Future of Learning and Work

Two recent surveys by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup offer insights into how our education system can better help all Americans navigate job and career choices

By LaVerne Evans SrinivasanApril 30, 2021

Future of Learning & Work

From the Spring 2021 Carnegie Reporter

Over the past few years, Carnegie Corporation of New York has been focused on working to better serve the cradle-to-career needs of our nation’s young people. We’ve identified a need to strengthen opportunities for students to connect with the world of work even before graduating from high school and to expand the range of educational pathways available to them afterward.

But the pandemic-related crisis has broadened the scope of our thinking: What changes to our system are needed to support long-term success for all adults?

We have partnered with Gallup on two surveys to understand the kinds of solutions that Americans want to see. Both surveys are designed to offer insights into the concerns, hopes, and pragmatic needs of those who look to the American education system to help them navigate job and career choices.

Back to Work: Listening to Americans, released by Gallup and Carnegie Corporation of New York in February, solicits Americans’ views of the most important issues facing the nation amid COVID-19; support for a plan that provides jobs, education, and training; and high-priority areas to address with a national jobs recovery program. The survey provides important insights about what is required to confront this immediate crisis, and it also suggests that we need a much more dynamic education system that supports lifelong learning and skills development.

Key Findings:

The survey surfaces strong bipartisan support for a national jobs recovery program that would put people back to work, addressing national and community needs while helping individuals build skills for future employment. Ninety-three percent of respondents favored a national work and job training program, including 98 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans.
A vast majority of survey respondents (65 percent) identifies addressing the impact of lost learning for K–12 students due to COVID-19 as a top priority for the nation to address. A recent study estimates that students have lost between two and six months of learning in reading, and between five and eight months of learning in math. Another estimates that reduced education from school closures will cost students between four and five percent of lifetime earnings. And when we look at the most vulnerable young people, the toll is even greater.
There is strong, bipartisan support for programs that combine paid work and learning. There is a large body of research showing that this approach is the best way to prepare people for long-term success, but the Back to Work survey shows that it’s also a commonsense idea. We need to create more of them.

Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work, a second survey by Gallup and Carnegie Corporation of New York released in April, offers further insights from Americans about the opportunities families want for their children and the postsecondary pathways available to them.

The survey explores how well parents think the American education system is preparing young people for life after high school. It offers new insights into the aspirations that parents have for their children, their perspectives on what will best help them achieve those hopes, and the barriers they face. The results of the survey are sobering, revealing a disconnect between the opportunities families want for their children and the postsecondary pathways available to them.

Key Findings:

The nation’s longstanding focus on making college degrees accessible to all has had the unintended consequence of leaving behind those students who are either unable or uninterested in pursuing a traditional college degree. While having their child attend a four-year college remains the ideal for many families, 46 percent prefer other options. Even among parents who hope their child will earn a bachelor’s degree, at least 40 percent are interested in career-related learning opportunities such as internships or apprenticeships.
We must work to remove barriers. Sixty-five percent of parents say their child faced one or more barriers to a preferred postsecondary pathway. While cost is a major hurdle, absent other barriers, families often manage to overcome it. Nonfinancial barriers, such as a lack of information about available programs or local access to a desired program, are more often insurmountable.
We need to create alternatives for lifelong learning for all students. Thirty-nine percent of parents who had hoped their child would enroll in college or a training program after high school say their child did not do so, with 49 percent of those same students entering the workforce instead, an outcome associated with lower lifetime earnings.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible to miss the fact that our schools, communities, and broader economy are inextricably linked. We are seeing schools distributing food to families. And while we know that schools provide much more than childcare, we see the impact on families’ ability to work when their children are unable to attend school in person. We also see that students need high-speed broadband to learn.

The best way to grow the economy is to invest in people — and that includes a heavy focus on programs that allow employees to earn and learn. It is in the interests of educators and employers to cultivate the capacity of the American workforce, so that companies have the talent they need to thrive, which will in turn strengthen the broader economy.

We hope that policymakers and education leaders will use the findings of both surveys to build a cradle-to-career education system that exposes young people to the world of work before graduating from high school and provides access to a robust array of career-related learning opportunities afterward. It’s going to take a partnership involving leaders from government, education, and the private sector to make that happen.

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan is the vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and the program director for Education.