Do we need more college grads?

One of the most important education reports of recent months is Projection of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018,  by Anthony Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Jeff Strohl, from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workplace. The study argues that the labor demand forecasts published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, widely used by state and local policymakers, systematically underestimate the number and proportion of future jobs that will require college degrees, and presents detailed alternative projections.

The authors point out that for the 1998-2008 period, the BLS “under-predicted how many workers in the U.S. labor force would have Associate’s degrees or better by 19 million” – a 47% error – whereas their methodology came in just 4% high. They argue that “because the official data consistently underestimate the demand for postsecondary education, they encourage a consistent bias against investing in postsecondary education and training.”

The BLS methodology accounts adequately for inter-industry shifts – the fact fastest-growing industries require workers with disproportionately higher education levels – but not for rising educational demands within industries and for specific occupational categories, Carnevale et al. write. Replacement workers, a majority of those entering the workforce, will need more education than their predecessors, as a result of advancing technology, more flexible organizational structures, and higher expectations of productivity.

Massachusetts is listed among the top five states for postsecondary jobs through 2018 (along with Washington, Minnesota, North Dakota and Colorado).

The current economic situation, they believe, will only accelerate the changes that increase the premium for education and depress the value of lower-skilled labor. (This effect is in fact already visible in the differential unemployment rates by level of educational attainment.) They project that the US is heading for a shortfall of three million postsecondary graduates by 2018, with serious consequences for the economy and especially for the individuals and families who will miss their chance for a middle-class lifestyle.