Jaime Casap, the Education Evangelist at Google, is a guest contributor for Reach Higher
College Signing Day is on May 2, 2018, and it is one of the most significant days in a student’s life. All students who participate are committing to continue to work hard and take their educational experiences to the next level. This journey can be particularly harrowing to first-generation students, and students who are the first in their family to attend college. For them, there is no family roadmap and no family experience on which the student can rely. Too often, these students do not even have someone in their neighborhood to help guide them through the college experience.
I know what this is like first-hand because it describes my experience. I am a first-generation American, and the first in my family to attend and graduate from college. I didn’t know anyone who had attended college besides my teachers.
I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in the 1970s and ‘80s. I grew up with a single mother on welfare and food stamps. Hell’s Kitchen at that time was a rough and violent community where your “life goal” was staying alive.
Attending college wasn’t an aspiration for many students. Going to college was unlikely. Graduating from college seemed like an impossibility.
However, I decided that I didn’t want to be a statistic. I didn't want to end up like so many before me, dead or in prison. I wanted to show the world that kids like me could go to college and succeed. I remember the day I committed to attend college. I remember how scared I was and how unclear my expectations were. I didn’t know it at the time, but the day I signed up for college is the day my life changed forever.
I am grateful for my college opportunity. It opened up my mind. It opened up opportunities. I made friends that I still treasure today. I wouldn’t be doing what I do today without my college experience. It made me believe that education can disrupt poverty. And I think it can do it in just one generation.
I grew up under dire circumstances, and because of higher education, my children are growing up in a radically different world.
Back in my day, higher education wasn't as essential to finding work. Today, that is no longer true. Higher education, whether it is a four-year university, professional training program, or community college experience, is essential in the workplace. According to a 2016 report from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, out of the 11.6 million jobs created after the Great Recession, 8.4 million of them went to those with at least a bachelor's degree. Another 3 million went to those with an associate degree or some college. In other words, nearly all jobs created since 2008 require higher education.
Another Georgetown University study found that employers will seek cognitive skills such as problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking. It is, for this reason, I never ask students want they want to be when they grow up. It's the wrong question. Automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics, will continue to reshape and redefine the “jobs” of the future. Instead, I ask students, “what problem do you want to solve?” I follow up with the more important question, “what do you need to learn to solve that problem?” In almost all cases, the knowledge, skills, and abilities our students will need to solve the problems they are interested in will require education beyond high school. In fact, one can make the argument it’s not even about how “much” education you should have. We are entering a phase of true lifelong learning. The future requires us all to continuously learn and build skills for the rest of our lives.
College Signing Day marks the day most high school seniors will look back on as the day that changed their life. For more than a decade, Michelle Obama, as the First Lady of the United States, and now as a committed and dedicated citizen, has been a champion and supporter of influencing students and their families to think beyond the obtainment of a high school diploma. The reason she is so passionate is that, like me, she can look back to her college experience as the catalyst for the rest of her life. We both want to help millions of students, especially students who are growing up the way we grew up, reach their full potential and apply their gifts and skills to make the world a better place. The effort and energy she puts into College Signing Day, and to her Reach Higher effort, are testaments to that commitment.
I proudly join Mrs. Obama and the Better Make Room Team in celebrating this momentous date with millions of students and their families across the United States.
So to the students out there, go get it! We got your back!
