espite record low unemployment in the United States prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, over 44 million Americans were without a college degree, not earning a living wage, and locked out of advancement within the labor market. After speaking in-depth with nearly 100 of these 44 million Americans, it has become clear to me that the pandemic has only exacerbated this disconnect and further revealed the flaws within the current education-to-employment system.
The tension is real: on one hand, I heard first-person accounts of crippling self-doubt; the hard reality of the student financial aid crisis; the ongoing stress and challenges of juggling family, work, school, and finances; and the frustrating disappointments of health challenges and costs. On the other hand, what I witnessed were strong motivations to learn new things, grow personally and professionally, be good role models to children, make good on promises to parents, and contribute something of significance to communities. Despite these positive attributes and goals, most of these individuals continued to find themselves stuck in place, feeling isolated and frustrated in dead-end, often multiple, part-time jobs. The numbers of newly unemployed people across the country lay bare what working adults without degrees have experienced for years—a labor market and education system devoid of the infrastructure and key functions to facilitate efficiency, meritocracy, and equitable mobility. Meritocracy is something we tout as a country, but we aren’t set up to make good on this promise. Currently, a degree is the proxy for achievement when it comes to jobs, but data shows that higher education is inaccessible for many.
Reading the recent New York Times opinion article, “How Much Money Americans Actually Make,” one repeated word struck me: transparency. In the highlighted interviews, working people disclosed their salaries and stated whether or not they felt they were paid fairly. They consistently expressed a wish to know their worth, how they compared to others, and if their wages were fair. There was no animosity, jealousy, or malice in these interviews; instead, there was a desire for information, trust, fairness—and transparency.
Fewer than half of Americans ages 25-64 have earned a credential beyond their high school diplomas. Only 31.6% of Black Americans and 24.5% of Hispanic Americans have completed degrees, compared to 47.9% of white Americans. Even more disturbing are the large wage disparities between Americans of color and white Americans with similar educational attainment. Furthermore, Georgetown University’s The Merit Myth notes “that 60 to 70 percent of the growth in earnings gaps since the 1980s is tied to differences in access to and completion of college programs with labor-market value.” The education gap between white Americans and Black and Latinx Americans means that white Americans are most likely to benefit from the college earnings premium. Those people of color who do everything right, study hard, are high-achievers in their local high schools, and earn top standardized testing scores—currently the main signal of college readiness—aren’t set up for success. Instead they are automatically removed from talent pool consideration while employers spend large sums competing to recruit and train from a diminished talent pool. This is bad for business, and the current infrastructure allows no way for the strong and diverse talent pool of individuals skilled through alternative routes to demonstrate their strengths.
As we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, we have an opportunity to build a new learning ecosystem designed to create seamless navigation between education and work—one that offers fairness, transparency, and the opportunity to make meritocracy a reality for everybody. A new learning ecosystem will power business and working people’s progress by clarifying labor demand and supply. It will also enable us to discover how learning-to-employment practices can be optimized to help people seize opportunities. With clearly articulated pathways linked directly to scaffolded job demands, aligned to the skills required, we can help individuals chart a path to specific goals and develop and demonstrate their knowledge and skills throughout a long working life, across a variety of jobs. The new ecosystem will also allow employers to better vet and recruit a diverse talent pool, understand their existing employees’ strengths and gaps, and tailor learning programs to help workers stay ahead of the curve for future job demands within, and beyond, their own ecosystem of workers.
By designing learning and work pathways based upon skills, we can move beyond outmoded job descriptions to unmask the specific human+ skills required for success. We can better understand how unique skills can be acquired and applied across different jobs and how they operate differently across geographies. The mystery of job availability, mobility, readiness, and fit is maintained by old systems networks that have excluded too many from educational and job success for too long.
Of course, it will require stakeholders to build new data interconnectedness to signal employers’ skills needs and employees’ readiness. It will require new learning models geared for lifelong learning. We must work toward creating the interoperable systems, data, and technology that will allow products, services, and organizations to speak with each other through a translated and shared language of skills. To do this, it is imperative to build coalitions that support new ways of working together; share insights, products, and services; discover ways to compliment strengths; and design for continual innovation and improvement. This unprecedented time in our history has exposed the urgent need for change—for new systems that generate greater equity and economic outcomes for the health of our workers and our businesses.
COVID-19 has helped unmask the glaring lack of meritocracy and the urgent need for transparency to ensure a better way forward. The time is now to build a new ecosystem that provides a clear and seamless way for working people to navigate and make progress in learning and work—to truly engage in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We must work together toward this transparent new learning ecosystem to ensure that working learners are empowered to obtain and assess clear and trusted information, map pathways to success, and demonstrate their strengths—with an open playbook to mobility and meritocracy, leaving no one to wonder their worth.
a global affairs media network
COVID-19 Underlines the Need for Transparency to Make Meritocracy a Reality
August 11, 2020
COVID-19 has helped unmask a glaring lack of meritocracy in education and career outcomes. This highlights the urgent need for transparency to ensure a better way forward.
D
espite record low unemployment in the United States prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, over 44 million Americans were without a college degree, not earning a living wage, and locked out of advancement within the labor market. After speaking in-depth with nearly 100 of these 44 million Americans, it has become clear to me that the pandemic has only exacerbated this disconnect and further revealed the flaws within the current education-to-employment system.
The tension is real: on one hand, I heard first-person accounts of crippling self-doubt; the hard reality of the student financial aid crisis; the ongoing stress and challenges of juggling family, work, school, and finances; and the frustrating disappointments of health challenges and costs. On the other hand, what I witnessed were strong motivations to learn new things, grow personally and professionally, be good role models to children, make good on promises to parents, and contribute something of significance to communities. Despite these positive attributes and goals, most of these individuals continued to find themselves stuck in place, feeling isolated and frustrated in dead-end, often multiple, part-time jobs. The numbers of newly unemployed people across the country lay bare what working adults without degrees have experienced for years—a labor market and education system devoid of the infrastructure and key functions to facilitate efficiency, meritocracy, and equitable mobility. Meritocracy is something we tout as a country, but we aren’t set up to make good on this promise. Currently, a degree is the proxy for achievement when it comes to jobs, but data shows that higher education is inaccessible for many.
Reading the recent New York Times opinion article, “How Much Money Americans Actually Make,” one repeated word struck me: transparency. In the highlighted interviews, working people disclosed their salaries and stated whether or not they felt they were paid fairly. They consistently expressed a wish to know their worth, how they compared to others, and if their wages were fair. There was no animosity, jealousy, or malice in these interviews; instead, there was a desire for information, trust, fairness—and transparency.
Fewer than half of Americans ages 25-64 have earned a credential beyond their high school diplomas. Only 31.6% of Black Americans and 24.5% of Hispanic Americans have completed degrees, compared to 47.9% of white Americans. Even more disturbing are the large wage disparities between Americans of color and white Americans with similar educational attainment. Furthermore, Georgetown University’s The Merit Myth notes “that 60 to 70 percent of the growth in earnings gaps since the 1980s is tied to differences in access to and completion of college programs with labor-market value.” The education gap between white Americans and Black and Latinx Americans means that white Americans are most likely to benefit from the college earnings premium. Those people of color who do everything right, study hard, are high-achievers in their local high schools, and earn top standardized testing scores—currently the main signal of college readiness—aren’t set up for success. Instead they are automatically removed from talent pool consideration while employers spend large sums competing to recruit and train from a diminished talent pool. This is bad for business, and the current infrastructure allows no way for the strong and diverse talent pool of individuals skilled through alternative routes to demonstrate their strengths.
As we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, we have an opportunity to build a new learning ecosystem designed to create seamless navigation between education and work—one that offers fairness, transparency, and the opportunity to make meritocracy a reality for everybody. A new learning ecosystem will power business and working people’s progress by clarifying labor demand and supply. It will also enable us to discover how learning-to-employment practices can be optimized to help people seize opportunities. With clearly articulated pathways linked directly to scaffolded job demands, aligned to the skills required, we can help individuals chart a path to specific goals and develop and demonstrate their knowledge and skills throughout a long working life, across a variety of jobs. The new ecosystem will also allow employers to better vet and recruit a diverse talent pool, understand their existing employees’ strengths and gaps, and tailor learning programs to help workers stay ahead of the curve for future job demands within, and beyond, their own ecosystem of workers.
By designing learning and work pathways based upon skills, we can move beyond outmoded job descriptions to unmask the specific human+ skills required for success. We can better understand how unique skills can be acquired and applied across different jobs and how they operate differently across geographies. The mystery of job availability, mobility, readiness, and fit is maintained by old systems networks that have excluded too many from educational and job success for too long.
Of course, it will require stakeholders to build new data interconnectedness to signal employers’ skills needs and employees’ readiness. It will require new learning models geared for lifelong learning. We must work toward creating the interoperable systems, data, and technology that will allow products, services, and organizations to speak with each other through a translated and shared language of skills. To do this, it is imperative to build coalitions that support new ways of working together; share insights, products, and services; discover ways to compliment strengths; and design for continual innovation and improvement. This unprecedented time in our history has exposed the urgent need for change—for new systems that generate greater equity and economic outcomes for the health of our workers and our businesses.
COVID-19 has helped unmask the glaring lack of meritocracy and the urgent need for transparency to ensure a better way forward. The time is now to build a new ecosystem that provides a clear and seamless way for working people to navigate and make progress in learning and work—to truly engage in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We must work together toward this transparent new learning ecosystem to ensure that working learners are empowered to obtain and assess clear and trusted information, map pathways to success, and demonstrate their strengths—with an open playbook to mobility and meritocracy, leaving no one to wonder their worth.
