Growing Quickly into Decline

By Alex Pearlstein, Vice President

I was in a community this week that is experiencing an interesting phenomenon: too much success. More specifically, too many small-lot, low-to-mid price point single-family homes being constructed than are fiscally sustainable. As can be imagined, this community is a fast-growing suburb of a fast-growing metro area. Schools are good, crime is low, retail is plentiful, so the steady march of new residents heading for this community shows no sign of abating. 

Unfortunately, government staff now estimates that for every newly constructed housing unit the community runs an $80,000 deficit for provision and maintenance of infrastructure and services. On top of that, some of the area’s older subdivisions (circa the 1960s and 70s) are starting to see their infrastructure fail. Strong Towns has written extensively and convincingly about this phenomenon, but it is striking to see it play out so clearly in reality. As could also be predicted – and is far from unique in commuter suburbs – the general public and elected officials are vehemently opposed to new multi-family development; in fact, there’s a moratorium on this type of product. Transit is also a dirty word here. Moreover, investing public dollars for talent-attracting/retaining amenities such as parks, paths, arts, beautification, event spaces, festivals, etc., gets short shrift when needs are so great for new roads, schools, water and wastewater infrastructure, police and fire personnel, etc. 

Despite increasingly dire fiscal projections, elected officials continue to show distaste for raising taxes; meanwhile, local government has been cut almost to the bone to remain solvent. Unsurprisingly, the community is thinking about strategies to become more fiscally sustainable. One way to accomplish this is to attract and create better jobs. Another is to engineer the development of higher-value housing. Backroom discussions on increasing minimum lot sizes for new development are starting to creep into the open. 

Some in the community are dubious that even downzoning properties reserved for residential will have the desired effect of luring investment in higher-priced housing. “We’ve already gone too far down that path and established a reputation as an entry-level community,” some argue. If developers thought there was a market for higher-cost homes they would have built them already. Others note that lot and/or home size is no guarantee that a desired price point will be realized. Value is largely determined by (wait for it…) location, location, location. In fact, one local developer of a higher-end subdivision was reportedly disappointed in the average sales price he received for his larger units. 

The situation in this community is being played out in hundreds if not thousands of similar suburbs in fast-growing metro areas. There is no guarantee that they’ll one day go the way of Ferguson, Missouri, but the likelihood of this scenario is greater if unsustainable development trends are not reversed. Unfortunately, the longer a community grows unsustainably, the harder it is to change minds and policies to pivot in new directions. Especially if we’re talking about increased density, mixed-use development, transit, road diets, and other bugaboos foisted on populations that self-selected suburban environments. 

Above all, making smart and sustainable choices comes down to leadership and vision; often, they go hand in hand. Realistically, however, leaders represent the values and viewpoints of the population that elects them, so you get situations where the blind are leading the blind. In other words, we’ve got some trainwrecks coming – and fast. Strong Towns is battling hard, but growth patterns are so established and mentalities so steadfast in their certitude, that it might not be a fair fight.

Gay Marriage, Economic Development, and The Case for Inclusive Communities

By Ryan Regan, Project Associate

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down an historic 5-to-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. It is most appropriate and perhaps serendipitous that this long-sought victory for the gay rights movement in the United States was delivered during LGBT Pride Month and just days before the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York. The morality of same-sex marriage has been and will be debated ad nauseam, but this blog post isn’t meant to wade into those waters. Instead, the purpose of this post is to make the case that tolerant, open, and inclusive communities are a step ahead of their peers in competing for jobs and talent in the 21st century. 

Dr. Richard Florida is a noted American urban studies theorist who is most well-known for his research around the “Creative Class,” a phrase he coined to describe the knowledge-based workers that he posited would be key to economic prosperity in a post-industrial world. Florida argues that the “three t’s” – talent, technology, and tolerance – are necessary foundational principles that communities must embrace in order to remain competitive in a new economy that is increasingly tied to high-tech sectors. 

The idea around the tolerance part of the equation is that talented knowledge workers who are driving the new economy are increasingly young, diverse, and tolerant, and these workers desire to live and work in communities that are accepting of their open-mindedness. When laid out that way, the tie between community economic development and marriage equality is quite clear, and I am not the only one who has noticed this before. 

While serving as governor of Rhode Island, recent 2016 presidential race entrant, Lincoln Chafee (D-RI), signed the Marriage Equality Act into law in 2013 in part on the basis that the legislation would bring economic development benefits to the state. His op-ed to the New York Times from 2013 cited Richard Florida’s “three t’s,” and Chafee went on to further state: “The talented workers who are driving the new economy — young, educated and forward-looking — want to live in a place that reflects their values. They want diversity, not simply out of a sense of justice, but because diversity makes life more fun. Why would any state turn away the people who are most likely to create the economies of the 21st century?” 

The business community understands the tie between diversity and inclusion and recruiting a talented workforce. As a whole, the business community has been unequivocal in their support for marriage equality. There were 379 corporations and employer organizations to sign on to an employers’ amicus brief to the Supreme Court urging the court to strike down state bans on gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Chambers of commerce from Durham to San Antonio to Seattle and plenty of places in between have since lauded the Supreme Court’s ruling. Recall that earlier this year major employers in Indiana along with the Indianapolis Chamber and the Indiana Chamber were vocal in their opposition to the original version of a controversial “religious freedom” bill that some argued could lead to discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. 

Communities that have embraced public policies that value diversity & inclusion, including gay-friendly policies, are flourishing throughout the country and that is no coincidence. San Francisco and Austin are arguably the most gay-friendly cities in the country, and they check in at #1 and #2 respectively on the Milken Institute’s 2014 List of Best-Performing Cities. San Francisco is home to the Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA), the nation’s first LGBT Chamber of Commerce, and the Austin Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is noteworthy in its own right, boasting over 350 members and over 10,000 “likes” on the Chamber’s Facebook page. Forward-thinking cities like San Francisco and Austin understand the value of opening their community’s doors to the types of workers that will be key to maintaining economic competitiveness in the 21st century. 

Communities looking to remain competitive for talented workers and high-quality jobs need to be mindful about how the country’s evolving diversity affects their local community economic development strategies. Consider the fact that more than one-in-three American workers are Millennials (ages 18-34) and this generation recently surpassed Gen Xers (ages 35-50) as the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, according to a Pew Research Center study released earlier this year. Millennials are not just more racially diverse than all other generations, but perhaps more importantly, they embrace diversity and inclusion in a manner that transcends all other generations before them. Pew Research Center data from just last month noted that 73 percent of Millennials support same-sex marriage – by far the highest percentage of all U.S. generations. It is these workers who will define the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future. Communities looking to attract these young, bright minds have to be cognizant of the open-minded social values that this generation embraces. 

The only constant in life is change, and this mindset is beneficial to keep in mind across all walks of life, including the work we do at Market Street. The country continues to change and so too must your community’s approach to community economic development.

A Nation of Renters?

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant

It has been a while since we talked in depth about the housing market on this blog—about 3 years and 5 months, if you’re counting. Back then, way back in early 2012, we were all wondering when the market would hit bottom. Economists kept saying the economy wouldn’t recover until the housing market did and home prices just kept falling. 

Now, home sales are at a five and a half year high, according to Reuters. But, that’s not the big news. The big news is that homeownership fell for the eighth straight year and is now at a 20 year low, according to a report published last week by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. 

More people are renting than ever and vacancy rates for rentals are the lowest they’ve been since the mid-1990s. 

Millennials are taking the majority of the blame for the dropping homeownership rates, though it seems to be Gen-Xers who aren’t buying. Homeownership rates among 35-54 year-olds have dropped more since 1993 than among any other age group. Among 35-39 year-olds, there’s been a 10% drop in just the last 10 years. 

But, it isn’t just the young people who aren’t buying that are driving homeownership rates down. It’s also the 45-64 set who’ve traded owing for renting after waves of foreclosures and profitable seller’s markets. Households aged 45-64 accounted for almost twice the share or renter growth as households under the age of 35. 

So, everybody’s renting more. Eight years of stagnant wages, pay cuts, a minimum wage that was more than a dollar higher an hour (in terms of real purchasing power) in 1968 than today, and mountains of student debt accumulated by X-ers and Millennials alike make saving enough for a down payment difficult, especially in this post-housing-market-bust economy where lenders are pretty tight fisted. 

In areas with booming economies, saving for a down payment might not be a problem, but that’s not enough to buy. In markets like Boston, Denver, San Francisco, San Jose, Dallas, even Los Angeles, buying a house means facing some stiff competition and winning the bidding war usually requires ponying up a lot more cash than 20% and paying significantly more than asking. Check out some of these housing market horror stories. 

And, renting is getting pretty expensive too. According to Zillow, rents were up 4% over last year in April—outpacing a 3% uptick in home prices over the same period. In hard hit places like San Jose, San Francisco, and Denver, rents are up more than 10% since last year. In the San Francisco region, and 16 other metro areas nationwide, more than one in four low- and moderate-income households spend half or more of their income on rent. Nationwide, roughly half of all renters pay more than 30% of their income in rent. Paying so much in rent makes saving for a down payment difficult. 

And, according to the experts at Zillow (quoted here), this rental affordability crisis is here to stay and it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. If it’s true that high rents are contributing to low homeownership rates, it means we may see homeownership rates drop even further, at least in the near future. 

Let’s jump back to 2012. Back then, economists were saying the economy wouldn’t recover until the housing market did. And that had a number of people, including me, questioning the role of homeownership in our society/economy. Here’s a quote from my 2012 blog post: 

“To be sure, homeownership is part of the American dream, but bad policy and lack of oversight has turned that dream into a millstone around our necks. Is it possible to reconceive that dream? What would an America with a lot more renters look like? Would it spur a move away from the suburbs to central cities? Would it free us up to invest our money in other sectors of the economy? How might a move to a more renter-heavy society change the way we do economic development? “ 

Fast forward three and a half years. Homeownership seems to have held on as an integral part of the American dream, at least thus far, but for now you might have to settle for renting that white picket fence (if you can afford it). 

This is what an America with a lot more renters looks like and the coming years will likely see even more. While at first it seemed cities had a lock on growth and were drawing people away from the suburbs, last year we saw the gap between urban and suburban growth narrowing. TIME magazine reported that it could indicate a return to more traditional patterns of city-suburban growth. Renting has most certainly not freed us up to invest our would-be down payments in other sectors of the economy—it’s costing us a fortune. 

How might the move to a more renter-heavy society change the way we do economic development? In 2012, that question called for some imaginative speculation. Today, the question is pressing. How can we change our thinking in order to deal with the reality that we are a growing nation of renters?

Big Changes in Metro Atlanta’s Demographics Are Reflected in Its Schools

By Matt DeVeau, Project Manager

In many ways, Metro Atlanta is emblematic of the fundamental demographic and socioeconomic shifts occurring in the United States. Last month, the Pew Research Center released an analysis showing that 78 counties in 19 states transitioned to “majority-minority between 2000 and 2013. Of the five counties that experienced the biggest proportional declines in non-Hispanic white population, four were in the Atlanta region. And on the topic of rapidly rising suburban poverty, Metro Atlanta is often utilized as the poster child: in the past two years, prominent national and international publications such as The Atlantic, The Economist, and Politico have led trendpieces on the topic with anecdotes from Cobb and Gwinnett counties, the two most populous suburban jurisdictions in the region. These changes have profound implications both locally and nationally, and as a Metro Atlanta resident who thinks about community and economic development for a living, they are never too far from my mind. 

Yet I still found myself surprised at a recent snapshot of radical changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the region’s school systems. The Atlanta Regional Commission, the metropolitan planning organization for a 10-county footprint inside a larger MSA, posted to its research microblog an analysis showing enrollment changes from 2000 to 2014 at the 15 public school districts within its service area. The post is brief and well worth checking out, but the upshot is this: the types of changes occurring (minority enrollment up overall, white enrollment down in most places) are to be expected, but the degree to which they are occurring is astounding. 

For instance, in a region with just shy of 780,000 students as of October of last year, Hispanic enrollment had grown by more than 100,000 students between 2000 and 2014, with every district posting a gain. Meanwhile, the white population had declined by more than 45,000. A handful of individual districts experienced especially dramatic shifts. As shown in the following graphic, the proportion of white students in Rockdale County declined by 51 percentage points while its share of black students grew by more than 40 percentage points. Proportional declines in white enrollment in excess of 40 percent also occurred in Douglas and Henry counties, while the share of Hispanic students in Gwinnett County increased from 10 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2014. (Not coincidentally, Douglas, Gwinnett, Henry, and Rockdale were the four metro counties identified in the aforementioned Pew Research Center analysis.) 

School System Composition Change: Percentage-Point Change in Enrollment, by Race/Ethnicity, 2000-2014 

Source: Atlanta Regional Commission 

White enrollment grew in just five districts, and these generally fall into two distinct categories – urban and quasi-exurban: the school districts for Atlanta and Decatur (a small city approximately five miles east of the region’s center) are urban areas that have experienced rapid gentrification in recent years, while the Cherokee and Forsyth districts cover areas far from the region’s core that had their development booms much later than the suburban counties closest to Atlanta.* To be clear, those four districts on aggregate still have 22,506 fewer white students than the combination of Cobb and Gwinnett. But it’s not an oversimplification to say that in the new millennium, white populations with school-aged children have grown in the region’s center and on portions of its periphery and decreased everywhere else.** And while all districts have diversified in one way or another, the change has been most profound in suburban districts that were mostly white just 15 years ago. 

My guess is that the story is similar in many other parts of the country – that Metro Atlanta is once again a microcosm of the whole. If that’s true, K-12 districts are already faced with a set of evolving challenges and opportunities. Community and economic developers with a vested interest and a strong and thriving talent development pipeline must take note. 

* Located at the region’s northwest edge, Buford is something of a hybrid between small town and far suburb that has historically had its own district apart from Gwinnett County Public Schools. 

** Interestingly, the trend has been titled more toward the core since the onset of the Great Recession. According to the full dataset from the Georgia Department of Education, Cherokee and Forsyth schools added a combined 13,737 white students between 2000 and 2007, compared to just 1,151 in Atlanta and Decatur. But between 2007 and 2014, things have practically been even, with the urban districts adding 4,065 white students compared to 4,608 in Cherokee and Forsyth.

Talent Development through Volunteer Opportunities and Civic Engagement

By Katie Thomas, Project Associate

Measure of America, a Project of the Social Science Research council, released a report last week on disconnected youth in the United States titled, "Zeroing in on Place and Race." Disconnected youth are defined as individuals between the ages of 16 and 24 that are not in school or working. The report found that 13.8 percent of individuals within the age group were disconnected, which adds up to roughly 5.5 million teenagers and young adults. In some metro areas the percentage of disconnected youth in the community topped 20 percent. One out of every five teenagers and young adults in the community were not working or in school. 

Individuals that are disconnected in their youth are more likely to be living in poverty, to be unemployed in adulthood, and to have higher incarceration rates, among other negative outcomes. Their situation sets them behind their peers, decreases their chances of success and self-sufficiency, and has long term implications on the community as a whole with outcomes such as cycles of multi-generational poverty. Additionally, disconnected youth are costing the nation billions of dollars in social assistance, medical care, incarceration expenses, and likewise, lost tax revenue, wages, income, and productivity. Measure of America estimated that the direct cost to taxpayers was $26.8 billion in 2013. 

Disconnected Youth Infographic 

Source: Measure of America 

So, what can be done to decrease the number of disconnected teenagers and young adults? Well, there are several strategies that communities can take to engage their disconnected residents, and one option is to get them to volunteer. Opportunity Nation and Measure of America found that volunteerism, group membership, and civic engagement have a positive impact on economic opportunities, upward mobility, and outcomes for the individual and the community. The likelihood of low-income youth to be disconnected if they do not volunteer was 19.3 percent for whites, 27.7 percent for blacks, and 20.9 percent for Hispanics; the likelihood of disconnection with volunteerism drops to 11.9 percent in whites, 17.8 percent in blacks, and 13.0 percent in Hispanics. 

The Citi Foundation’s Pathways to Progress, is a $50 million initiative to expand economic opportunities for 100,000 low-income youth in 10 major U.S. cities. One initiative is Service-Works, which partners with AmeriCorps VISTAS and Points of Light. Its strategy is to use volunteerism and civic engagement to develop soft skills, gain leadership experience, and prepare low-income youth for college and career success. Their study found that youth engaged in volunteering are half as likely to be disconnected compared to teenagers and young adults that do not volunteer. 

In order to have a prosperous community, residents must be given the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty and move up the social and economic ladder. Volunteering offers valuable experiences and important opportunities to develop and foster the necessary skills to succeed. Further, civic engagement encourages them to invest early-on at improving their community. The people in a community are its biggest assets, and with the trend of companies moving to where a qualified talent pipeline is available, a strong workforce and community is necessary to compete on the national level for jobs, workers, and residents. Nationally, it is important that individuals are afforded the same opportunities to succeed, regardless of race, ethnicity, or where they grow up. 

If we fail to provide these opportunities, we will waste one of our greatest assets and lose out on the productivity and prosperity that could come from these individuals, given the right tools and talent development. Reaching the disconnected youth of your community and reengaging them is important to creating a sustainable, quality workforce and a strong, health community and economy. Increasing civic engagement and volunteerism, alone, will only be a part of the solution, but it is one step that can be taken to at least alleviate some of the problem and provide opportunities for some of the millions of disconnected youth. 

To see what percentage of youth in your metropolitan area are not in school and not working, you can find the report at http://www.measureofamerica.org/youth-disconnection-2015/.

Sustainable Development — Economy, Ecology and Equity

By Jim Vaughan, Senior Fellow 

When I was president of the Chattanooga Area Chamber in the 1990s, our chamber, economic development organization, community leaders and elected officials developed a community growth strategy based on sustainable development. 

Sustainability was a new term for cities and my friend and city councilman Dave Crockett, an early leader in the movement, helped position Chattanooga as a national leader among sustainable cities. 

In 1994, we hosted the first national meeting of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development where Vice President Al Gore called Chattanooga “an environmental success story, not only for the United States, but for the world.” 

As a native Tennessean, Gore’s declaration could be viewed as a play to the home folks except that Chattanooga was making quite a name for itself— 

•  It cleaned up its air, meeting all federal standards, just 20 years after legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite said Chattanooga had the worst air quality in America; 
• It engaged thousands of citizens in a public planning process to envision Chattanooga as the “best mid-sized city in America” and attracted the public and private resources to realize its dreams; 
• It constructed the Tennessee Riverpark—walking and biking trails along the Tennessee River, six fishing piers, public art throughout, and including active and passive destination parks; and 
• It opened the world’s first and largest freshwater aquarium in 1992 as the lynchpin of the transformation of the city’s downtown. 

Fast forward 21 years and today, almost every leading city in America has embraced sustainability and is committed to prosper with a stronger economy and through environmental excellence. 

____________

But sustainable development includes three elements—economy, ecology and equity. How are we doing on the equity front? 

Not so good. 

Between 2000 and 2013 every state has seen its share of middle-class families shrink, according to a Pew Charitable Trust report. 

The current federal minimum wage, $7.25 per hour, has not been increased since 2009. And even though 29 states have minimum wages above the federal minimum, none would qualify as a “living wage” which is typically $10.00-$14.00 per hour. 

Workers aren’t benefiting from their increased productivity. From 1948 to 1979, net productivity rose 108.1 percent, and hourly compensation increased 93.4 percent. But from 1979 to 2013, according to Economic Policy Institute, while productivity rose 64.9 percent, hourly compensation rose only 8.0 percent. 

Sociologist Tali Kristal has documented that the share of revenues going to wages and benefits in manufacturing has declined by 14 percent since 1970, while the share going to profits has correspondingly increased. 

CEO-to-worker pay-ratio was 20-to-1 40 years ago, according to the AFL-CIO. Today it’s 354-to-1. 

Scientific American, in a March 31, 2015 article, “Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think,” paints a pretty bleak picture of America in the 21st century when it says, “We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations.” 

The article also references an infographic video on wealth income inequality in America that went viral and has been watched more than 16 million times. It’s worth looking at right now. 

____________

More than 100 years ago, Henry Ford roughly doubled his workers’ wages to $5.00 a day. “No one loses anything by raising wages as soon as he is able,” Ford said. “Low wages are the most costly any employer can pay.” 

“The new wage rate set off seismic shifts in American society,” wrote John Galagher in the Detroit Free Press. “A tidal influx of job candidates from the South and around the world flowed into Detroit. Factory jobs became prized, helping turn America into the world’s industrial colossus.” 

In 2015, Walmart raised its minimum wage to $9.00 per hour. Hardly a seismic shift, but the world’s largest retailer is running television ads to say they are “investing in the most important part of our company, our people, because a raise in pay raises us all.”
President Obama has called economic inequality “the defining challenge of our time.” But even if it is just one of the defining challenges we face, it’s time for chambers and economic development organizations to remember that sustainable development is about economy, ecology and equity.

Starbucks Is Trying to Save The American Dream One Barista at A Time

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant

Last month’s The Atlantic magazine caught my eye at the airport newsstand. Next to a tattooed barista wearing a green Starbucks’ apron and matching green mortarboard, in huge white letters, the cover asked boldly “Can Starbucks Save The Middle Class?” I don’t usually buy magazines at the airport, but I bought this one. I wanted to know the answer and I wanted to know how they proposed to do it. 

The article was about Starbucks’ partnership with Arizona State University to offer all Starbucks employees a free four-year college degree through ASU’s online program, which was first announced last June.[1]  Starbucks says it’s about creating access to the American dream. ASU says they’re not trying to save the world, but merely trying to show that the world can be saved. 

It’s some soaring rhetoric to be sure and although no one comes right out and says it, the implied answer to the question on the magazine’s cover is, in a word, yes. Even if Starbucks can’t do it alone, they’re blazing a trail that others may follow. 

The program has been up and running for a year (an academic year). There are far fewer students enrolled than Starbucks predicted, but so far their retention rate is good, 87 percent (three percent higher than ASU’s typical online student rate). At least part of the credit for that goes to the innovative strategy of assigning each enrolled employee an enrollment counselor, a financial aid advisor, an academic advisor, and a success coach who calls at regular intervals throughout the semester to check in and see how things are going, to offer advice, and just to listen. 

As I finished the article, I found myself agreeing with the implied answer. This is a very interesting model and they’re innovating quickly and incorporating what they learn about how students best perform and what services are most helpful in seeing them through to graduation. If even some of these strategies were applied at institutions of higher education across the nation, I bet we’d see significant increases in college completions. This program is small enough to be nimble, and smart enough to innovate when the numbers don’t bear out their working theories. 

I thought, wow, they really are doing something important and valuable and they’re developing a model others could implement. I wanted to toast Starbucks and ASU for just getting up and jumping in and doing something to try and solve a problem we all acknowledge, but don’t do much about. 

But, I also found myself thinking that there’s a BIG assumption lurking behind that question “Can Starbucks Save The Middle Class?” and behind its answer. An assumption that doesn’t quite seem right: a bachelor’s degree is necessary if you’re going to make middle class wages. 

I am not saying that assumption is wrong. We’ve all seen the statistics. It seems that in America at the moment (and for the foreseeable future) that’s just reality. What I am saying is that maybe it shouldn’t be reality. Can a college degree save the middle class? Maybe, but at what cost? A bachelor’s degree is an expensive ticket to the middle class. 

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, said his company’s partnership with ASU is about creating access to the American dream. We all used to have access to the American dream. And, that we all had access to it was what made it the American dream—the dream that hard work and perseverance were all it took to be successful in this country. Somehow, and without fanfare, the American dream seems to have become pay-to-play. 

Starbucks and ASU are, in a small way, for a small number of people, making the American dream accessible again by covering the cost of tuition and providing some much needed support services to make it easier for Starbucks students to complete their degrees. 

This is a big step, especially if other public and private entities see the social value of a program like this and follow suit. 

This is America. The American dream is a fundamental part of our understanding of what America is. It’s a problem if it’s no longer accessible to all of us. Is the only way to make it accessible to make a college education free? If you buy the assumption that a bachelor’s degree is necessary to make middle class wages, then you might think so. 

But, there are plenty of jobs that pay middle class wages that require skills and knowledge that don’t correspond to the skills and knowledge one typically takes away from a bachelor’s degree. It may be true that many of these jobs still prefer to hire candidates with bachelor’s degrees, but perhaps that’s an artifact of this country’s focus on college education to the detriment of any other sort of program for acquiring skills or knowledge. 

If we could revise our system, take stock, shift some of our focus (and funding) towards technical and vocational programs like those in Germany, we might find an alternative route to the middle class through technical skill development. But, this kind of education isn’t cheap to provide either. So, if we were to make this a viable alternative route to the middle class for large numbers of Americans we would still need to make sure that the cost of this sort of education also isn’t prohibitive. 

If we want to save the middle class, we’ve got to save the American dream. We have to make sure that the route to the middle class is accessible to anyone who’s willing to work hard and persevere. 

[1] When it was originally announced last year, the program would pay for the last 2 years of a student’s 4-year degree. Students who already had 2 years of college credit could finish their degrees for free. Students with less would get a 22% tuition reduction for the credits needed to get them up to the 2 years worth of credits mark and then the rest of their degree would be free. Starbucks recently announced that the program would now cover the cost of all four years of a bachelor’s degree.