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326Conversation What Is the Future of Higher Education?the start of the pandemic. A new Populace study finds that %u201cgetting kids ready for college%u201d has plummeted from the 10th highest priority to 47th. A growing number of commentators are also openly questioning the value of college.That%u2019s unfortunate. The reality is that a college degree continues to pay substantial dividends. But rather than continuing to force students down the same narrow post-secondary pathway, it%u2019s increasingly clear that the nation needs a more flexible system for providing high school graduates the additional education and training they need, a system that gives students more options than State U or Starbucks.A college degree is still worth the expense for many students, even if the journey to one doesn%u2019t begin three months after high school graduation. Research I%u2019m working on with the Burning Glass Institute suggests that having a bachelor%u2019s degree delivers a wage premium worth more than four years of experience compared to those without a degree, findings confirmed by earlier research by Georgetown University%u2019s Center on Education and the Workforce. What%u2019s more, a degree gives workers greater mobility to move up (and out) into better jobs.Why, then, are both students and commentators pushing back against college? The reasons are overlapping and complex, but most of the research points to money: it costs too much and prospective students don%u2019t see it as worth the investment.College presidents tell me their competition is now not only other colleges but also employers who are advertising jobs that pay more and offer flexibility. In a tight labor market, employers, including the states of Maryland and Utah as well as Delta Airlines, have dropped degree requirements for some jobs in the past year. And more companies, from Walmart to Disney, are offering education benefits as part of the job, just like health care and retirement, giving students the option to start work and then go to college. Working was always a side gig for many college students; now for many students working is core and learning is the side gig.That%u2019s a reason why too many people start a degree but don%u2019t finish it. The number of people who began college but left without a credential grew to 39 million in 2020, up nearly 9 percent in two years. That represents more than one in five people in the United States over age 18, according to a report released this year by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.One important solution is to increase the number of registered apprenticeship programs across all career fields. Registered apprenticeships combine paid on-thejob learning and formal instruction with a credential. In 2021, there were almost 27,000 active registered apprenticeship programs in the U.S. training over 593,000 apprentices, according to the U.S. Department of Labor%u2019s Employment and Training Administration.While nearly 3,000 new programs were established in 2021 alone, we still have an antiquated image of apprenticeships as pathways that prepare young adults for the trades or factory work. But that perception is starting to shift as apprenticeships turn up in all kinds of fields, especially to train muchneeded tech workers. The number of registered programs in tech fields grew about 41 percent between fall 2020 and 2021, according to an analysis by Work Shift. Still, the number of young adults in training programs pales in comparison to those in college.Another key reform is to provide better education about careers and the training 510Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.