Crain's editorial: Opportunity for all - Crain's Cleveland Business

Some problems are obvious, and yet the solutions remain elusive — even when those solutions would lead to substantial social and economic benefits.

Such is the case with a story we ran Feb. 22, by education reporter Amy Morona, headlined, "Ivory towers: How higher education is failing Black Americans in the Midwest."

If you haven't read the piece, by all means do so. A one-sentence summary: "Black Americans in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, as well as the nation, remain underrepresented at our best colleges and overrepresented at some of our worst." And some numbers: In Cleveland, nearly half of city residents are Black, but Case Western Reserve University, the city's most selective college, reported only 6% of its population was made up of Black students in 2018. (At nearby public universities, the numbers were a little better — 8% at Kent State and about 15% at Cleveland State.) The situation is similar in Chicago and Detroit, two other markets explored in the analysis.

The selectivity issue matters, Morona wrote, because students at those institutions "have higher chances of graduating," thanks in part to the schools' vastly higher spending on instructional and academic support. Meanwhile, Black students are significantly overrepresented at for-profit colleges — schools where graduation rates generally are low and students are left with substantial debt and little to show for the investment. The result: "In each of the counties that house Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, the rates of white people with bachelor's degrees are more than double the number of Black Americans with those same credentials," Morona wrote.

That kind of educational attainment gap has enormous ramifications on future earnings for students, and, more broadly, on equality and opportunity in a region. In Cleveland, with a stagnant population and an economy that still needs a jolt, we're doing ourselves no favor if we're not maximizing the potential of all citizens.

We didn't get into this situation quickly, and the answers aren't fast, either. As Ryan Fewins-Bliss, the executive director of the Michigan College Access Network, said in the story, "We have to do systems-level change at the K-12 level and definitely at the higher ed level in order to see these problems be fixed." Wil Del Pilar, a vice president at the national nonprofit educational advocacy group The Education Trust, added, "Truthfully, the way we should be funding these institutions should be flipped. We provide the most resources in higher education to the students with the most advantage, and we provide the least resources in higher education for those students who are most disadvantaged."

There are organizations doing good work to close gaps, including Cleveland's Say Yes to Education and College Now Greater Cleveland. The work ahead is significant, all along the educational timeline.

A recent report from the Brookings Institution, meanwhile, underscores the importance to the Midwest of its research universities — and takes note of the challenges those schools are having in boosting enrollment.

As Brookings noted, the Midwest is home to 20 of the world's top 200 research universities, including CWRU and Ohio State. Those universities are "an important fulcrum for the economic revival of the Midwest's older industrial communities," according to Brookings, and public schools, in particular, play a key role in "closing higher education attainment gaps by race and income."

But Midwestern states and their higher education institutions "face fierce demographic headwinds, in the form of an aging population and declining school-age enrollments," according to Brookings. One notable stat: "Regional public university enrollment in the Great Lakes region reached its high point in 2011 with over 971,000 students, but has fallen by over 10% since."

There are other challenges exacerbating the enrollment decline, including COVID-19 and state disinvestments in the Midwest. Plus, Brookings says, "hostile state legislatures and growing anti-intellectualism" make schools "easy targets for further cuts." This storm of factors holding back educational opportunity holds us all back.

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Crain's editorial: Opportunity for all - Crain's Cleveland Business
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