What Life Are We Educating For?

In last week’s column, the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County overviewed the new “Future New Indiana Diploma” requirements and how the new requirements ask kids and their parents to pick tracks – academic, workforce or military. The three roads diverging in the first year of high school may fence students in while they are too young, making it so their education may underserve them for the coming decades of their lives.

The impact of these options means everything to Chip Timmons, dean of enrollment at Wabash College. His oldest child is a student at Wabash, and his youngest plans to join the workforce straight out of high school.

“When I look at them and consider how these curricular changes would have helped them, I see different benefits. My older son would have gained some hands-on skills and done things that were non-academic related. This would probably have helped him have an easier adjustment to being out on his own and developing life skills. While there’s still a chance he could acquire these skills in other ways, it would have been good if he had learned how to write a check, assemble an engine or understand how things work.”

His older son, a highly motivated college junior at Wabash, has always been academically focused, with a strong executive function and a clear trajectory toward graduate school and teaching.

“For my younger son, I believe he will join the workforce and find success early. I’m confident of that. But I wonder, why can’t he be well-read while doing that? We live in Crawfordsville, where the Hispanic and non-native English-speaking population is growing. He would probably benefit from intensive language study beyond the absolute minimum required to check off that box,” said Timmons.

Timmons’ statements reveal his belief that education should aim to develop students holistically — not just for immediate career paths but to prepare them for all aspects of life, including parenting, civic engagement and career paths. He values a curriculum that fosters well-rounded individuals capable of long-term personal and professional success.

As for the impact on college-bound Hoosiers, he said, “The challenge Wabash is going to have is that there will be fewer people graduating from high schools in Indiana. There will be fewer men graduating with eyes on higher education and the type of student we want to enroll here.”

Presently only 53 percent of Hoosier high schoolers pursue training or education after high school, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. While Indiana is graduating more students from high school, the number of graduates seeking post-high school education in 2022 was down 6 percent in 2019 and down 12 percent from 2015.

Economics professor Kevin Mumford, also the director of Purdue University Research Center in Economics, has told Indiana lawmakers that Indiana’s economic health is linked to the number of college graduates, especially since such graduates earn 60 percent more than high school diploma holders. Some of that message must have landed. This session, Terre Haute’s Greg Goode (R) proposed legislation (SB 448), which would put a quota on public universities for their incoming first-year class students. Presently SB 448 would require 50 percent of freshmen be from Indiana.  (For context: WFYI reports that “As of fall 2024, 55 percent of IU Bloomington’s first-year class was from Indiana, while 41 percent of Purdue’s first-year class were Indiana residents.”)

“Kendra Leatherman, Purdue University’s director of government relations, said Purdue actually admits a higher percentage of Indiana residents who apply versus the percentage it admits of out-of-state residents who apply,” reported WFYI. “But, she stressed, the university can’t fully control whether more in-state students enroll.”

Not only are fewer Hoosier students pursuing any sort of vocational or academic training after high school, but many Hoosier students aren’t prepared for the rigor of schools like Purdue. To succeed, they need Algebra I, II, Trigonometry and Pre-Calc, along with advanced science, college prep courses in a number of subjects and eight semesters of literature and English. (Purdue has reduced its foreign language requirements for graduation.)

Indiana is a “sleeping giant” in higher education, as Wabash College President Scott Feller told local legislators at MoCo’s December legislative breakfast. This is particularly true when it comes to college partnerships. The state offers a generous grant program that makes college more affordable for Indiana residents, a model that is the envy of states across the country, Feller reminded our local representatives. The 21st Century Scholars program, in particular, is extraordinarily generous and helps countless students achieve their educational goals.

Indiana boasts two research public institutions — Indiana University and Purdue University — as well as a prestigious private research institution, Notre Dame. Beyond these, the state is home to nationally recognized liberal arts colleges like DePauw, Rose-Hulman, Wabash and Butler, each with unique strengths in fields such as STEM and the arts. Butler, for example, stands out with its renowned Jordan College of the Arts. These seven institutions alone have national profiles and distinctive offerings, but Indiana’s higher education landscape extends even further. The state is home to 26 other private colleges and Ivy Tech Community College, a far-reaching institution that provides critical workforce training and educational access across the state.

President Feller urged legislators to maintain the excellence in this system, which incentivizes low-income students to access college.

If Indiana backs away from diplomas that encourage post-high school training, even manufacturing companies will opt to build in other states. Manufacturing organizations value employees with the capacity to learn and run high-level automation and robotics. Without graduates who are willing to do post-high school training, the state will suffer trying to lure competitive manufacturing.

There’s a tension between economic development and human development. A degree should (and does) economically (and physically) improve the lives of those who invest the time and money. It doesn’t have to break the bank, thanks to Indiana’s excellent options. But one of the reasons a four-year (or higher) degree leads to higher salaries is that post-high school degrees help graduates develop the ability to think across functions and boundaries. Not only should college students have acquired the soft skills of attention, focus, collaboration, communication, professional presence, time management and self-regulation, they should have digested ideas across subjects and learned to make creative, unique connections. They should be able to solve unexpected problems – not just professional problems, but interpersonal, intercultural and civic issues. As Timmons noted, “That’s why colleges like ours try to bring in students from all over the country and all over the world, because there are benefits of having this, like cultural friction with different ideas that are shared in the classroom and living units.”

The world has changed around us. Technology and ideas have specialized. It’s not a simple widget world anymore. High school training is no longer the gold standard for earning enough to live comfortably. Not everyone will earn a bachelor’s degree or higher, but almost all should go through an education system that prepares individuals for a lifetime of learning, adaptability and growth. Educators know this. Now, how to bring leaders and the public together on this?

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, multi-issue political organization which encourages informed and active participation in government. For information about the League, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org; or, visit the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, Indiana Facebook page.