The NEA has updated its analysis of the impact of the sequester on major education programs, using the 5.1% cut assumed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). They project a little over a $30 million dollar cut to the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act program, and a nearly $89 million dollar cut to Career, Technical, and Adult Education overall:
Source: NEA
That’s kind of how I feel after reading Jared Bernstein’s sensible take on the college earnings premium. It’s not that there isn’t one, but, as he puts it, “it doesn’t inoculate you against global wage arbitrage, accelerating labor-saving technology, and high unemployment.”
Bernstein shows that the college earnings premium has been flat for women over at least the past decade, and rising a lot more slowly for men than it was back in the 1980s. But this data includes people my age who started out in better paying jobs after earning their degree. I’d be interested to see the wage differential between those with just a high school degree and those under 30 with a college degree. Considering that average wages for college graduates have been falling steadily since even before the recession, I don’t understand why the wage differential for future generations won’t continue to narrow.
The other point is that not all college degrees are the same. A BA from Harvard presumably has more earnings potential than a BA from lower tier school. But unless I’m mistaken, the college premium argument is based on the average earnings of everyone currently in the workforce with a college degree, young and old.
It seems like we’re asking young people and adults without college degrees to work harder and invest more in education, but settle for less—maybe a lot less, in terms of earnings—than prior generations.
In the comments section to Bernsteins’s post, someone argues that “[E]lectricians, plumbers, carpenters, HVAC, exterminators, all blue collar work etc. is where the future lies… [T]hose trades carry little or no debt, have apprenticeships and pay well from the get-go. AND they carry job security.” It’s kind of old-fashioned now to talk about, but a lot of adult education programs can (and do) help adults move into those kinds of careers. The emphasis in adult education now is to ensure that adults become college and career ready, and I hope the career readiness piece looks at ways to help more adults move into apprenticeships for these kinds of jobs.
(Updated Below)
This week I’ve been hearing from some my friends in the field that the House is getting ready to introduce an immigration reform bill in the very near future—even, perhaps, ahead of the Senate. I’ll believe it when I see it. After reading some of the published reports about House action on this issue, I still think that the Senate, where a bipartisan group of influential Senators has actually put out a plan, is going to be first up with a bill.
The Hill did report Monday that a “bipartisan group of House negotiators is even further along in drafting a comprehensive immigration overhaul than its counterpart in the Senate,” and that this group was trying to release a draft bill directly before or after President Obama’s State of the Union address on February 12th.
But The Hill also noted that even though House Speaker John Boehner told a Republican advocacy organization last month that the House immigration group “basically [had] an agreement,” an aide later said that the Speaker’s assessment was “overly optimistic” as they “have not come to agreement on some of the big stuff.”
Moreover, Caitlin Huey-Burns, writing today forRealClearPolitics, suggests that Republican leadership is actually tapping the brakes on this effort:
House Speaker John Boehner… has advised his chamber to approach immigration reform slowly. “This is not about being in a hurry. This is about trying to get it right on behalf of the American people and those who are suffering under an immigration system that doesn’t work very well for anybody,” he told reporters Tuesday.
She also reports (as many others have) that there are still a significant number of Republicans in the House who are opposed to introducing a comprehensive bill, and would rather take on reform in a piecemeal fashion, through a series of separate bills.
Mike Flynn, writing for Breitbart.com about the revelation that a group of House members has been meeting to draft legislation on immigration reform reminiscent of the Senate talks, thinks that “the talks are even more political theater than the Senate effort.”
If I were in a position where I had to choose between focusing my advocacy efforts between the House and the Senate over the next few weeks, I think I’d go with the Senate. In particular, considering Sen. Marco Rubio’s strong interest in this topic—and apparent influence within his party on the pending legislation—the sizable number of adult education advocates in Florida seem to me to be in an interesting position to advocate for adult education resources in the Senate bill.
UPDATE 2/7/13: The National Journal seems to agree:
[[T]he House will likely hold hearings and markups, and maybe even offer the bipartisan bill, but they’re not going first. House Republican leadership thinks immigration will likely fail in the Senate, and they’re not wild about the idea of making their members take a politically tough vote only to have reform die.
I didn’t watch any of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on immigration yesterday but I would guess from a quick scan of the written testimony that there wasn’t any significant discussion about the role of adult education in immigrant integration.
It appears that the best opportunity might have been during the testimony of Michael Teitelbaum, who served as the Commissioner and Vice Chair U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform back in the 1990s. For his written testimony, he attached the commission report—which is now over 15 years old. But the commission’s assessment of the state of adult education could have been written yesterday:
The Commission urges the federal, state, and local governments and private institutions to enhance educational opportunities for adult immigrants. Education for basic skills and literacy in English is the major vehicle that integrates adult immigrants into American society and participation in its civic activities. Literate adults are more likely to participate in the workforce and twice as likely to participate in our democracy. Literate adults foster literacy in their children, and parents’ educational levels positively affect their children’s academic performance.
Adult education is severely underfunded. Available resources are inadequate to meet the demand for adult immigrant education, particularly for English proficiency and job skills. In recognition of the benefits they receive from immigration, the Commission urges leaders from businesses and corporations to participate in skills training, English instruction, and civics education programs for immigrants. Religious schools and institutions, charities, foundations, community organizations, public and private schools, colleges and universities also can contribute resources, facilities, and expertise.
In his written testimony, Teitelbaum said he “was pleased to learn only recently that many of recommendations designed to facilitate the integration of legal immigrants, “including a welcome guide for new immigrants, orientation materials and information clearinghouses, and facilitating access to adult education in civics and English” had been implemented after the Office of Citizenship was created in the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security. (my emphasis)
But while it’s true that USCIS has developed many of the materials and resources envisioned by the commission (and has offered some grants for adult EL/civics education), there has been virtually no progress over the last 15 years to significantly expand educational opportunities for adult immigrants. Funding for the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the primary vehicle for federal investment in adult education in the U.S. (which includes a set-aside for EL/Civics) has been stagnant for years; in fact, taking inflation into account, it’s actually gone down.
Moreover, the EL/Civics grant program, which began as as a demonstration grant at the U.S. Department of Education, isn’t actually authorized by WIA. The set-aside has been approved by Congressional appropriators for years now, but the lack of authorization leaves the program more vulnerable to elimination than other programs under WIA. Proponents have been trying to get it authorized in the next version of WIA, but WIA reauthorization itself has been delayed for about a decade. (A modest—but significant—win for adult education in the immigration reform bill would be to finally codify and authorize the EL/Civics grant program in WIA.)
I don’t think Teitelbaum meant to suggest that the adult education recommendations made by the commission had been achieved, but anyone not familiar with the state of adult education, WIA and EL/Civics education might have been given the impression from his testimony that significant progress has been made made in this area, which is not the case.
Literacy & Policy 