In today’s economy, where most well-paying jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree, a college education is critical to establishing economic stability and job security.
According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, “The bachelor’s degree (BA) has become the premier pathway to economic opportunity. The BA now accounts for 56 percent of all good jobs, due to greater demand for workers with at least a four-year college education.”
As income inequality steadily increases, it is becoming even harder for people in the lowest income bracket to get out and stay out of poverty. However, workers with a bachelor’s degree can expect to earn nearly $25,000 more per year than those with a high school degree, and unemployment rates for college graduates are half those of high school graduates.
Quinton Lampkin, director of College Transition & Success at The SEED Foundation says, “In today’s fast and furious job market, every student must consider post-secondary education to remain competitive. Look at what’s happening in many communities across this country–jobs that were once in surplus for individuals with just a high school degree are increasingly a thing of the past or being outsourced to robots.” Of the jobs created since the Great Recession, 4.6 million required a bachelor’s degree, compared to 800,000 for those with a high school diploma or less.
This gap in unemployment has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. The unemployment rate for workers with a high school diploma was 3.8 percent before 2020, peaked at 17.3 percent in April, and remained at 8.3 percent in January 2021. For workers with bachelor’s degrees, those figures were 2 percent prior, 8.4 percent at peak, and 3.8 percent by January.
At SEED, we bridge the college access gap for low-income, first generation students and their families. We prepare students for college in our 24-hour, five-day-a-week program and our data-informed, individualized college matching methods support our students with enrolling at a college that will help them best meet their goals. The learning experiences, mentorships, and college advising provided by SEED, help level the playing field in pursuit of college completion. SEED graduates show that students from all backgrounds thrive when they have the resources and opportunity to do so.
Attending college is a pathway to a career with growth opportunities and economic stability, but it’s much more than that. Dr. Keisha Findley, SEED Foundation Scholarship Selection Committee member and Microbiologist at the FDA, stresses the transformative nature of the college experience. “College is about self-exploration, and his or her experience will be unique to that individual. It is one of the most critical periods in one’s life, where students have time to identify strengths and weaknesses, develop educational and technical skills, define interests, make connections/create networks, and contemplate future career options. College is truly a time of discovery of self, others, and the larger world.”
All students deserve the opportunity to expand their horizons and to achieve success at the highest levels. Completing college has a lifelong impact on a person’s career prospects and ability to provide for themselves and their families. At SEED, our students expect to go to college, and we give them the tools and support to achieve their goals and dreams.