Why Are There So Many White
Young American Men Without College Degrees?
Young white men without college degrees could throw the election. But
how are they still such a dominant group?
The country is divided any which way you look at it. Some of it is
generational, some of it is cultural, and some of it is geographic.
And some of it, it turns out, is what
you might call educational. According tonumbers cited by the New York Times earlier this month,
young white American men without college degrees overwhelmingly support Donald
Trump. Men and women without college degrees accounted for nearly half the
electorate in 2012, or roughly 64 million people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau,
nearly 97 million white people, 60 million men of a variety of races, and 23
million white men and women between the ages of 25 to 34 do not have an
associates degree or higher. This gives some context for how many millions of
young white men in the country have not gone beyond high school. Now this
powerful demographic could determine the 2016 outcome. The Times's Nate Cohn doesn’t mince words: "It’s enough to keep the election
close. It could even be enough for him to win."
While we could ask why they support Trump, perhaps more telling is, why
are there still so many of them?
Diagnosing why there are so many isn’t so simple. But a lot of it has to
do with a series of economic and cultural issues from the last few decades.
Dewayne Matthews, the vice president of strategy at the Lumina
Foundation, a private organization working to expand access to post-secondary
education, offered several thoughts when I called him up. Since the 1980s, the
number of young men who pursue higher education has increased only slightly;
since 1991, women with college degrees outnumber men; in 2014, it was 34% to
26%.
And this situation is not unique to the U.S. The widening gap between
young men and women with degrees is occurring in "all industrial and
post-industrial countries," Matthews said. "It’s spreading even into
the developing world."
"You’re talking about generations of families
in communities that were build around a certain type of work."
Why? "Structural shifts in the economy," according to
Matthews. In the early- to mid-20th century, the U.S. was an industrial nation
where young men with a high school diploma could find jobs that earned them
middle-class incomes. "You could get those jobs in a lot of sectors,"
Matthews explained, citing manufacturing, natural resources, and forestry.
"These were jobs that were held mostly by men—paid very good wages—and
didn’t require post-secondary education."
Now the job market has drastically shifted and demands a workforce with
at least some specialized skill. Demand for entry-level positions in dying
industries like mining and factory work is waning, while sectors like computer
science and engineering are continually ramping up. Matthews told me the story
of an energy company CEO who began his tenure at the company reading energy
meters. "Now," he said, "the meter reads itself." Which is
to say that technology has made some jobs obsolete, all while increasing the
need for specialized skills for even entry-level positions.
And still, many young men continue to
opt out of post-secondary opportunities. "You’re talking about generations
of families in communities that were built around a certain type of work,"
Matthews said. Changing the culture of what young men do—or imagine they can
do—for a living takes time. So is it any wonder that so many men from
working-class backgrounds are heartened by Trump's promises that he will bring back coal
jobs?
Nicole Smith, a research professor and chief economist at the Georgetown
University Center on Education and the Workforce, sees a more systemic problem.
While it's true there are many young white men who haven't gone beyond high
school, they are part of a larger group of low-income U.S. citizens. "The
poor," she said, "have a lower likelihood to get a college
education." And while there are a great deal of white men who fit this
description, there are even more people of color—men and women—who do. In 2015,
54% of Caucasians between the ages of 25 and 29 had associates degrees or
higher, compared to 31% of African-Americans and 26% of Hispanics.
"The poor have a lower likelihood to get a
college education."
She added that there’s a prevalent perception by the white male
population that they still could be able to earn an income with no advanced
education. "The problem with that outlook," she said, "is that
the world has changed." If people don’t invest in acquiring technical
skills, they will be left behind. "Given that perception and given this
reality," Smith said, "there needs to be better ways of encouraging
low-income white males to enter college."
This perception is likely what leads these uneducated white men toward
supporting more conservative candidates. "We've found," she said,
"that there's usually a disconnect between the politics of a question and
the economics." In terms of why non-educated white men may support Trump,
they likely feel threatened by the growing demographic of non-white people who could,
they imagine, hypothetically take their resources and opportunities. "For
people who might have enjoyed positions of privilege," she said,
"based solely on their race or ethnicity status . . . it could be
disconcerting." There are only so many non-skilled jobs for them, the
rationale goes. So Trump's anti-immigration stance may speak to low-income
white people who feel threatened by the prospect of an increasingly ethnically
diverse country, regardless of the fact that this reality wouldn't actually hinder
their future employment opportunities.
All the same, given the
disproportionate number of white people who do graduate college (or
beyond) compared with people of color, it is crucial that we focus this lack of
secondary education toward everyone in the low-income
bracket, regardless of race.
And it’s even more important to consider gender. College-goers, said
Smith, are "overwhelmingly women." In fact, according to the Census
Bureau, 30.2% of women in 2014 had bachelors degrees or higher compared to
29.9% of men. The problem, said Smith, is that "you’re not seeing enough
males, period."
In response, some states have been implementing programs designed to
incentivize people to go to college. Matthews pointed to Indiana, which
launched a scholarship program called "21st Century Scholars" that
significantly boosted secondary education attendance. But, he added,
"There’s still a long way to go."
Source : https://www.fastcompany.com/3062321/election-2016/why-are-there-so-many-white-young-american-men-without-college-degrees
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