“There will come a time when people question whether it’s worth it to pay what they pay for a four-year education given what the job market is able to produce in terms of careers. We haven’t hit that point yet, but it’s coming,” Swail warns. “Higher education is a serious hot spot for public policy.”
How education quality increases for disadvantaged and underrepresented students and college affordability is made possible over the coming years represent great challenges to U.S. education. Sarita Brown, the president of Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works on Hispanic success in higher education, believes it’s possible to be optimistic about the future despite the enormous challenges ahead. That optimism has to be tempered with sobering realism, she adds.
“I think there is an assumption that seems naïve now, and it was an assumption 25 years ago, which is when I got started in access work, that the numbers all by themselves would somehow bring about adaptation by higher education institutions and systems so that many more students of color would just be naturally participate, thrive and graduate, and that hasn’t happened,” she says.
Nothing can be assumed about the next 25 years, Brown notes. “The only thing that demographics tell us is that many more children are coming into this world so the question on the table is what is going to happen to them.”
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