Lifelong Learning: New Strategies for the Education of Working Adults

Sat Dec 8 14:37:58 UTC 2007

Lifelong Learning: New Strategies for the Education of Working Adults

By Brian Bosworth

December 7, 2007

The United States has long relied on rising educational attainment in
a rapidly growing labor force to help propel our economic growth. Over
the last four decades of the 20th century in particular, steady
increases in the education level of our labor force contributed very
significantly to steady productivity gains, sustained economic growth,
and formidable national competitiveness in an increasingly global
economy. All those gains are today under threat because of a complex
mix of factors that boil down to a single reality—the American
workforce is steadily becoming less educated just when better and more
diverse educational opportunities are essential for our labor force to
maintain its justifiably famous productivity, flexibility and
ingenuity.

Unless the United States makes critical adjustments now to its
national human capital investment strategies, our education attainment
levels will stagnate and future economic growth will slow. Policy
changes are necessary to compensate for much slower labor force growth
over coming decades, to boost adult worker productivity that can fuel
economic growth, and to head off further increases in income
inequality that will result if future demand for an educated workforce
outstrips the supply.

The labor force, which more than doubled over the past forty years,
will grow very slowly between now and 2040. The young cohorts moving
through school and then into and through the labor force are much
smaller than in the baby boomer years and (reversing the trends of the
past four decades) will almost certainly have lower educational
attainment than the older groups who will be aging out of the
workforce. The demographic factors that worked to our nation's
advantage in the past are turning against us in the future.

The upshot: the United States can no longer pursue an education policy
that essentially gives up on adults. We must leave no children behind,
of course, but future gains in labor force educational attainment will
come only as we get much better at educating our working adults.

More than half of America's 120 million workers between the ages of 25
to 64 have no postsecondary degree; in fact, no postsecondary
credential of any kind. To put this in perspective, over the next 10
years a total of about 30 million young people will graduate from high
school in the U.S. hopefully, many prepared for college—but there are
today twice that many adults already in the workforce who have no
postsecondary credentials.

The adult literacy problem is equally severe. Findings from the 2003
National Assessment of Adult Literacy indicate that 31 million people,
or 14 percent of Americans age 16 or older in the U.S. have "below
basic" prose literacy and 48 million (22 percent) have "below basic"
quantitative literacy. Especially in a global economy, these low
literate adults are at very serious risk of never escaping subsistence
or below-subsistence labor markets, and their limited job skills are a
drag on national economic growth.

Unfortunately, America does not offer effective systems for adults
already in the labor force to increase their educational attainment.
This paper argues for new and better federal policy to support the
education of working adults: basic education for those hampered by low
literacy; English instruction for the non-language proficient; and
postsecondary education for those needing educational and occupational
credentials for job advancement and increased productivity.

Current federal policies designed to ameliorate these problems are
failing. Adult basic education and language training programs serve
only a tiny fraction of those who need help. Postsecondary student-aid
policies are sharply skewed toward traditional students—recent high
school graduates without dependents and with no labor market
attachment. These policies promote postsecondary educational
practices, such as program structures and delivery methods, which
simply do not work for most working adults. We have no system in place
that might encourage employers to invest more in the skills of their
less prepared workers. And we offer little help to those low-skilled
adults who are prepared to invest in their own education.

The problem of under-educated and under-skilled adults workers is
getting worse, not better, which is why it is immediately necessary to
put new strategies in place. This paper offers five suggestions.
First, create new economic incentives for employers to help finance
basic skill training, English as a Second Language or ESL training,
and credentialed postsecondary education for their employees. To
facilitate these new incentives, this paper proposes an employer tax
credit in the amount of 50 percent of certain educational investments,
up to $2,625 per employee per year.

Second, it is essential to strengthen existing incentives for
individuals themselves to invest in their basic skills and their
credentialed postsecondary education. This paper proposes an increase
in the percentage of education expenses allowed under the Lifetime
Learning Tax Credit from 20 percent to 50 percent, making LLTC tax
credits of up to $2,000 per year available to far more working adult
students. And we urge that the credit be made fully refundable for
low-income workers.

Third, the United States needs more effective ways to encourage
postsecondary institutions to develop more flexible programs and
degree strategies that work for working adults. The answer: a
five-year program of federal matching grants to those states that are
most committed to helping their public postsecondary institutions
create innovative and effective degree and credential pathways for
working adults.

Fourth, adult basic education requires a new strategy centered on the
deployment and utilization of technology to accelerate
English-language proficiency among non-English speakers and
employer-defined basic skills for low-literacy adults. This paper
proposes that Congress revamp the existing federal adult basic
education program, beginning anew with a more employment-focused and
technology-based program that supports individual and employer
investment in basic skills and English acquisition. The LLTC should be
used as the primary funding vehicle for adult basic education and ESL
instruction.

Finally, the U.S. government must launch a national marketing campaign
to help millions of working adults and their employers better
understand their shared interest in more and better education and
learn about effective ways to plan, finance, and complete that
education. A few years ago the state of Kentucky launched an
aggressive adult education marketing campaign known as Go Higher! The
remarkable success of that program offers a model for the national
effort we propose.

These five proposals are bold only in their departure from current
policy; they represent a measured and necessary response to a huge
problem. These new approaches are "demand-side"
strategies—market-oriented policy interventions that seek to stimulate
and organize effective demand for education rather than simply trying
to increase "more of the same' supply-side offerings. Our new
strategies aim to influence, as directly as possible, the ways that
less-educated workers and their employers spend their money so that
together they invest more in education.

This is a big job that requires unambiguous and substantial economic
incentives, unfiltered by intermediating agencies or institutions. The
combination of targeted tax credits for both individuals and their
employers, modest grants to states to support reforms in higher
education, a new start for adult basic education and English language
acquisition—all supported by an aggressive marketing campaign—offers
an efficient method of incentive and reward.

What's more, this is a comprehensive educational strategy that over
time will pay for itself many times over. If thousands of employers
and millions of workers respond to our combination of tax credits and
state-directed incentives, then reduced tax revenues and new
appropriations might cost as much as $10 billion to 12 billion
annually. Yet the downstream return on that human capital investment
will be enormous—in the form of rising productivity, higher wages, a
growing economy and widening tax base. We simply cannot afford not to
make this investment.

Read the full report here:

Lifelong Learning: New Strategies for the Education of Working Adults (pdf)

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/12/lifelong_learning.html

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