Terrible Timing to Publish My Book?

Maybe. Maybe not. Although I Didn't Mean to Kick Higher Ed When It's Down

It couldn’t be stranger coming out with a book called “Who Needs College Anymore?” just as President Trump has signed the Department of Education into oblivion. Anyone who gets beyond the title of my book soon sees that I am pro-college. And that my book is meant to push us to expand the definition of college to include funding and prestige for shorter term programs, not just degrees.

As I travel the country on my book tour, I feel like I have to apologize to my friends in academia. It’s a tough moment to recommend that colleges disrupt themselves when they feel roughed up by the new sheriff.

When Moody’s has downgraded the investment grade of colleges to negative because of the political environment.

When the federal student loan program appears to be homeless as it looks for a port in the post-apocalyptic storm of federal agency downsizing.

When the research function across the federal government is being challenged as wasteful, with data contracts being cancelled. Would I even be able to write this same book in, say, two years, if I need data to tell me how many students are going to college and what types of learners are choosing what forms of higher education?

Privately, friends at colleges and universities tell me that the College Reset I lay out in the book has to happen and that higher ed needs a good existential crisis to drive reforms through. But how to protect the baby as the bathwater sloshes out of the tub?

Moonshots Come and Go

I’m old enough to remember life before we had a Department of Education. In 1979, I was an intern at NASA in the building at 400 Maryland Ave, where a third of employees of Education Department carried out their belongings in cardboard boxes last week. In 1979, it was NASA’s star that was falling; it got downsized and gave over the building to the shiny new toy, that would elevate the state of education to Make America Great Again. A different kind of moonshot was born.

Ironically, it was a GOP president, Ronald Reagan, who brought the Education Department to life, when his administration used the new federal agency as a policy foothold to declare that we were “A Nation at Risk” and needed an education mandate to win the R&D race, in technology and medicine.

The “college for all” movement was born. And it did extend college access to more Americans, particularly first in family students and Black and brown learners. But that movement also began to make you feel bad about yourself or your prospects if you were not “college material.”

By the time Donald Trump rode into town in 2016 with a strong appeal to those on the wrong side of the diploma divide, not having a degree had become a wellspring of resentment to tap into. It was a force field holding the new majority of learners near the bottom of the economic ladder. As one high school junior I interviewed for the book told me, “If you aren’t going to college, you are made to feel like you’re ‘nothing’.”

So, I sympathize w the underlying surge of resentment that fueled Trump’s victory this time around. 62% of American adults don’t have a bachelor’s degree and yet we told them they need one to get a “good job.” 40 million adults tried college and it didn’t work out for them.

I was a little bit hopeful that because Trump won the non-college vote by 14 percentage points in November, he would take action on behalf of those voters. He signed the first executive order in his previous administration to remove degree requirements for federal jobs where possible. It is in keeping with his nolstalgic view of reviving US based industries that provided good factory jobs, like semiconductors.

What Are We Watching For?

In its first 100 days, viewing this from the outside, it appears that the administration has spent more time on what to eliminate and what to block: government waste, foreign goods, immigrants, DEI programs, research.

All eyes are waiting to see what gets lifted up instead: what are the new or bolstered programs in education and workforce training that Trump folks will support.

On the supply side, for learners and job applicants:

1. Will there be funding and employer incentives for apprenticeships? Could apprenticeship training even qualify for federal financial?

2. Short term Pell: Will Trump supporters push this legislation through Congress? This would extend federal financial aid to short term certificates, the fastest growing type of college enrollment. It is rumored to be fairly close. How would a hobbled Department of Education set up the implementation? Would the reporting requirements be lax? What types of education providers would qualify?

3. Will the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act be renewed? Easing the creation of apprenticeships and more flexible training programs. This almost made it through last year and is said to be bipartisan.

On the demand side, or dealing with talent shortages in key sectors:

1. Will Trump block further payouts under the $50 billion CHIPS Act, passed during the last administration to revive a US semiconductor industry. Trump called the Act a “horrible, horrible thing,” but went to Phoenix recently to announce a deal with a Taiwanese semiconductor company that is benefiting CHIPS Act dollars to expand its jobs. Will Congress fund new supports for key industries? President Trump announced the Stargate project in his first week, where the government will back companies to bolster the US’s dominance in AI technology. The workforce support piece of this has not been publicly spelled out.

2. Immigration: Will the Administration block what’s been called by detractors a “cheap labor scam” for tech companies in his general challenge to immigrants. Those workers with H-1B visas only get to come here if an employer sponsors them as “critical specialty workers,” and they are beholden to their sponsor employers. If this program is curtailed, US companies will suddenly be incented to grow their entry level tech worforce. And might the Administration support that?

The Trump team wants to return education to the states. The good news is that for much of the innovation I write about in my book, the action is in the states. But states’ ability to provide catalytic funding to both make college more affordable and scale new paths to well-paying jobs is spotty and cyclical, at best. Some years they have a deficit, and have to cut bold plans to modernize their education action system, as may happen in Maryland this year. And it’s Congress and the federal government that needs to modernize the student grant and loan program to include shorter pathways and it’s the federal government that needs to hold the states accountable to report data.

I was kind of surprised that one of the most common comments I get from readers so far about my book: “It's so optimistic. I needed that. Thank you.”

So to end on that note, hopefully, when the dust settles, the Administration will feel the pull from the populist part of its political base to explicitly solve for the diploma divide. To answer the call of the learners who say they are made to feel like “nothing” because non-degree forms of higher education are not visible or affordable for them.