Jeff Stoller is one of my oldest living friends. I've known him since I was five of so and he has more stories to tell about me than seems decent. He and I also have a long history of correspondence, all of which seemed hilarious at the time, and probably would seem far less so now. He offered to write something for my website, an offer I jumped at. He's a brilliant writer, even if he has a penchant for quoting me.
These days he describes himself as follows:
I am a lobbyist, handling labor and employment issues for the nation's largest state-level business association (18,000 employers). My office is sort of an "emergency room" for small businesses in crisis.
I've spent 25 years in the murky world where business and politics overlap. Prior to joining this association, I gained work experience in the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, New York State Senate and New York State Division of the Budget.
After graduating from Hamilton College, I completed an MBA and a Master's in Regional Planning at Cornell University.
Blah blah blah
He said that last part, not me.
10/02/02
By Jeff Stoller
I adore my stepdaughter. At 23, the beautiful Meagan is fearless, charming, gregarious and kind. And her curious, adventurous spirit has carried her all over Europe and Central America. She has scrambled to the top of Mayan ruins in Mexico. She has lived with a French family in the old Roman-era city of Nimes. She has ridden horseback through the hills and streams of Costa Rica. She has lived and worked in London, and shopped in Paris. She has done the beach scene from Barcelona and Trieste to the Art Deco neighborhoods of Miami’s South Beach.
In Scotland, she starred in an award-winning music video (she’s the dreamgirl who steps out of the hero’s suitcase on a sunny hillside). In Italy, a professional chef magically appeared at night to prepare dinner for her and her roommate at their borrowed seaside apartment. And on and on.
I know she has been to all these places because of the multi-national flood of letters, e-mails and phone calls in the dead of night that always follow in her wake. (Her distant male admirers do not always understand or acknowledge time zone differences.) This fall, she’s headed off for a month in Thailand so her mother and I are already bracing for a new wave of late-night “gentleman callers” from Asia. We look forward to the novelty of being jolted awake by young men who aren’t even calling the same day.
Clearly, our favorite girl has become a dazzling woman of the world. She is our Movie Star In Residence.
But here’s the catch. She still is. “In residence”, I mean. Long after that happy day when she collected her undergraduate degree, our globe-trotter is still operating out of her little bedroom down the hall. This is fine with her mother and me – she’s a delight to have around – but she is clearly not in love with the New Jersey suburban scene and understandably longs for an independent life: a full-time job, her own apartment, the works.
Meagan’s story is headed for a happy ending. Despite a high school and college education that failed to help her “find her bliss”, she has pieced together a career plan and timetable on her own that will take her where she wants to go – out into the wide world.
But what about all the young Americans who don’t have an escape plan? Why does it seem that so many students, even those with college degrees, are suddenly back home with Mummy, Dad and Fluffy the Cat? I conducted an informal survey of family, friends and colleagues the past few weeks, and was astonished by the number who reported children in their 20’s and even 30’s who have cheerily logged prolonged periods of time back home in the recent past. Many are working, but not at jobs that enable them to strike out on their own. This is admittedly an unscientific survey. Maybe someone in the Census Bureau can prove otherwise. But my gut tells me that this new generation of homebodies is not simply a figment of my imagination.
Why should I care? Because every day I deal with countless employers who can’t find the skilled labor they need to operate, despite the economic slowdown. The spectacle of educated young people adrift in our economy, taking years to connect with meaningful full-time work, makes me crazy. Something is fundamentally wrong with an education and training system that pumps out young adults so unprepared or so unfocused that they can’t afford to live independently until age 28.
That’s not a number I made up, by the way. Back in the mid-90’s, I had an opportunity to visit Denmark and Germany for the National Governors Association and learn about the school-to-work programs established for young people there. Someone in our group said that, on average, American kids take till the late 20’s to settle into serious full time work. They go to community college, or college, and then drop out, or take a year off…or two or five, or go into the military, or work at several low-level dead-end jobs, or some combination of the above…and eventually blunder into a career. In contrast, the European kids I met were gaining work experience at age 16 and writing technical manuals for business by age 18.
I’m not suggesting that a European workplace is the model I’d choose for American employers; big problems there! But wouldn’t it be great for U.S. businesses to find a way to capture some of those “lost years” of productivity from workers aged 18 to 28? And wouldn’t it be great for young people to find a way to establish independent lives, sooner, by connecting with meaningful work in the world outside their door.
There’s got to be a better way, for employers and young people alike.
What I Do, I Know
FLASHBACK: November 1994. I’m having lunch with a group of Danish students at Koge Business College on the outskirts of Copenhagen. They are mostly 19 or 20 years old, alternating between 18-week periods of study at school and apprenticeship work out in the business world. The program emphasizes problem-solving, flexibility and working in teams – a “hands-on” approach to learning that is summed up by a Chinese proverb: What I Hear, I Forget. What I See, I Remember. What I Do, I Know.
Students and teachers work in interdisciplinary teams; they tend to focus on specific projects rather than sleepwalk through the standard routine of classroom lecture and rote memorization. You can sense the difference in the building we are visiting. Noisy clusters of students are actively engaged in projects on every floor. In class, the young people often assume the role of teacher to share outside work experiences. At work, they frequently end up training and tutoring older co-workers.
Most of the students I meet are quite proficient in English (and often another language as well). When I ask several former “exchange students” to compare their high school experiences in Denmark and the United States, they laugh. They try to be polite but ultimately fail: frankly, they consider the instruction they encountered in the American high schools a joke. Minimal homework. Endless lectures. A glaring disconnect between the abstract theory of the classroom and the exciting reality of a cutting-edge workplace.
They ask: What jobs in the real world require people to sit quietly in rows all day, being lectured to, and working independently of others? What business problem is solved by reading a single textbook and parroting back the answer? What entrepreneur launches a successful enterprise by filling out multiple-choice tests? END FLASHBACK
The Danish students are rewarded for being active – not passive. If the assignment is to research trade with China, they aren’t handed a book and told to takes notes on chapter 8. Instead, they are expected to spend hours in the library and online, contact the Chinese embassy, get information from a local company that exports to Shanghai, etc. The goal is to produce young people who understand the practical applications of math, science, language and literacy….not just the theories and equations.
Danish kids start moving into work-study arrangements in what would be the junior and senior years of high school here. That’s precisely the point at which many American students are becoming hopelessly bored in a classroom setting. They hunger for more independence, and the chance to earn some money. The Danish kids actually get both. Their teachers and employers develop a coordinated program so that the 16 and 17 year olds spend several days in class and several on the job. Whatever topic is being emphasized in school that week – accounting, food preparation, chemistry, whatever – is what they’ll be see emphasized at work as well.
By age 18, the students in Denmark have many choices available. They may enter into a trade, an apprenticeship, a business college like Koge, a four-year college or a job. Some members of our NGA group worried that placing young people on a vocational “track” so early (and tempting them with a regular salary) would discourage many from pursuing a college education. Our hosts suggested that the opposite was often true: students excited by what they learned at work suddenly realized why they needed a college degree in their field.
Did the Europeans have problems with dropouts? Sure. But they seemed to lose fewer students than the double-digit losses common in American high schools and colleges. And I think I know the reason why: In places like Denmark and Germany, teachers and parents aren’t scandalized by the thought that their young people must someday work for a living. And rather than producing mindless capitalist drones, their system appeared to yield many high-skilled, resourceful thinkers who begin making independent choices about their lives at a remarkably young age. How cool is that?
Why Johnny Can’t Work
American high schools seem obsessed with promoting college, especially four-year colleges, as the best and only option for their senior class. And who can blame them? In many communities, the quality of a school is judged by a single standard – the percentage of seniors that enter college in the fall. Most of what the school does is focused on that one objective. And, as a result, many districts succeed in getting a large part of their graduates enrolled.
But then what? Many of the arriving freshmen have no clue why they are in college, drop out in stunning numbers and begin that decade of drift I mentioned before. The fact is that 70% of American adults will NEVER complete a four-year college degree. That often comes as a surprise to some (like me) who go through life surrounded by people who have had at least some college.
The good news? Employers I know keep telling me that 70% of the jobs they have – including many high-skill, high-paying jobs – don’t require a four-year degree. Often, these businesses require employees with the basic competencies of a high school graduate, with a bit of additional training (available through community colleges) and -- tah-dah -- some meaningful work experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking college. Having that B.A. still translates into higher earnings down the road. All I’m saying is that we’ve done young people a disservice by pretending it is the only route to a happy, independent life.
What I’m saying is that there is a serious mismatch between what American schools are producing and what employers and unions say they need. Teachers, administrators, and parents talk “college, college, college” and look down on anything that smacks of vocational education. That’s for kids who “can’t hack it.” Meanwhile, businesses and organized labor struggle to fill jobs and apprenticeships that pay well. And young people move home and work odd jobs because they can’t figure out what they want to do. What’s wrong with this picture?
I recently spoke with a manager from a major utility who described how hard it was to fill many technical positions his company had available, despite the rising jobless rate. Many applicants couldn’t pass the drug tests or the 9th-grade math test required, but high school graduates who would clearly qualify were being discouraged from applying for such “blue-collar” work. After a relative brief period of training, young people in these jobs could start at $30,000+ and be earning $65,000 within three years. But the schools currently offer this manager a limited choice of two flavors: the incompetent and the uninterested. That’s not a smart approach to customer service, but then, most schools do not think of employers as their customers.
I believe our high schools’ overemphasis of the college option is hurting all students. The majority who aren’t college-bound aren’t getting the kind of basic work experience they need to move on (like the ability to show up on time, work in teams, etc.). And others, with higher skills, are being steered away from challenging, interesting, well-paying work because of a mistaken belief that college is the sole route to success.
Surely, we can strike a better balance between academics and work experience in the high school years. Surely, we can offer young people more opportunities to learn outside the classroom….without locking them into inflexible career paths.
Removing The Last Car
The story is told of a New Jersey legislator, back in the late 1960’s, who was troubled by a rash of accidents involving commuter trains going in and out of New York. Many incidents involved one car crashing into the rear of another stopped on the tracks ahead. He learned that the majority of injuries were occurring in the last car of the damaged trains. With a logic that surpasses understanding outside of New Jersey, our hero seized on a simple solution he believed would fix the situation overnight. He introduced legislation with a new mandate for railroad management: remove the last car from every train!
I worry that a lot of what passes for school reform these days is the educational equivalent of “removing the last car.” We add 15 minutes to the school day. We reduce the average class size from 20 to 17. But will any of that matter if our core curriculum has little or nothing to do with the reality of the modern workplace?
What can be done? A number of schools around the country have found that working in partnership with local companies is a great way to make classroom lessons more interesting and “relevant” to students’ futures. Again, greater exposure to real work doesn’t necessarily undermine college as an option. As in Europe, seeing the 3Rs in action on the job is often the spark that reinvigorates the imaginations of teens whose love of learning has been quizzed and drilled out of them since kindergarten. Going to work may in fact give people the motivation they need to enter college…and see it through to graduation.
But the burden of developing a new approach to learning cannot be placed on the schools alone. God knows, society keeps imposing responsibilities on them that go far beyond their original mission (to teach). Businesspeople need to get involved, too. It’s not enough to whine about not getting graduates that don’t match their job descriptions. After all, employers are often the largest property-taxpayers in town; they have a serious financial stake in their local schools. Many might be happier with the return on that investment if they were actively engaged in helping teachers bring high school subjects alive by opening up their facilities for vivid site visits or offering their best employees as guest speakers. I know the first time I truly appreciated the wonders of chemistry was during a brewery tour!
In the end, it’s not the future of schools or employers that has me worried. It’s the future of our young people. Especially the homebodies – the ones we’ve cast out into a rapidly changing economy without having experienced the challenge, frustrations and possibilities of real full-time work. It’s a scary time to be out there in the marketplace; no wonder so many head for home.
The Importance of Leaving Home
JACK: …it’s a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?
GWENDOLEN: I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.
-- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
All my life, I’ve said “college isn’t for everyone.” But I never believed that. Not really. So it is a terrible thing to realize that what I was saying might be true.
I certainly never let Meagan think there were non-college options. Even when she yearned for time off. Even when her high school and college classes failed to provide her with the kind of experience she could craft into a livelihood. And so, like many of her peers, she has had to put in a lot of extra time and effort into finding her way to a full-time job and independence. That’s never an easy process, but it should have been easier.
Who knows? Maybe this is all my imagination. Maybe all the homebodies I see are just there because of the high cost of housing. Or because they are paying off gigantic student loans. And yet, I worry. I worry that we have created an education system that either demonizes the business world …or keeps it distant and shrouded in mystery as long as possible. And, in doing so, we condemn many young people to long, unnecessary years of flailing around in search of a career that means something to them. Sure the money matters, but what’s more important is what that money buys: the ability to establish an independent life, the ability to organize A Room of One’s Own, the ability to leave home…..
Fran Leibowitz once wrote, “Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one’s home.” For me, that’s the real point of this rant. Every person deserves the chance to strike out on their own, to be offended, to be offensive, to try, to try and sometimes fail, to make a fool of themselves without their family in the audience, to be bold, to be bad, to find out who the hell they are…
Certainly, by their early 20’s, people should have that chance. To the extent that we deny them the kind of work experience that makes all those things possible, we are doing damage that cannot be measured in dollars alone.
Comments? Questions? Give me a ring anytime, day or night. Don’t worry about the hour; once Meagan gets back from Thailand – you know we’ll be awake to take your call.
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Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified:
07/24/05