the idea has gained momentum with the growing realization that a healthy economy requires a well-educated workforce and that workers benefit immensely from education beyond high school. Indeed, job market data show that 80 percent of jobs leading to middle-class wages call for at least some postsecondary education. Of course, free college is not really free for the taxpayers who will wind up paying for it. Supporters of free college argue that investment in the education system is a public good that yields both economic and noneconomic benefits far beyond its costs. In a diverse democratic society, higher education not only provides a path for economic self-sufficiency, it also contributes to positive outcomes such as improved health, reduced crime, and a greater sense of well-being. All these factors might reduce costs to society in the long run. Finally, higher education provides civic value by preparing an educated citizenry to participate in the electoral process. Any assessment of free-college plans needs to consider both costs and benefits. The analysis of a free-college plan endorsed by Joe Biden finds that it would have high costs but would also generate substantial benefits. Biden's plan would allow all students at community colleges and students with family incomes under $125,000 at public four-year universities to attend college without paying tuition. Like other first-dollar plans, Biden's program would allow students to use their existing financial aid toward other attendance costs, such as room and board. Biden's proposal for tuition-free college would cost $49.6 billion in its first year, with $33.1 billion in federal spending and $16.5 billion in state spending. These costs are $8.6 billion less than the costs associated with a first-dollar plan that would cover all students regardless of their family income. This report also examines the class and racial equity implications of first-dollar programs with universal eligibility, the Biden plan, and last-dollar programs with universal eligibility and discusses a variety of free-college models and assesses their relative costs and benefits. [For the executive summary, see ED608988.]

Education beyond high school is now the preferred currency for workers seeking economic opportunity in the US labor market. Since the 1980s, the bachelor's degree has been the gold standard for stable employment and lifetime earnings and the most promising route to the middle class. The new rules of the college and career game confirm that education level matters, and that more education is generally better when it comes to earnings potential. What is less well known is that program of study and major matter even more to potential earnings than education level. As a result, less education can often be worth more. In fact, some certificate holders can earn more than those with an associate's or bachelor's degree, and some associate's degree holders can earn more than those with a bachelor's degree. In other words, certificates and associate's degrees--credentials on the middle-skills pathway--can be viable routes to economic opportunity. Workers who have taken this pathway to jobs are doing so with certificates, associate's degrees, noncredit education, certifications, licenses, and a host of emerging microcredentials such as badges or coding and technology boot camps. But, while pockets of opportunity exist, not enough is known about the risks and rewards of the particular education and training programs available. Today the combined number of certificates and associate's degrees awarded by colleges is roughly equivalent to the number of bachelor's degrees, around 2 million per year, with certificates and associate's degrees each accounting for about 1 million. The students earning the vast majority of these credentials attend public two-year colleges. While certifications, licenses, microcredentials, and noncredit education are also important options on the middle-skills pathway, much less is known about the workforce outcomes of these options because no data source consistently captures this information. Due to limitations in the data, this report focuses on certificates and associate's degrees.

Judging from how much high school students and their parents worry about standardized test scores, one might presume that an SAT or ACT score is the primary factor in college admissions. But a look at the numbers reveals a different reality. A review of SAT and ACT standardized test scores among students in a recent class at the nation's 200 most selective colleges finds that if all students were admitted solely on the basis of their test scores and no new seats were added, 53 percent of incoming students at the nation's most selective colleges would no longer be attending. These students had median test scores that were 110 points below the median of all students at selective colleges (1140, compared to 1250). More than half of the students who would be ousted are affluent students-from families in the top quartile of socioeconomic status (SES). The problem however is that if those students were ousted and replaced by applicants with higher test scores, the student bodies of America's most selective colleges would become even more aristocratic. Now, 60 percent of incoming freshmen at selective colleges are from the top quartile of family SES, but that would increase to 63 percent if students were admitted based on standardized test scores alone. In addition to having more affluent students, selective colleges would become notably less racially diverse. The White enrollment would grow by about 14 percent. Meanwhile, the combined Black and Latino enrollment at selective colleges would be reduced by 43 percent, and Asian enrollment would decline as well-by about 9 percent. Researchers performed an thought experiment in which data that followed students entering high school in 2009, which includes information about those students' family socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, standardized test scores, and college enrollment were examined. Students from the high school class of 2013 who enrolled at the most selective colleges and universities in the country were identified. Then all the prospective college students from that year who reported SAT or ACT scores were reviewed. Researchers sorted by score and took the highest-scoring students until every existing seat was filled in the most selective colleges. After filling all 300,000 existing seats, it was determined that no one with an SAT or SAT-equivalent score below 1250 would have been admitted to the 200 most selective colleges and universities if admissions were based on test scores alone. Findings from this experiment indicated that an SAT-only admissions process isn't the answer. If admission to the most selective colleges were based on SAT scores alone, those institutions would serve even more affluent White students than they already do, further perpetuating intergenerational race and class privilege. Results obtained from this experiment show that the current admissions system disproportionately benefits affluent Whites, and supports the argument that just as an SAT-only admissions standard isn't the answer, neither is an admissions process without any standardization at all. Researchers concluded that what is needed is an admissions system that is not only holistic (while still including some form of standardization), but also transparent. Without transparency, there is no way to ensure that the college admissions system is fair.

This is the executive summary for the report, "Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don't Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be." Throughout their youth, relatively advantaged children enjoy protective and enriched environments that help ensure their success. Meanwhile, equally talented children from poor backgrounds are held back by material disadvantages. Stunningly, a child from the bottom quartile of socioeconomic status who has high test scores in kindergarten has only a 3 in 10 chance of having a college education and a good entry-level job as a young adult, compared to a 7 in 10 chance for a child in the top quartile of socioeconomic status who has low test scores. Thus, the likelihood of success is too often determined not by a child's innate talent, but by his or her life circumstances--including factors that determine access to opportunity based on class, race, and ethnicity. In short, the system conspires against young people from poor families, especially those who are Black or Latino. Among these youth, even those who "make it" and earn a college degree are less likely than their more affluent peers to get a good entry-level job as a young adult. [For the full report, see ED599947.]

In the United States, there is a broadly held presumption that the journey along the pipeline from kindergarten to early career success gradually reveals each child's innate abilities. This presumption is widespread not only in the general public, but among students themselves, who self-identify and identify each other as either academically gifted or generally undistinguished. All too often, these beliefs about one's talents and the talents of one's peers become self-fulfilling prophesies. In this study, the authors test the idea that demonstrated achievement is a perfect reflection of innate ability by tracing children's journeys through and beyond the educational system, from their academic performance in childhood to their early career outcomes as young adults. They find that there is substantial churn in children's demonstrated abilities as they travel through the K-12 system and onward to college and careers. These findings suggest that talent is not fixed: innate ability can be nurtured over time, or it can remain underdeveloped. The education system can play a role in whether children reach their full potential. Their findings also suggest both a good-news and a bad-news story. The good news is that early academic performance is not destiny and that individual striving, educational quality, and policy matter. The bad news is that the existing systems distribute opportunity based on income, class status, race, and ethnicity rather than hard work and talent. As a result, race and class also matter when it comes to children's life chances. [For the executive summary, see ED599950.]

This is the executive summary for the report, "Our Separate & Unequal Public Colleges: How Public Colleges Reinforce White Racial Privilege and Marginalize Black and Latino Students." America's selective public colleges should be among the great equalizers in our society. Funded primarily by taxpayers and carrying a relatively low price tag, these colleges are meant to be engines of opportunity for all. In reality, however, the doors of these colleges are open wider to White students than to their Black and Latino peers. Whites have almost two-thirds (64%) of the seats in selective public colleges even though Whites make up barely half (54%) of the nation's college-age population. Blacks and Latinos are making unprecedented gains in college-going, but the vast majority of Black and Latino students enroll in overcrowded and underfunded open-access colleges, primarily community colleges. Consequently, fewer Black and Latino students receive a bachelor's degree. [For the full report, see ED594576.]

Since 1980, the Black college-going rate has nearly doubled, while the Latino college-going rate has more than doubled. As a result, the Black and Latino share of public college enrollment has grown from 15 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2015. However, those impressive college-going gains are not being matched by gains in college completion. Today, even with their elevated college-going rates, Black and Latino students are only about half as likely as Whites to attain a bachelor's degree or higher. In fact, over the past 35 years, as Black and Latino college-going rates have climbed, the deficit in bachelor's degree attainment between Whites and Blacks and Latinos has actually increased from 15 percentage points to 21 percentage points. A reason for the widening deficit: while White students inordinately attend selective four-year public colleges to pursue bachelor's degrees, Black and Latino students in disproportionate numbers go to open-access public colleges, most of them community colleges where the highest possible credential is an associate's degree. This report tracks levels of minority enrollment and postsecondary expenditures in public colleges by state. Public colleges are exclusively looked at for two major reasons: (1) public colleges collectively enroll more than three out of every four college students, and (2) since public colleges are funded significantly by tax dollars, they have missions that include serving all of their states' residents. [For the executive summary, see ED594582.]