Colloquium Tackles Large Themes of Economics and Community Development
Tally Hart, senior advisor for economic access at The Ohio State University, led the 2009 Colloquium planning committee.
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Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute and one of the country's top experts on the economy and economic policy as it affects middle- and low-income families, provided a special session with an analysis of the current economic crisis and the proposed stimulus package and took part in the session "Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? The Challenges Faced by the Middle Class."
The middle-class squeeze has been going on for a long time, Mishel said. "What is happening in labor markets is key to what drives overall inequality," he explained. "We've seen people with power exerting their power to redistribute income from a vast majority to a small few." For example, since 1989, the top 10 percent of wage earners received 90 percent of all income growth in the United States. Citing data that compare income by decade going back to the mid-1940s, he said that the income of a typical middle-income family has declined since 2000, something that has not happened before. By contrast, the top 1 percent of wage earners now hold 23 percent of total income, the highest inequality level in any year on record with the exception of 1928.
Part of the problem, he said, has been the disconnect between pay and productivity and the erosion of good jobs for those without college degrees. Those with college degrees have also seen their wages decline since 2000. Mishel cautioned against overstating a future shortage of college-educated workers, citing data that show the supply of college graduates will likely grow in pace with the demand. "But there are major problems with who goes to college," he went on to say, and referenced data from the College Board's Trends in Higher Education reports showing that 29 percent of low-income, high-performing students complete college, while 30 percent of the low-performing, high-income kids complete college. "That's the real challenge to me. It speaks to mobility in our society. We are not as mobile a society compared to other advanced European countries, for example." Education, he argued, can help overcome inequities, but factors such as heath care and early childhood stimulation also affect how a student will do in school.
That holistic approach was well-demonstrated in the final session, "Collaborations for Tomorrow," which showcased two examples of universities that are working within their own communities to increase access to college for low-income and underrepresented minority students.
Attendees were extremely impressed with the scope and scale of the university-community network described by Hiram Fitzgerald, associate provost at Michigan State University. Practicing what they call "engaged scholarship," the university contributes to the well-being of the community by making outreach and research within community projects a key component of scholarship for faculty and students.
Employing evidence-based practice, the goal is to produce evidence of impact across 33 indicators of community change. "We are always ratcheting up the metrics for those indicators," Fitzgerald said. His "Birth-to-Work" initiative involves a community-wide consortium that has asked the ambitious question: What is it that every baby conceived and born needs to be successful in life?
Fitzgerald was met with the question, "How do you take this enormous system, so many coalitions, so many organizations — there is not a human service organization, a faith-based organization, a local business in the Lansing metropolitan area that is not connected to this — and effect change?"
Fitzgerald credits the success to a detailed model that uses science to drive the evaluations of a program's effectiveness. "When we say, 'this program works,' they understand why," he explained. "There is not a single discipline on my campus that I can't connect to Birth-to-Work," he added, saying that they have linked such disciplines as engineering, computer science, education, literature and medicine.
Fitzgerald was joined by Nancy Zimpher, president of the University of Cincinnati, who shared details about a similar university-community project with the mantra "every student graduates, no exception." She talked about the importance, and challenges, of bringing together disparate efforts within the community from the public and private sector, to work toward this common goal.
William Kirwan, the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, was another campus leader who delivered an address to the group. Other presenters included Philip Ballinger, director of admissions at the University of Washington; Michael Mills, associate provost for university enrollment at Northwestern University; and Jon McGee, vice president for institutional planning, research and communication at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, as well as other enrollment experts from the public and private sectors.
A planning committee of 11 educators, led by Tally Hart, senior adviser for economic access at The Ohio State University, organized the event, alongside College Board staff members.
For more on the Colloquium, read the story on the programs and services page.
