3:15pm | Editor’s note: This commentary is written by Carl Dene, owner of Vision Design Studio, the Long Beach design firm behind the recent launch of the weekly Lunch Truck It events each Wednesday in the Zafaria South Creative District.
We know certain facts about unemployment: First, it is stubbornly high. The national average of 9 percent would be welcomed here in California, where the number is about 12.5 percent.
Second, the best predictor of whether or not someone will suffer from long-term unemployment is his or her level of education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in January 2011, people with less than a high school education had an unemployment rate of 16.5 percent. For those with a college degree, the rate was 4.5 percent.
If those numbers are correct, then it would stand to reason that the U.S. Government would be doing everything possible to get more students into post-secondary education and help them graduate with a college degree.
That, unfortunately, is not the case. Indeed, quite the opposite is happening. The Department of Education is on a mission to revoke federal grant and loan programs for students who want to attend career-oriented (for-profit) colleges.
On Thursday [June 2], the Department of Education issued what is known as the “Gainful Employment” rule. It sets an arbitrary ratio between what a graduate of a career college with a degree in graphic design, for example, can be expected to earn when he [or] she leaves school and the amount of student loans that the graduate must repay.
The Gainful Employment rule only applies to for-profit colleges. In contrast, there appears to be no problem, in the minds of D.C. bureaucrats, with the gainful employment potential of a recent graduate of Harvard with a degree in English literature.
Unlike traditional not-for-profit colleges and universities, career-oriented schools focus on teaching real-world job skills. I am a 2001 graduate of such a college: The Art Institute of California – Los Angeles. And I graduated with a degree in graphic design.
Based upon what I learned at Ai Los Angeles, I opened Vision Design Studio in Long Beach. We were among the first firms in the creative industry to move into what is now the Long Beach Design District along Coronado Avenue.
My firm serves clients across the nation and employs 30 people. Over the last decade, we have hired 26 graduates of The Art Institutes system of schools. They are either still with us or have moved onto the marketing departments of major corporations like Boost Mobile, Verizon, Draftfcb and Wieden Kennedy.
Before enrolling at Ai Los Angeles, I attended the University of Arizona. The admissions counselors assured me that the SALT program, geared to students with learning disabilities, would be the right fit, so I decided that the high out-of-state tuition would be worth the cost. It wasn’t. The program didn’t offer the assistance I had been promised, and in the end I wasted time and money on a traditional school that did not meet my needs. Fortunately, I was accepted to The Art Institute of Los Angeles and had a wonderful experience.
The Gainful Employment rule will hit the very people who are at the highest risk of unemployment; they are older than the typical freshman, they often have families, are working at least part-time, and are more likely to be a minority.
Not every graduate of a for-profit college will go on to open his or her own business. Neither does every graduate of the MBA program at Stanford. But every graduate of a career-oriented college has the same opportunity to succeed as every graduate of a traditional college or university.
The Declaration of Independence doesn’t guarantee my success and doesn’t pre-ordain my failure. It provides simply an unalienable right to, among other things, the “pursuit of happiness.”
In my case, happiness is defined by running a successful design firm. For others it might be cooking in a great restaurant or designing clothing or being a nurse in a community hospital.
Career-oriented colleges are a major component of America’s educational system. Congress should do everything in its power to help students get a college degree and move from the 16.5 percent unemployed group to the 4.5 percentile. That means charting a course correction to turn back an ill-conceived rule that could hurt far more than help.
The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Long Beach Post or the official policies of the Long Beach Post.