Generation Y? More like Generation Dropout!

What can the past tell us?

The origins of these issues, surprisingly, and the answers we are looking for can be rooted forty years into the past. Let us use the United States as a case study.

During the first seventy years of the twentieth century, the high school graduation rate of American adolescents rose from six to eighty percent. One of the characteristics of educational policy became career-oriented education. The open education system approach had reached its height, involving learning that was initiated by the students themselves, dividing classrooms based on interest areas, and lessening mandatory courses and instead increasing the number of electives. By the sixties, the graduation rate ranked first among the OECD countries. As more and more graduated from high school, the increased proportion of the labour force that had a diploma became a driving force that fueled economic growth and rising incomes.

The seventies saw the rise of teacher activism, a broadening of the idea of civil rights in education. Nonetheless, the high school graduation rate flattened out around this time and stagnated for decades, while graduation rates in many other OECD countries increased markedly during this period. These countries, such as Finland, Germany and Japan, started incorporating a vocational education approach, an education that prepares students for specific careers, trades and crafts, providing procedural knowledge as opposed to theory. So what went wrong?

At this time, the United States developed a pattern of increasing high school graduation requirements. Requirements increased the nonmonetary cost of earning a diploma for students, especially for those entering high school with weak skills. In doing so however, they also lessened the value and effect of the financial payoff to a diploma, thus contributing to the stagnation in graduation rates over the last decades of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century.

So to summarize: education before the seventies was career-oriented, concentrating on the students’ interests for the future, rather than the general present-day requirements. Then beginning in the seventies, we began to see a shift in generalizing all students, who are all required to take at least the minimum amount of the same courses. Focus of the future in the long-term dissipates.

More Problems for Millennials?

The problem with these new graduation requirements was, and still continues to be, that they are too focused on getting a student into a post-secondary program, or any program, rather than guiding the student toward a career. Today, high school graduates and even college/university graduates are entering the “real world” with limited experience and a scarce amount of skills.

“Priorities have changed and our education has adapted to reflect those priorities,” commented Salma Faress. “Back then, when my parents were my age, life was focused on two things: career and family. You needed a career to provide food on your family’s table and that’s where education came into the picture. But now? A college or university degree is more about prestige than anything else. And prestige isn’t about perfecting, or even learning, skills.”
There are few job-prospect expectations for Millennials now. Not necessarily because they are less educated, but because they do not have the sufficient skills required to maintain the jobs available. As Baby Boomers continue to leave the workforce, employers are having a difficult time finding skilled young workers to replace them, producing long-term consequences on economic growth. Subsequently, the slow economy has shifted the way businesses hire: employers don’t need to build skills, they can simply hire them. And since Millennials are known for not having the right resources and skills for today’s labour market, companies are happy to retain the expertise of an older worker, rather than train a novice.

“It’s a vicious cycle worsening the problem,” Faress remarked. “One of my cousins is a lawyer but can only work at Holt Renfrew. How crazy is that?

I imagine it must be upsetting in a parent’s perspective, to immigrate to or live in a country with so much potential, but have their children live in a reality that has left them unprepared.”

Any solutions?

Perhaps the best suggestion is to expand education options that focus on life skills and work experience, as opposed to the traditional route of academic success. Graduation requirements should be loosened and businesses should collaborate with post-secondary schools to lead students toward pursuing careers. Salma Faress says there needs to be more application, rather than theory, a morphing of college and university into a single entity because right now “we’re only good on paper”.

Education has been the foundation for opportunity in countries such as Canada and the United States. But other countries have begun to outpace the best of the best. Times have changed and it’s time that schools change with them.

As the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a group committing to ensure that all students in the United States have the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, puts it, “we live in a globally connected, information saturated world. To thrive, our students need to learn in and out of school, in person and online, together and independently. Students need learning experiences that meet them where they are, engage them deeply, let them progress at a pace that meets their individual needs, and helps them master the skills for today and tomorrow.”

Known as Michelle Monteiro, she’s been writing since her hands could grasp paper and pencils. She’s learned that a pencil is an extension of the hand and a gateway to the psyche. Currently, Michelle is an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, completing a BA in English. For more of her quirkiness, follow her blog at http://therealmichellemonteiro.wordpress.com.