{"id":48267,"date":"2026-04-14T02:56:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=48267"},"modified":"2026-04-14T02:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:56:33","slug":"higher-educations-huge-opportunity-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=48267","title":{"rendered":"Higher Education\u2019s Huge Opportunity (column)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Colleges and universities\u2014and the testing companies, enrollment-management firms and other participants in the admissions-industrial complex\u2014collectively spend billions of dollars trying to get as many of the nearly four\u00a0million high school graduates each year into a postsecondary institution near you.<\/p>\n

Important work, to be sure, and a solid investment for society, given that most jobs still require some form of postsecondary education or training.<\/p>\n

But at a time when the traditional high school\u2013age population is set to shrink by 10\u00a0percent over the next decade\u2014and when it\u2019s increasingly obvious that one period of learning in our late teens and early 20s can\u2019t possibly suffice in our lengthening lives\u2014might it make more sense to spend at least a bit more of our collective time, energy and money driving the postsecondary success of the roughly 43\u00a0million Americans who went to college but failed to earn a credential?<\/p>\n

Or, at the very least, focusing on the nearly three\u00a0million of those people who during their time in college accumulated enough credits to qualify for an associate degree or the equivalent? <\/p>\n

To be fair, we\u2019re already paying more attention to the \u201csome college, no degree\u201d crowd than we used to. The National Student Clearinghouse began issuing reports on this population more than a decade ago and has done so regularly since 2022. Philanthropic organizations such as Lumina, Strada and Ascendium, among others, are funding various strategies aimed at re-engaging adult learners.<\/p>\n

And lots of states, colleges, companies and nonprofit groups (including my colleagues at Ithaka S+R) are focusing meaningful attention on this learner population and more generally encouraging us to think broadly about creating a \u201clearning society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shifting from our current structure to an ecosystem focused on learning across a lifetime is a long game that will require pulling major policy levers and changing funding mechanisms. There\u2019s a more urgent challenge\u2014and opportunity\u2014given the demographic and financial changes already cascading over us: the need for many if not most colleges to look beyond traditional-age learners to ensure their survival.<\/p>\n

The importance of this issue was newly reinforced for me by \u201cEarned but Not Awarded,\u201d a recent report from Texas 2036, a nonpartisan public policy group. A fascinating chart in the report (hat tip to Glenda Morgan\u2019s On Student Success newsletter for the referral) shows what happened to roughly 875,000 Texas public high school students after they graduated in the early 2010s.<\/p>\n

Capitalizing on Texas\u2019s top-notch data system for tracking how its residents move between education and work, the report shows that about three in five of those high school graduates made their way to a college or university in Texas, where their progress could be gauged. (Nearly 100,000 others enrolled in a college or university out of state, and almost 250,000 did not enter postsecondary education at all in the six years after high school.) Of the 540,000 who enrolled in a Texas college, 57\u00a0percent entered a community college and the rest went to a four-year institution. Within six years, not quite half (258,152) had earned a degree or certificate, as seen below. <\/p>\n

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board<\/p>\n

The remainder\u2014nearly 300,000 young adults\u2014joined the \u201csome college, no degree\u201d ranks. The vast majority (251,218) earned fewer than the 60 credits normally required for an associate degree. More than 31,000, though, hit that mark but did not earn a credential. Texas 2036 calls them potential completers and has a wealth of information about them.<\/p>\n

These were not mere dabblers: 70\u00a0percent earned all their credits at the four-year institution they originally enrolled in, and one in 10 (!!) earned at least 120 credits, the standard threshold for a bachelor\u2019s degree. The rest attended multiple colleges or universities, and many lost credits they\u2019d earned when the institution to which they transferred failed to recognize the courses.<\/p>\n

Potential completers were more likely to be men than women, to be Black or Hispanic than Asian or white, and likelier than students generally to receive Pell Grants for low-income students.<\/p>\n

And while these learners earned about the same pay as their peers with associate degrees upon entering the workforce, they soon fell behind: By their third year after leaving college, potential completers were less likely to be employed (74\u00a0percent versus 84\u00a0percent for associate degree holders) and saw less wage growth (55\u00a0percent versus 63\u00a0percent).<\/p>\n

Every state has its own pool of such learners; the National Student Clearinghouse estimates that there are 2.7\u00a0million potential completers nationally who are poised to qualify for a postsecondary credential and very much targets for re-enrolling\u2014if our highly diffuse postsecondary ecosystem can figure out how to serve them.<\/p>\n

The Texas 2036 report lays out what some of those changes might look like:<\/p>\n