YOUNG COLLEGE-EDUCATED WORKERS PREDICTED TO DECLINE IN NEW ENGLAND

Forecast Challenges Conventional Wisdom About Workforce

Boston – A major new research study was unveiled by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation at a briefing in downtown Boston. The study finds most New England states will suffer declines in the percentage of young workers holding Bachelor’s degrees by the year 2020 if current educational and demographic trends continue.
 

The report, New England 2020: A Forecast of Educational Attainment And Its Implications For The Workforce of New England States, challenges today’s comfortable assumptions about New England’s educational strengths and competitive advantages. (Available online at www.nmefdn.org)
 

The study predicts a dramatic transformation of the New England workforce:
 

• Massachusetts and Connecticut will suffer the largest drops in the percentage of young workers holding a Bachelor’s degree or higher. The Bay State’s forecast calls for a decline from 43% in 1993 to less than 40% by 2020. Connecticut’s forcast calls for a drop from 34% to roughly 30%. While seemingly modest in percentage terms, each point drop represents a loss of many thousands of young educated workers.
   

• There will be marked declines in the size of the working-age population in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with insignificant gains forecast for Vermont and New Hampshire.
   

• All six states will witness dramatic increases in the percentage of their workforces composed of minorities. For example, 28% of the Massachusetts working-age population will be minority by the year 2020 (up from 15% in 2000).
   

• An expanded minority presence in the workforce will be especially visible among young workers. By 2020 nearly half the 25-29 year-olds in the three southern New England states (CT, MA, RI) will be minorities.

Co-author Stephen Coelen of the Connecticut Center For Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut explained the implications: “Today’s talented workforce will not be there for us tomorrow, if current demographic and educational trends play out. If the six New England states prove unable to significantly raise their current levels of educational access and attainment, the region will witness a decline in the quality of its workforce and find itself in serious economic jeopardy.”
 

Co-author Joseph Berger of the University of Massachusetts Amherst expressed concern that leaders do not recognize the magnitude of change approaching the region: “Reversing today’s demographic and educational trends is like turning an ocean liner. The fact that our previous [1993] forecast has been consistently confirmed by actual Census results should alarm anyone who believes a shortage of young college-educated workers is only a distant or uncertain scenario.”
 

New Ways To Prevent The Decline Identified
 

According to New England 2020, the two most important contributors to the predicted decline are an outflow of native residents and the persistence of several educational performance gaps. At the same time, the report cites an important trend working in the region’s favor, namely the capacity of New England states to attract young people to the region to attend college:
 

• The report finds that the in-migration rate for the college-aged is often more than twice as high as the rate of in-migration for the general population. In Massachusetts, for example, the in-migration rate for those aged 18-29 was 27% while the rate for all ages was just 10%.
   

• Education is identified as the motive for more than half of all in-migrants aged 20-24 in every New England state, except Connecticut (43%) and Maine (44%).

While it is widely recognized that colleges and universities contribute economically in the form of innovation, new technologies, and federal funding, New England 2020 argues these are not the only benefits. Colleges and universities have been generating a steady, reliable supply of “replacement residents”—young people who are crucial to sustain the regional economy.
 

Nellie Mae Education Foundation President and CEO Dr. Blenda Wilson cast the research’s importance in a broad light: “What the data suggest is that our higher education system may be—to borrow from Abraham Lincoln—‘our last best hope’ for sustaining our population, workforce, and economy. Each state needs a strategy to enhance the quality of its higher education system to attract young people here and keep them here once they graduate.”
 

New England 2020 calls for improving the access, affordability, and quality of higher education as a way to foster in-migration, as well as several other initiatives, including:
 

• Business/higher ed/K12 partnerships that develop college aspirations and college readiness as early as middle school. Such partnerships—by boosting college participation rates—would help make the most of the existing native population as a potential economic resource.
   

• Campus-to-workplace “bridge” programs in which industries, state policy-makers, and higher education institutions collaborate closely to move recent graduates directly into key areas of the labor force.

About The Nellie Mae Education Foundation
 

The Nellie Mae Education Foundation is the largest philanthropy in New England that focuses exclusively on promoting access, quality, and effectiveness of education. Based in Quincy, Massachusetts, the Foundation provides grants and other support to education programs in New England that strive to improve underserved students’ academic achievement and access to higher education.
 

The Foundation also funds research that examines contemporary educational opportunity issues that affect New Englanders, convenes educators, policy-makers, and community members to influence public policy in education. Since it was established in 1998, the Foundation has awarded more than $63 million in grants and support.