One Good Question with Ben Nelson: Do We Actually Believe that College Matters?

Ben Nelson

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question (outlined in About) and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Education matters.  It sounds so banal and simple.  Everyone in the world says this, but I argue that no one actually believes that education matters. Here’s the proof:Imagine a high school student that has the option to go to  A) Harvard or B) some other less prestigious educational institution where they will get a better education. How many people are going to say don’t go to Harvard?  Effectively nobody.If people actually believed that education mattered, then college rankings, curricula, and choice wouldn’t exist in these formats.  Fundamentally, no one believes that the education matters, but that the credentials matter.  People think “have credential, will travel”.  And they’re wrong.  Credentials actually don’t really matter.  Credentials ultimately are put to the test when you get to the real world. The investment – whether dollars, human capital, time and money—from government, private sector, or families—the investment that returns the most in your life is learning.  It’s not getting an education. 

“You’re shifting the whole paradigm here – learning matters but learning institutions less so?  I still believe in "school," so help me understand this.”

We need to make a distinction between getting an education, being educated and actually learning.  One of the key elements to know that learning has occurred is the concept called far transfer.  Far transfer occurs when people apply learning from one context to a problem/need in a radically different context.  You know that some has learned when they say, “I’ve never seen this before, but I’ve seen all of these common elements.  I studied XYZ and there are patterns developed between them that I recognize here.  With certainty, I know that if I do ABC I will likely get positive results.So for families wondering where to invest in their children’s success?  Invest in education, not the credential. 

“How do you get people to shift their values towards “education” not credential?”

Hyperbolic discounting is the phenomenon that things get better with age.  Among youth and adults—if you are told “you can invest $10 today and get $100 5 years from now” most people say they would rather spend the $10 today.  Similarly, when you tell an 18-year old kid, you shouldn’t drop acid/do coke, because you’re going to have a lot of fun tonight, but 10 years from now you may ruin your life.  They discount it.  This is so built in to human nature to think about short-term reward vs long-term benefit.

It’s hard to admit that you don’t believe in our education system.  When push comes to shove and you’re at the supermarket, run into your old friend and she asks where your kid is going to school, you want to say Harvard (or whichever university has status for you).  You don’t want to say she’s getting an amazing education at "unbranded institution."  You sacrifice the future well-being of your child to have an easier supermarket conversation.  That’s how human beings behave.

How do we have a republic that works?  People understand and are informed instead of responding to their cognitive biases.  They actually commit to spending the time thinking about how not to generate irrational biases. That requires long-term thinking, i.e.  I’m going to spend more time pouring through this article, so that my one vote will be a beacon of light and influence others.  We’re not built to think that way, even though we live in a world that requires us too.  That’s the problem we’re stuck in.  We’re not designed for the modern world. We’re still designed to be hunters and gatherers.  The only solution I see to our problem is long-term and systemic.  Minerva exists to reform education systems all over the world.  We believe that reform occurs when the most prestigious institutions reset.  Ripple effect goes through the rest of the system.  This is a process that will take longer than my lifetime.

Don’t divorce the election outcomes from what government policy has been over the past several decades.  Republicans and Democrats have focused the last 50 years of higher education policy on: increasing access, increase completion, and more recently lowering costs.  The easiest way to increase college access, completion and make it cheaper – is to lower standards.  It’s the easiest way.  Anyone can go, anyone can finish and it’ll be cheaper.

If you actually educate your citizenry, and not just drive people towards the same credentials, more of the population will be ready to take the next step. When you apply science of learning, students are more engaged and are ready to make informed choices. Completion rates then increase.  Thirdly, as education institutions focus on education, then they can shed all of the outrageous cost levels that universities are currently in the trap of doing: sports, research salaries, campus museum and performing arts centers.   The cost burden of creating these country clubs falls to students and tax-payers but what’s the ROI?  If higher ed actually focused on education, then we could solve this.  College access and completion rates are only symptoms.  You have to treat the root cause. 

Ben’s One Good Question:  How do you enable wise decision-making in a world with unwise people?  I don’t know the answer to that.  I know how to make less and less wise decisions accelerate—social media, balkanization, knowledge migration – all these trends and realities are pushing us in the wrong direction. 

Ben Nelson is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Minerva, and a visionary with a passion to reinvent higher education. Prior to Minerva, Nelson spent more than 10 years at Snapfish, where he helped build the company from startup to the world’s largest personal publishing service. With over 42 million transactions across 22 countries, nearly five times greater than its closest competitor, Snapfish is among the top e-commerce services in the world. Serving as CEO from 2005 through 2010, Nelson began his tenure at Snapfish by leading the company’s sale to Hewlett Packard for $300 million.  Prior to joining Snapfish, Nelson was President and CEO of Community Ventures, a network of locally branded portals for American communities.Nelson’s passion for reforming undergraduate education was first sparked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he received a B.S. in Economics. After creating a blueprint for curricular reform in his first year of school, Nelson went on to become the chair of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education (SCUE), a pedagogical think tank that is the oldest and only non-elected student government body at the University of Pennsylvania. 

One Good Question with Ana Poncé: Is School Enough for Our Kids?

Ana Poncé

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Our mission at Camino Nuevo is to prepare students to succeed in life; we want our kids to be compassionate leaders, critical thinkers, and problem solvers and to thrive in a culturally-connected and changing world. But we can’t do this work alone. We need families to be our partners. That’s why, from the beginning, when we opened our first school, one of our priorities was institutionalizing an authentic parent engagement program with a robust menu of support services. We try to get to know families and understand their needs. When a family needs help, our staff connects them with existing support services in our community. Our commitment to families is paying off: Nearly 100 percent of our students graduate and are college bound.

There is a perception that running an effective parent engagement and support services program costs millions of dollars. However, it’s all about the partnerships and how schools integrate the support structures into the day.  For example, our schools are able to offer mental health counseling because we partner with a nonprofit mental health provider in the community. We also partner with graduate schools that provide us with interns. Through this partnership model, we can provide services to about 2,000 youth at a fraction of the total cost. We have similar partnerships for our students to have access to the arts, science, mentoring, and afterschool programming. These resources and services are available in many communities.

“Without dedicated funding available, so many schools feel like they have to choose between academic supports and mental health supports.  Why not just rely on community agencies to respond to these needs?”

Schools don’t have to provide every direct service. However, it is time that schools embrace collaboration and coordination. As educators, we know when families are struggling because a family member will turn to a teacher or staff member they trust to ask for help. Sometimes we find out [about a need] because a student is acting out due to the stress or trauma imposed by a family’s situation. That’s when we can connect those families with support agencies. We’ve had situations, for example, when a child’s family member has been deported, our staff has connected the student and their family to support services because we know how traumatic this situation can be for everyone. We do the same when we hear of a family who may be at risk of being evicted from their home. Everyone — from school leaders to custodians to office assistants – is trained on the referral process as well as our partnership philosophy. So, if a school’s office manager hears about a family in need, that person knows something can be done about it and knows who can connect the family to the services they need. 

“When we grow up in under-served communities and teach/lead in those same communities, we want to provide our students more access than we had.  Is that enough?  Does today's generation of (insert your demographic here) need something different than we did?”

It gives me pause when I hear people say “Is that enough?” What is enough? What does that mean? Ten years ago I was meeting with a program officer who asked when our work would be “done” in the MacArthur Park community. [laughter]What’s happening here, in terms of the consequences of poverty, is so beyond what we can do as a school.  When I think about what is enough, I know that school is not enough.  We have a lot more to do and we need a lot more of us to do it.  I believe that we need to create culturally reflective environments where our children are seeing themselves, and who they can become, on a daily basis.  As People of Color, we come into the education space and some stay for a few years, others stay longer.  I don’t think we are doing enough in diversifying the education workforce.  I believe we need to do more to prepare people of color for college success so that we can recruit more teachers of color, more leaders of color in education and education adjacent fields.

It’s important that our communities support more of us coming back in some way.  It doesn’t mean that you have to come back and live in the same community. You can “come back” in different ways – teach or lead in a school site, work in an education nonprofit.  Our kids need to see us come back and inspire them. When they see people who look like them in positions of influence (principals, C-level organizational leaders, key board members) and engaging in different activities (in college fairs, arts programs, ethnic studies classes) – their perception of what is possible for them begins to change.Camino Nuevo students are getting a lot more, in many ways, than I or my peers did back in the day, when high school completion was the exception, not the norm, for kids like me. Is it enough?  In some ways it is; more personalized attention, more wrap-around services, more enrichment opportunities, more access to higher education. However, our kids still need more because the system is so broken and set up against their success.  Our students need more than a solid educational foundation to make them competitive and to help them navigate the system.  Higher education needs to rethink how it supports first-generation college student to completion.  We have a solid track record of getting our kids to pursue higher education options and many of them are encountering significant barriers that most often are not academically related.  What we are doing at CNCA is great and it is a lot “more,” but I don’t believe that it is enough because of the barriers our kids continue to face every day due to systemic injustice.

Ana’s One Good Question: As a nation, we’re struggling with low college completion rates. We’re seeing a slight increase in graduation rates for Latinos, but a lot of our kids start college and don’t finish.  Education leaders and opinion influencers are rethinking the goals of K-12. I’m really concerned that more folks are thinking about creating alternate pathways for Latinos that don’t include a college education. That’s constantly on my mind. I know that my students, my kids will need a college degree to be competitive and to be on the path to leadership and influential positions. I am committed to educating all our kids to be leaders in their communities and in their fields. When we start creating watered-down pathways to a job, we’re not setting our students up to be leaders. What does that say about what we’re really trying to do?  I’m personally committed to figuring out how we move 'average students' to attain higher levels of success beyond being at top of class.  Jumping to alternative pathways is a quick solution. But let’s think about the consequences and examine what we as educators and what our institutions are not getting right. Let’s not blame the kids just yet. Let’s turn the mirror on ourselves.

Ana Ponce is the Chief Executive Officer of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (CNCA), a network of high performing charter schools serving more than 3,500 Pre-K through 12th grade students in the greater MacArthur Park neighborhood near Downtown Los Angeles. CNCA schools are recognized as models for serving predominantly Latino English Language Learners and have won various awards and distinctions including the Title 1 Academic Achievement Award, the California Association of Bilingual Education Seal of Excellence, the California Distinguished Schools award, and the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) award. Born in Mexico, Ana is committed to providing high quality educational options for immigrant families in the neighborhood where she grew up.An alumnus of Teach for America, she spent three years in the classroom before becoming one of the founding teachers and administrators at The Accelerated School, the first independent charter school in South Los Angeles. Under her instructional leadership, The Accelerated School was named “Elementary School of the Year” by Time magazine in 2001. Ms. Ponce earned her undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and a master's degree in Bilingual-Bicultural Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her administrative Tier 1 credential and second master's degree from UCLA through the Principal's Leadership Institute (PLI) and earned a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Loyola Marymount University. A veteran of the charter school movement in California, she serves on the Board of the California Charter Schools Association. 

One Good Question with J.B. Schramm: Is College Still Relevant?

J.B. Schramm

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Every school success paradigm I’ve seen involves similar components: excellent educators, school leaders, data and measurement, standards, etc.—but what you never see is “students” as part of the solution.  We have this sense that students are vessels into which education is to be poured.  In order to move forward in our communities, we need young people from our communities to take charge.   They need to have confidence and be equipped as critical thinkers, problem solvers, strategists, and risk takers.  They need the motivation to challenge power structures and be problem solvers in the broader community. We don’t win, and our nation doesn’t become a more just place, simply by informing students. We need to offer them the responsibility to take charge of their education and future.The fact is, young people are most influenced by their peers.  Young people today are taking responsibility for more and more parts of their lives, either because adults are abnegating obligations, or because technology is giving youth more opportunity to control their own communication and networks.  Young people influence young people, tremendously.  We are missing a huge opportunity when we define students as the objects of education.  The key that we need in our investments is to show that young people can be drivers of their education.  They can take charge of improving achievement in their schools.  The paradigm changes when you start with the premise that the young people are on your side, that they can be driving education gains not only for themselves but also for their classmates.I learned these lessons working at College Summit, the nonprofit championing student-driven college success.  They coined the phrase #PeerForward, which means to find and train a community’s most influential students in college access and leadership so that they run campaigns with their peers to file FAFSA, apply to college, and explore careers.  In this model, the peers are owning the outcomes, not just following adult voice.  That’s a very powerful model.  We all care more when we own something. When you’re talking about under-resourced institutions, the most powerful resource that schools need is already there in abundance – the students!! They can solve their problems. They want to achieve and they want to be challenged.  For teenagers especially, just when they are hungry for greater challenge, we so often keep them in the same sort of structure as elementary school.  Let’s take off the training wheels and give them the chance to take on bigger challenges.

“Given all of the contemporary discourse about the ways that traditional K-12 education is not preparing students for the new global economy, is college still relevant?”

A year ago, I co-authored a white paper with Andy Rotherham and Chad Aldeman that outlines today’s post-secondary paradox.  On the one hand, college is more valuable than ever. In immediate term the wage premium is about 70%, the highest it’s ever been.  From a medium term perspective, the number of jobs requiring postsecondary education is climbing. Today, just 45% of Americans have a post-secondary degree, and by 2025, 65% of jobs will require one.  If you want to be in the running for that set of jobs, education beyond high school is essential. (For more information, see Lumina Foundation’sA Stronger Nation report.)At the same time, college is riskier than ever, with historic debt loads, and employers questioning the value of many postsecondary programs.So how can students handle the post-secondary paradox? Young people need to be smart shoppers about their post-secondary education. You can no longer blindly get a degree from anywhere. Some colleges do a much better job of educating and graduating students than others; plus students need to navigate a wider array of options for quality postsecondary education today. You can no longer meander across majors, without considering career goals. That’s not to say students should lock into a career path in 9th grade. Teens are not going to all of a sudden know what they will want to do in 20 years; data suggests that they change jobs even more frequently than previous generations. Students benefit when they consider careers that interest them, and the economic potential of those fields, and then thoughtfully explore them.As smart shoppers, students can consider which range of careers intrigue them, which postsecondary programs will get them on the right path, and which institutions most effectively graduate students from similar backgrounds.  Unfortunately due to budget crunches, school districts are dedicating fewer and fewer resources for college and career planning. Just as the postsecondary paradox leaves students more in need of college-going know-how than ever before. Not surprisingly, college-going rates are down, especially for low-income students.

Students, parents and community organizations need to step up, help schools prioritize college and career planning, and access the resources—including influential students, recent college grads, and volunteer mentors — close at hand. (Check out: College Advising Corps, College Possible, and iMentor)The need for postsecondary education, and in fact deeper postsecondary education, becomes more pronounced the farther out we look. Some labor theorists predict we’re on the verge of the greatest workforce shift since the Industrial Revolution. Over the next few decades, large employment sectors will disappear, they say, due to automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, etc.  How can we prepare for a world like that?  I think we need to be skeptical of hyper-focusing on training students for what the job market requires right now.  Narrowly directing students to fill today’s job gaps may lead to employment and aid certain industries in the short term, but it’s not in the service of our kids, nation or industry in the long term. Rather, we need to raise the conversation about the future of work with students, employers, education innovators, and technologists. Also, I believe it’s a smart bet that this brave new world will favor people who can lead, create, problem solve, work in teams, and persevere. We call those attributes Power Skills. These are the skills employers cite today as being most in demand.  The most effective colleges develop Power Skills well, as do challenging work experiences, and demanding community service work—for example, we have seen Power Skills develop in College Summit Peer Leaders running peer campaigns in their high schools. For America to prosper relative to advancing economies around the world, we need to develop this kind of deeper learning in all students, in every corner of our nation. The question isn’t “whether” postsecondary education. It’s which kind of postsecondary education. Now is not the moment to soften ambitions, especially for students from low-income and under-represented communities climbing uphill. Nor is it time to resign ourselves to status quo postsecondary education.  We need to challenge our students, educators, employers and technologists to stretch, figuring out better ways for students to learn and take charge of their future.

J.B.’s One Good Question:  How can young people drive their education and improve student achievement in their communities?

J.B. Schramm chairs the Learn to Earn initiative at New Profit, a venture philanthropy and social innovation organization that provides funding and strategic support to help the most promising social innovations achieve scale. J.B. leads the organization’s ecosystem innovation work for college access, postsecondary education and career, helping colleagues in the field equip 10+M more Americans for career success by 2025.