Friday, March 27, 2015
By Andrew Bradley
Hoosier adults and working parents
are ready to go back to school to get the skills to compete for better jobs and
higher wages, but will Indiana provide the opportunities they need to be able
to boost their families and the state’s economy?
Despite a self-proclaimed ‘education
session’ at the Statehouse aimed at K-12 schools, policymakers must remember
that the success of working parents and adult students is also necessary for
Indiana to meet its economic and workforce goals. And while there are several
promising proposals being discussed in the General Assembly, Indiana still
needs true leadership to bring together supportive services with financial aid in
a way that removes barriers and allows Hoosier adults to benefit from
completing their degrees and credentials.
A new policy brief from the
Indiana Institute for Working Families indicates that Indiana’s economy and the
prosperity of its families continues to be held back by the low educational
attainment of our adults, and it gives recommendations for how Indiana can better
align state and federal resources so Indiana can meet its goals and
responsibilities. The policy brief provides data that show adults and
financially independent students combine for over a third of Indiana’s
post-secondary population, but until this past year, those who had to attend
part-time have only been eligible for less than 3 percent of state’s financial
aid. And while employers are increasingly requiring applicants to have degrees
and credentials above the high school level, data from the Working Poor
Families Project shows that 30.1 percent of prime working-age adults in Indiana
ages 25-54 had only a high school diploma or equivalent in 2013, and another 11
percent don’t even have that, higher percentages than all of our neighbors
except Kentucky. And while an additional 22.9 percent have some post-secondary
education but no degree to show for it, just 6.8 percent of Indiana’s
working-age adults were enrolled in post-secondary education in 2013.
As Indiana employers have told
the state time and again, there is a skills gap for educated workers,
particularly in middle-skill occupations such as nurses, electricians and
operating engineers that require education above a high school diploma but less
than a four-year degree. These are the very certifications and degrees that
adult students have the best opportunity to complete, particularly those students
with family and financial obligations that require them to attend school while working.
Meanwhile, demographic projections show that adults who have been in the workforce
since 2010 will remain nearly 2/3 of Indiana’s workforce through 2025, meaning
that in order to meet the demands of a changing economy, Indiana must
concentrate on finding solutions for the adults who are already part of our
labor pool.
However, Indiana’s adults are too
often kept from going back to school to complete degrees by work and family
obligations, and even more frustratingly, by the lack of support and services
matching their needs. The Institute has found that almost two-thirds of Indiana’s
post-secondary adult students age 25-54 work their way through school, and over
60 percent of these work more than 30 hours per week while taking classes, whether
at part-time or full-time status. Another recent study
by the Institute for Women's Policy Research finds that while 26 percent of all
college students nationwide are raising dependent children, it’s become harder
to find child care on campus, especially at 2-year colleges, where only 46
percent now provide any on-location child care. For the more than 4 in 10
student parents who attend community college, this means they can only take a
class if they can find child care somewhere else, not exactly a reliable recipe
for a degree.
There are a few promising
proposals for Hoosier adults wanting to improve their skills, but big gaps
still exist. Senate Bill 509 would transform the previous grant for part-time students into the
state’s first ‘Adult Learners Grant’ and give the state flexibility to reward
students for persistence by giving graduation grants for students studying to
go into high-demand occupations. Even so, this grant would still amount to only
two percent of the state’s financial aid, compared to the 36 percent of adult
and independent students in the state’s post-secondary population. Another
promising proposal is in House Bill 1601,
which would open the door for better aligning the services of the state’s
workforce and family resources agencies when providing services for Hoosiers.
This is an exciting development that could foster interagency coordination and pave
the way for ‘two generation solutions’ to help parents put themselves on the
pathway to economic success while simultaneously putting kids on the path to
educational and personal success.
What will still be needed at the
highest level of state government is for leadership with the vision to
strategically put together resources and services so that adults have the best
chance to return and complete the degrees. This will mean discerning how to maximize
the use of limited state and federal funds meant for workforce development so
that they result in portable, stackable, industry-recognized credentials, not
just resume-writing workshops. It will take leadership to make a priority of
tearing down barriers to education while providing access to child care and
transportation; and also promoting guided pathways for adults and structured
part-time programs that include academic maps, critical path courses, and
student advising designed to promote completion.
Until that leadership emerges and
takes up this cause as its own, we will continue to remind policymakers at the
Statehouse that Indiana needs an education session that includes working
parents and adults, too.
