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Americans share a strong belief that the country offers access to opportunity. In 2017, 82 percent of Americans said they had achieved the American Dream or were on their way to achieving it. But do all Americans--regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status--have equal access to the American Dream? This report examines racial/ethnic and gender gaps in who has a good job as a young adult. It explores how the likelihood of having a good job is affected by the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender and related opportunity gaps in: (1) educational attainment; (2) field of study; (3) occupation; (4) full-time work; (5) access to high-quality work-based learning; (6) experiences with structural racism and sexism; and (7) intergenerational wealth. These elements work together to perpetuate inequality of opportunity for young Americans. It is part of a two-report exploration of the elongated pathway to a good job. [For the companion report, "The Uncertain Pathway from Youth to a Good Job: How Limits to Educational Affordability, Work-Based Learning, and Career Counseling Impede Progress toward Good Jobs," see ED624515.]

The economic and social landscape that young people encounter today is substantially more complex and challenging than the one faced by earlier generations. Technological change and globalization have transformed the labor market, increasing the value of postsecondary education and hollowing out industries that once employed many workers who had no more than a high school diploma. While access to postsecondary education has expanded, gaps in educational attainment and access to good jobs among demographic groups persist. Together, these factors limit opportunity for many young workers. Within each racial/ethnic group, women are less likely to have a good job than men. Many young people seeking to secure a good job find themselves on winding pathways rife with barriers. Among these barriers are three major hurdles: (1) the rising cost of postsecondary education, (2) limited access to high-quality work-based learning (WBL), and (3) an absence of comprehensive counseling and career navigation services. These three hurdles, exacerbated by discrimination, have heightened disparities in educational attainment and financial security by race, class, and gender. Finally, they have slowed young adults' ability to accumulate wealth, especially for those who acquire substantial debt to cover the rising costs of postsecondary education. [For the full reports, "The Uncertain Pathway from Youth to a Good Job: How Limits to Educational Affordability, Work-Based Learning, and Career Counseling Impede Progress toward Good Jobs," see ED624515 and "The Uncertain Pathway from Youth to a Good Job: How Racial and Gender Bias Impede Progress toward Good Jobs," see ED624516.]

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.]

In partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission, we conducted a thought experiment on the costs of inequality in the US education system. Our simulation found that the US economy misses out on $956 billion dollars per year, along with numerous nonmonetary benefits, as a result of postsecondary attainment gaps by economic status and race/ethnicity. "The Cost of Economic and Racial Injustice in Postsecondary Education" finds that closing these gaps would require an initial public investment of at least $3.97 trillion, but the benefits would outweigh the costs over time. Equalizing educational attainment without increasing student debt for low-income adults could also boost GDP by a total of $764 billion annually. [During the writing of this report, Kathryn Peltier Campbell, Ban Cheah, Megan L. Fasules, Artem Gulish, Michael C. Quinn, Jenna R. Sablan, Nicole Smith, and Jeff Strohl received funding from the Institute for Higher Education Policy for work done on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.]

"If Not Now, When? The Urgent Need for an All-One-System Approach to Youth Policy" makes the case that the United States' disjointed approach to youth policy has failed young people. In the current fragmented system, pre-K-12, postsecondary education, and the workforce operate in silos that allow many young people to fall through the cracks. In its place, the country needs an all-one-system approach that supports youth on their journey through education and training and into careers.

Over the past half century, postsecondary education has taken on an increasingly important role in career preparation in the United States, with profound effects on the life experiences of young adults. Having a college credential has become both more valuable in the labor market and more expensive, with much of the burden falling directly on students and their families. At the same time, postsecondary institutions are not doing enough to equip students to lead economically independent and fulfilling lives. This essay explores several current trends, including the following: the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in both exacerbating the challenges young adults face on the way to economic self-sufficiency and amplifying postsecondary education's relationship to economic security; the increasing number of jobs that will require at least some postsecondary education and training; and the role that separate and unequal postsecondary institutions play in perpetuating and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic injustice. Based on these trends, the report outlines 10 rules of the college game for students and their families as they choose among different postsecondary institutions and programs. Finally, the essay concludes with recommendations to measure educational value to better align the classroom and the workplace, which will ensure that postsecondary education better fulfills its economic, political, and cultural missions.

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.]

This report examines the relationship between authoritarianism and postsecondary education, including liberal arts education. This analysis rests on the idea that authoritarianism is part of human nature, but its influence waxes and wanes according to circumstances. Having entered a new era defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence suggests that there is good reason to worry about the future of democracy. Presenting enormous threats to physical and economic well-being worldwide, this contemporary emergency bears the hallmarks of a possible tipping point into authoritarianism. Key findings include: (1) College graduates are less inclined to express authoritarian preferences and attitudes than their peers with less education; (2) Higher education provides people with a greater sense of security. As a result, it can lead to the development of interpersonal trust, which is associated with a weaker inclination toward expressing authoritarian preferences and attitudes; (3) People with postsecondary education are more likely to be politically active, which in the United States is associated with a lower inclination toward expressing authoritarian preferences and attitudes; (4) Liberal arts majors in particular are less inclined to express authoritarian preferences and attitudes than majors in business-related fields and STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics); (5) People with postsecondary education are more economically secure than those without it, and people who are economically secure are less inclined to express authoritarian preferences and attitudes; and (6) Postsecondary education tends to expose people to secular values and cultures, leading them to be less inclined to express authoritarian preferences and attitudes. [Foreword by John J. DeGioia.]

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos." Between 1991 and 2016, White workers built on their past educational and economic privileges to attain bachelor's and graduate degrees in historically high numbers and consequently gained access to good jobs that demanded higher levels of education. As a group, White workers with bachelor's degrees and graduate degrees gained 10.6 million good jobs even as overall employment growth for White workers was modest: 1.9 million jobs. With the constantly growing demand for workers with postsecondary education and the disproportionate advantage that Whites have accrued in educational attainment. Black and Latino workers also sought and attained higher levels of education as a pathway to greater opportunity, but their gains have been far short of those of Whites. Black workers gained 1.9 million good jobs for workers with at least a bachelor's degree, while their employment increased by 4 million jobs overall; Latino workers gained 2.2 million good jobs for workers with at least a bachelor's degree even as their employment increased substantially, by 13.1 million jobs overall. [For the full report, see ED600048.]

The gender wage gap, the disparity in pay between men and women, has narrowed to 81 cents in 2016 from 57 cents on the dollar in 1975. Nevertheless, the gap persists. Over the course of a career, the gender wage gap results in women earning $1 million less than men do. To close this gap, women have relied primarily on the advantages conferred by education. Today, women are enrolling in college in greater numbers than men, breaking through barriers to pursue degrees in male-dominated majors that offer higher earnings, as well as graduating in greater numbers at all levels of education. In the 1970s, the number of associate's degrees awarded to women began outnumbering those awarded to men. In the 1980s, the number of bachelor's degrees and master's degrees awarded to women overtook the number awarded to men. By the 2000s, more women completed doctoral degrees than men. The report explores the complex set of reasons that have kept the gender wage gap in place. Even when comparing men and women who have equal educational attainment and work in the same occupation, women still earn only 92 cents for every dollar earned by men. [For the executive summary, see ED594548.]

In the post-World War II period, workers with a high school diploma or less were able to attain jobs with middle-class wages in American industry. Good jobs were available in manufacturing and other blue-collar industries that employed large numbers of high school-educated workers. But as automation, globalization, and related phenomena have led to major structural changes in the American economy, economic opportunity has shifted toward more educated workers with higher skill levels. Whereas two out of three entry-level jobs in the industrial economy demanded a high school diploma or less, now two out of three jobs demand at least some education or training beyond high school. In this report, the authors write about the three pathways to good jobs, each defined by education and skills: the high school pathway, the middle-skills pathway, and the bachelor's degree (BA) pathway.

This report shows how state leaders are using technological advances to improve the use of data in five critical areas: (1) Helping economic and workforce developers, businesses, and colleges to reduce the high costs resulting from uninformed education and workforce decisions; (2) Assisting college leaders in making program-related decisions that take into account labor market needs; (3) Ensuring that postsecondary education and training programs strike a balance between learners' foundational knowledge and what they will need to know and be able to do in the workplace; (4) Enhancing high school counseling and college advising to make the process of exploring, entering, and finishing college easier for learners; and (5) Helping workers understand how to take advantage of postsecondary education and training options as they change jobs and navigate their careers. These five practices call for the integration of postsecondary education and workforce data to support individual, organizational, and policy decisions. Together, they represent closer alignment between the postsecondary education and workforce sectors. Alignment does not mean that the postsecondary sector becomes the pawn of the workforce sector, or vice versa; rather, the two sectors work in concert to contribute to a state's overall success. The tools featured in this report represent how leaders within and across eight geographically diverse states are using labor market information to build a more complete picture of what happens to learners and workers before, during, and after they complete their postsecondary studies. Each section of the report includes an overview and describes the data being integrated, as well as the intended audience for each of the Five Ways. Each section concludes with one or more state examples.

Economic projections show that skills-based technological change across industries and occupations will support rising demand for postsecondary education and training. By 2025, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that 68 percent of the jobs in Iowa will require some level of postsecondary education. A key driver is the growing need for workers in healthcare, education, management, STEM, and other high-skill occupations. Many of the largest employers in the state--clustered in healthcare, finance and insurance, manufacturing, and education--need workers with at least some college education. Businesses that relocate to or expand in Iowa will also require an educated workforce. Setting a goal of having 68 percent of the workforce achieve a postsecondary degree, certification, or other industry-recognized credential with labor market value by 2025 would not just be reasonable, given demand-side projections, but also highly supportive of future economic growth in the state. Appended are: (1) National projections and why Georgetown Center on Education and the Workplace projections differ from Bureau of Labor Statistics projections; (2) Educational distribution of 2025 employment by occupation in Iowa (number); (3) Educational distribution of 2025 employment by occupation in Iowa (percent); (4) Job openings by occupation group and subgroup in Iowa, 2010-2025; (5) Distribution of occupations in top 20 industries by employment in Iowa; and (6) Career Pathways in Iowa.

This report analyzes the growing need for qualified nurses. The study projects that the economy will create 1.6 million job openings for nurses through 2020. Yet, there will not be enough nurses to fill those openings. this report projects that the nursing workforce will be facing a shortfall of roughly 200,000 nursing professionals by 2020. One of the reasons for the growing demand is due to changing demographics; older nurses are retiring in large numbers, creating thousands of job openings. Another factor is the Affordable Care Act, which expands health insurance coverage to millions of job openings. In addition, nursing schools lack the faculty, facilities, and training sites to match the growing demand. A glossary and bibliography are provided.

"College Is Just the Beginning: The Employer Role in $1.1 Trillion Postsecondary Education and Training System" focuses on employer investment in formal training for workers in the context of the broader postsecondary education and training system and the primary institutions involved in skill development in the United States. Along with colleges and universities, employers are the main providers of formal training in the United States. In this brief report, we analyze how much employers spend on formal training, what they spend formal training dollars on, and how spending on formal training varies by workers' educational attainment, age, and industry sector. Formal learning or training features a scheduled, regimented series of learning or training sessions, typically administered by an assigned trainer. Informal learning or training, by contrast, occurs through experience on the job. Appended is: "Data Sources and Methodology."

The lockstep march from school to work and then on to retirement no longer applies for a growing share of Americans. Many young adults are launching their careers later, while older adults are working longer. As a result, the education and labor market institutions that were the foundation of a 20th century system are out of sync with the 21st century knowledge economy. This six-part report examines trends in employment, labor force participation, annual earnings, and occupations for young and older adults, by sex, race/ethnicity, and education. The following are appended: (1) Methodology; and (2) Detailed Occupational Changes for Young Adults between 1980 and 2010, and Endnotes.

Democratic societies are rooted in the widely shared belief that all lives have value. As a result, the idea of educational adequacy in a democracy is rooted in the conviction that education's primary mission is to provide knowledge and skills sufficient to allow people to live fully, according to the standards of their time. In a democracy with a market economy--and little support for an extensive social safety net--paid work is essential to individual human flourishing. In the U.S. socioeconomic system in particular, individuals are expected to attain a base of self-sufficiency. In this system, individual well-being is primarily a personal responsibility. Education is the preferred method in the United States of providing access to opportunity to attain self-sufficiency. This report begins with a brief history of the co-evolution of educational adequacy and democratic capitalism. The report then discusses the difficulty of defining education adequacy in a rapidly changing economy and educational system. It then presents a simplified approach to calculating a standard for measuring educational adequacy based on the earnings of graduates, to give the reader a concrete grasp of how these principles can be applied. This report ends with a discussion about some of the issues that will need to be grappled with, and suggests that the answers to many questions will need to be based on very subjective decisions, or on social consensus.