David Leonhardt: Students of the Great Recession
[David Leonhardt is an economics columnist for The Times and a staff writer for the magazine.]
The Great Depression did not have too many silver linings, but it did change the way Americans thought about education, clearly for the better. In 1930, only 30 percent of teenagers graduated from high school. By 1940, after a decade in which there often was nothing better to do than stay in school, the number had jumped to 50 percent. The Depression didn’t just make Americans tougher. It made them smarter.
In the years that followed, these newly skilled workers helped create an economic colossus. They were the factory workers, office clerks and managers who built up General Motors, U.S. Steel, R.C.A. and I.B.M. So when our own Great Recession began more than two years ago, it was reasonable to hope that something similar, if less extreme, might take place.
In a historical echo, the share of young adults in recent years who graduated from college happened to be about 30 percent. By any serious reckoning, that number was too low. The gap between the pay of college graduates and everyone else has grown sharply over the last three decades, reaching a new all-time high last year, which suggests that workers with a degree are too scarce a resource. There may indeed be a natural ceiling on how many college graduates a society should produce, but the United States does not appear close to it.
A deep recession has the potential to change that. It can keep people in school, or drive them back to school, in two main ways. First, it reduces the opportunity cost — to use the technical term — of attending college. When times are tough, you are less likely to be missing out on a good $20-an-hour job by being in class. Second, a recession can serve as a wake-up, as Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economist on leave to work in the White House, puts it. Because job losses and reductions in hours tend to fall disproportionately on less-educated workers, a downturn reminds people of a degree’s value.
The good news is that this dynamic seems to be playing out once again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the share of new high-school graduates enrolled in college rose to 70.1 percent last fall. That was up from 67.2 percent in 2007 and a new record. And an analysis by the Pew Research Center has found the increase happening overwhelmingly at community colleges, which tend to educate working-class and poor students, the very groups that have been left behind. Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pa., has dealt with the crush by holding classes in empty mall stores and church basements, according to the publication Community College Week. Fresno City College, in California, now has an enrollment of more than 25,000 students but just 3,000 parking spaces....
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The Great Depression did not have too many silver linings, but it did change the way Americans thought about education, clearly for the better. In 1930, only 30 percent of teenagers graduated from high school. By 1940, after a decade in which there often was nothing better to do than stay in school, the number had jumped to 50 percent. The Depression didn’t just make Americans tougher. It made them smarter.
In the years that followed, these newly skilled workers helped create an economic colossus. They were the factory workers, office clerks and managers who built up General Motors, U.S. Steel, R.C.A. and I.B.M. So when our own Great Recession began more than two years ago, it was reasonable to hope that something similar, if less extreme, might take place.
In a historical echo, the share of young adults in recent years who graduated from college happened to be about 30 percent. By any serious reckoning, that number was too low. The gap between the pay of college graduates and everyone else has grown sharply over the last three decades, reaching a new all-time high last year, which suggests that workers with a degree are too scarce a resource. There may indeed be a natural ceiling on how many college graduates a society should produce, but the United States does not appear close to it.
A deep recession has the potential to change that. It can keep people in school, or drive them back to school, in two main ways. First, it reduces the opportunity cost — to use the technical term — of attending college. When times are tough, you are less likely to be missing out on a good $20-an-hour job by being in class. Second, a recession can serve as a wake-up, as Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economist on leave to work in the White House, puts it. Because job losses and reductions in hours tend to fall disproportionately on less-educated workers, a downturn reminds people of a degree’s value.
The good news is that this dynamic seems to be playing out once again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the share of new high-school graduates enrolled in college rose to 70.1 percent last fall. That was up from 67.2 percent in 2007 and a new record. And an analysis by the Pew Research Center has found the increase happening overwhelmingly at community colleges, which tend to educate working-class and poor students, the very groups that have been left behind. Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pa., has dealt with the crush by holding classes in empty mall stores and church basements, according to the publication Community College Week. Fresno City College, in California, now has an enrollment of more than 25,000 students but just 3,000 parking spaces....