Author: By Ralph Whitehead Jr.

Date: SUNDAY, November 22, 1998

Page: E1

Section: Focus

Ralph Whitehead Jr. is the Public Service Professor of the University of Massachusetts. He served in the US Department of Labor in 1994-'95.

Massachusetts has quietly pulled within eyeshot of a crucial milestone on its journey into the knowledge economy: the point where the state's working-age adults who have four-year college degrees outnumber those who do not.

No other state has yet achieved "college majority" status; if Massachusetts continues its current rate of progress, it will very likely be the first. But more than a title is at stake.

A college-educated majority would confer economic benefits on both individuals and the state. Those with a baccalaureate earn more, of course: $40,000 a year vs. some $25,000 for those whose education ended in high school, a gap that has grown markedly since the 1970s. They are also more likely to be employed: The jobless rate for the state's four-year graduates is 1 percent.

And as a recent opinion survey shows, the state's voters are all but unanimous in the view that it now takes a four-year degree to qualify for a decent job, the kind that puts -- or raises -- one into the middle class. As surveys also show, a majority of those without a diploma believe they benefit from living in a state with a large concentration of graduates. A college majority would also attract "knowledge economy" jobs.

A college majority is now very much within reach. In 1990, the share of the state's 25- to 54-year-olds with a bachelor's degree was 33 percent. As data gathered recently by the Census Bureau suggest, the college share of that age group is now almost 40 percent, a dozen points above the national average.

Further, recent developments give the state a new capacity to achieve such an objective. Of the many steps that must be taken to build a college majority, two are essential. The first is to increase the percentage of high school graduates who go on to a college and can do its academic work. The second is to put the costs of college within the reach of as many of these graduates as possible. The state has now established -- and financed -- the capacity to take both steps.

On the readiness front, the crucial development is the unfolding of the Education Reform Act. Five years and $9 billion after its passage, the benefits of the act are finally becoming clear.

For example, it is discouraging social promotions. In the past, such promotions could be used to push up the share of high school students who graduate, and then go on to a public community college. There, any high school graduate is likely to get in, since it's state policy for these schools to offer academically open access. Some students cut it on such terms, but many don't and fall by the wayside. So the social promotion route often wastes time, and cash, for all involved.

The education act doesn't put up roadblock on this route but does lay down some speedbumps: the rigorous subject matter tests that students must now take in grades 4, 8, and 10. (They were given in May for the first time, and the scores will soon be made public.) It is hard for schools to pass along students who do poorly on the tests.

Moreover, in a few years, the 10th-grade test will become a roadblock: Students who fail it three times will be denied a diploma. (If they fail in 10th, they can take the test again in grade 11 and, if necessary, grade 12.) So schools must now help the students to surmount such barriers on the merits.

Further, the education act creates a powerful premium on literacy. The tests reward the ability to read and write. This is true even for the math tests, where many problems are word problems. In other subjects, many questions call for short answers or essays. Multiple-choice questions are relatively few.

The tests are proving to be both bad news and good. The bad: Just as critics of standardized tests say, a high-stakes test compels teachers to teach to the test. Researcher Robert Gaudet of the University of Massachusetts reports that, in the dozen districts he visited recently, this is precisely what's happening. The good: Since the tests reward the ability to read and write, this is what gets stressed by the teachers who are teaching toward them. The more literate the students are, the more prepared they are for college.

On the cost front, there has been dramatic change. A few years ago, tuition and fees at the state's public college and university campuses were among the nation's highest. As of this academic year, however, it is now possible to get a four-year degree at these schools for a total in tuition and fees of $5,600 -- that is, for an average yearly price of $1,400. To qualify, your family income must be $80,000 or less, and you must begin by earning an associate's degree at one of the state's 15 community colleges. The $5,600 price is established by the confluence of a number of measures: President Clinton's Hope Scholarships, the state scholarships just created by Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham, the Tuition Assistance Plan offered jointly by the community colleges and the University of Massachusetts, and recent cuts in public sector tuition and fees.

It pulls the price of a four-year degree down to the price of a daily Big Mac and super fries. More to the point, it brings the cost down to a sum that can be covered by what a student can typically clear by working 40 hours a week for five summers.

If your family income is $36,000 or less, you pay even less -- an average of $1,150 a year. This could be crucial to women who are past the traditional college age, rely chiefly on what they earn, and don't have a four-year degree (and thus are likely to have an income under $36,000). The decline of marriage and the abolition of welfare as a long-term entitlement put more women in their 20s and 30s into this category. Already, the typical public community college student is a woman in her late 20s.

Community college enrollment has jumped. It's up 8 percent for the fall semester, reports Janice Motta, the colleges' executive officer. The increase is greater than for the state colleges and UMass.

So Massachusetts is making steady progress toward the "college majority" milestone. Still, there are ways to further hasten its arrival. Among them:

-- Create a virtual pipeline. In this and other states, it's common to speak of the institutions that make up the education system as if they form a single pipeline, but this is only a figure of speech. The lengths of pipe -- early childhood, grade school, middle school or junior high, high school, college, and graduate or professional school -- aren't physically linked, of course. Further, they rarely engage in broad-based and wide-ranging discussion with each other. Without a pipeline, it is hard to follow a child's progress (or lack of it) through school.

What's needed for this purpose isn't a physical pipeline, of course, but an information pipeline, so that vital information can flow back and forth between the institutional pipe lengths.

Through both face-to-face talks and computer links, teachers in a junior high could have a window on the pupils in earlier grades who are flowing toward them. What's being taught to the students, and how? How are they doing? What methods seem to be working with which children? At the same time, fifth-grade teachers, and their students, could get a view of what's happening in classes at the junior high, and so what will be expected of the fifth-graders once they get there. Junior and senior high schools could have windows on each other, as could high schools and higher education, private as well as public.

Within this approach, there could be a focus on periods of transition: grade school to junior high, junior high to high school, high school to college or to job training (and maybe to college a few years later.)

-- Share the wealth -- of knowledge. Every school district has teachers who know how to teach literacy; those who don't know how can learn from those who do. But there is a severe shortage of teachers who know enough mathematics and science to teach others what to teach. Massachusetts' many excellent private universities can help. Their math and science faculty members and students can join with UMass and state college faculty to teach these subjects to teachers in the public schools and, if needed, the community colleges. Without this help, education reform's math and science speedbumps could quickly turn into some unintended bottlenecks.

-- Measure progress. Virtually every child enters Grade 1. Only a minority of them later successfully complete what might be called Grade 16. If the education system were a literal pipeline, it would be a leaky one.

If the goal is to build a college majority, you have to pinpoint the leakage points: their origin, their location, their magnitude. Then you have to establish what can be done to plug them for future students, and how to draw back as many as possible of the students who already have leaked out.

Education in Massachusetts has added powerful new strings to its bow. What it needs is a target that's worthwhile and plausible. A college majority should be that target.

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