Wed, 07 April 2021 | education
A national survey of parents looks at how well they think our education system prepares young people for life after high school and finds a sobering disconnect between the opportunities families want for their child and the postsecondary pathways that are available. While attending a four-year college remains the ideal for many families, 46 percent prefer other options. Even among parents who hope their child will earn a bachelor’s degree, at least 40 percent are interested in career-related learning opportunities such as internships or apprenticeships.
These are among the findings of Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work, an opinion poll released today by the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup. It offers new insights into the aspirations that parents have for their high school graduate, their knowledge of college alternatives, their views on how well different postsecondary options prepare their child for work, and whether they can access those options.
The survey indicates that the nation’s longstanding focus on making college degrees accessible to all has had the unintended consequence of leaving behind those students who are either unable or uninterested in pursuing a traditional college degree.
Among the survey highlights:
Commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Family Voices is based on a self-administered web-based survey conducted between November 9 and December 8, 2020, with a random sample of 2,952 U.S. adults who are current parents of children between the ages of 11 and 25.
“The message from families is clear: We need to expand and strengthen postsecondary pathways so that young people are exposed to the world of work before graduating from high school and to ensure that they have access to a robust array of career-related learning opportunities afterward,” said LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and program director for Education. “We hope policymakers and education leaders use these findings to build a cradle-to-career education system that prepares all our nation’s young people for the bright futures they deserve.”
Source: Carnegie Corporation