Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone

by Settersten, Richard; Ray, Barbara E.

  Tyler, a young man from Minnesota, knew he should go to college, but he absorbed that message not from his parents or from high school mentors. He says, “I just thought a four-year degree would be a good thing. I had no idea what I wanted to do, any direction, nothing like that.”

  Tyler attended an average public high school in the midsized city of St. Paul, Minnesota. Not a star student, he became swallowed up in the middle ranks. His mother was a high school dropout who had spent her life working factory jobs. Tyler saw no connection between what he was learning and his future because no one was making the connections for him. The school’s guidance counselors, he told us, were not focused on C students.

  “I met my counselor once and that was briefly before I graduated. ‘Don’t bother going to college’ is about what he told me.” The overworked counselor, meeting Tyler for the first time, was probably judging his prospects based on his grades, which were average at best. In hindsight, Tyler says, “I think I was kind of ripped off in a way because even just a little advice would have done so much good. I mean, I could have done so many more things if somebody had said, ‘Why don’t you try this?’ or ‘This is why maybe you should study.’ ”

  He didn’t get that advice because counselors today are overworked and underpaid. In public high schools, counselors have a workload that must leave them exhausted. A typical counselor in a public school attends to 311 students in a school year, on average. Out of necessity, they spend just 23 percent of their time advising students about college. In contrast, counselors in private schools spend more than half their time helping students prepare for college, and their caseload is approximately 234 students. Minnesota, where Tyler went to high school, has the nation’s second highest student-to-counselor ratio, at 799 students per counselor.7 Here again we see the education arms race rear its ugly head. Rather than demanding better services for all students, parents in more elite schools and school districts instead dole out thousands upon thousands of dollars to college consultants to ensure that their children have the strongest possible shot at getting into elite schools.8 The problem is that many parents, like Tyler’s mom, just cannot afford to compete.

  Not Ready for College

  Tyler is the classic case of a young person lost in the system, not bright enough (on paper, at least) to be noticed by his teachers or bad enough to be noticed by detention officers. Without any guidance from home or at school, and without the internal drive to get noticed, he faded into the background. He went from achieving the 98th percentile on standardized tests in eighth grade to being a C student in high school. “I’m pretty emotional, so I was just full of angst, hating the world or whatever. Certainly how I was treated reflected on how much self-worth I gave myself.”

  Not surprisingly, Tyler’s short college career was a disaster. Unlike many of his peers in more elite schools, he had no clue how to select a college, how to apply, what to expect, or how to fund his education. Rather than the well-planned college search of many of the elite youth, with visits to campuses and multiple applications, Tyler chose to apply to the local university because he drove by one day and saw some students tossing a Frisbee around, having what looked like a fun time. Though his grades were no great shakes, his ACT scores were good enough to get him in (reflecting, no doubt, his natural ability, as was evident in his 98th percentile scores in middle school).

  Tyler arrived on campus with little direction, no sense of purpose, and very little high school preparation. The University of Minnesota is a big school, with more than fifty thousand students. It is easy to get lost even with a good map. Tyler had no map. He took a psychology course, a math course, and a smattering of others. He was shuttled into remedial courses in the General College section, the bottom end of the food chain in college. He chose a communications major in an equally haphazard manner without even knowing what communications was. “I think there was a list, basically some choices that the counselor gave, and I think I chose that, I don’t remember why exactly.” He sank quickly, dropping out after less than a year. “The counselors did as good a job as they could,” he says, “but I think what I needed was babysitting, and they just can’t do that. And I think I probably just wasn’t ready for it.”

  In today’s competitive college game, Tyler was an average student in a system that has little patience for average. This raises another issue. When do we tell students the truth about their capabilities? Is it wrong to dash hopes by telling the truth? Is it worse to mislead students into thinking they can make it when the prognosis is all too clear? Maybe Tyler’s high school counselor was right to tell him the harsh truth that he was not college material—or at least not at that moment. It certainly would have saved him money he didn’t have. Although he managed to get some financial aid, the complex financial aid system was confusing to him and as a result he didn’t use it to his advantage. Instead, he borrowed money and six years later is still paying it off. In the past, Tyler might have found a place in a vocational class that linked him to employers. While these programs still exist today, they often come, as we show later, with a whiff of “loser” and “dumping ground” attached. This lack of a viable alternative without stigma may be one reason that aspirations for college are so high, and misplaced. Expectations are that college is for all, but unlike life in Lake Wobegon, not all children are above average.

  “Over the years, the sense that everyone should go to college has escalated to such a level that it’s taken as a given now,” says McAlexander. “Some students just aren’t ready. Now it’s sort of an expectation. Even if you’re not ready, and even if you don’t know where you want to go or what you want to do, you go to college anyway. Most of them flounder and they maybe finish in something they didn’t really care about, their GPA is very low, and when they’re done, they still don’t know what they want to do. They just sort of stick it out and they’re unhappy.” Unfortunately, for too many—Tyler included—the other viable options are not as clear as the mantra Go to college. Feeling like a Little Leaguer trying to play ball in the big leagues, Tyler dropped out.

  Benny, who was a better high school student than Tyler, also dropped out of college, but for a different reason. He had the support he needed, but he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He was crippled by this lack of direction.

  Benny grew up in San Diego in a large Filipino family. He was a B student in high school, and his high school teachers and parents were all enthusiastic about his prospects. Even though he would have preferred to begin at a community college, he enrolled at San Diego State because his mother insisted he go directly to a university. As Benny told us, he still “didn’t know what [he] wanted to do.”

  Benny first considered majoring in biology, but then his sister turned him on to liberal arts, which he figured was flexible and probably less work than biology. As most nineteen-year-olds do, he chose to take the easier route. Either his advisers were absent, or he didn’t know enough to use them to their full potential. His parents were just happy he was in college and left it at that. Benny also couldn’t quite give up what he perceived as “good money” working in retail. He decided to work on the side, taking two part-time jobs, the first at the Malibu Grand Prix and another at the Disney Store.

  Benny’s sister had blazed a trail ahead of him, so college was not a big unknown for him as it was for Angelina and Peter. Benny also had the support of a large social network—he was well liked in high school and was active in several groups. In other words, he had a map to help him find his way in the college world. Yet he had no internal compass. He was adrift, and like 40 percent of his peers, he dropped out. Also like many of his peers, Benny eventually returned, this time to a community college, but he, like too many others, would never complete that second try.

  Many young people—probably most young people—aren’t sure at age eighteen, twenty, or twenty-two what they want to do in life. This seems true of even students in the most selective institutions of higher education; indeed, for t
hese students, the college years are actively designed to help them figure it out. Parents of all stripes can nag, cajole, and cultivate their kids toward an interest, but young people rarely listen. They hear lawyer, doctor, cop, or the ubiquitous, “go into computers,” and they think, Nope, not for me. How many young people, for example, know that it’s possible to parlay their love of writing into working as a speechwriter for a CEO or a communications director for a nonprofit? How many know that an interest in law can lead to a job as a customs official? The list of job possibilities is nearly endless, yet for too many young people, these wider—and less prosaic—options are rarely spelled out. Benny liked biology, but saw no connection to a later job. No one was suggesting some of the possibilities that lay before him when he was making crucial decisions about the direction of his schooling.

  Benny is not alone. These are difficult decisions, regardless of how much or little support one is given. Even with parents who have interesting jobs, or who work to expose their children to a variety of options, this time of life is both exciting and confusing. Young people are too old to be given “advice” and too young not to need it. The result: They drift.

  Today, as the stigma lifts and norms change about living at home beyond age eighteen, many of these young people end up back at home with their parents. While young people of every decade have drifted, confused and at loose ends, opportunity structures today are less forgiving of trifling mistakes. In part this is a direct result of the arms race we noted earlier. When a sizable number of young people are really excelling, employers have a prime pool from which to choose. Decent students with blemishes on their records from dropping out are bypassed for surer hires. More recently, the recession means that older, more experienced workers are also now part of the pool. Finding a foothold in an interesting job is that much harder with this kind of competition. Even drifting has become an art form in today’s competitive playing field. Sean Aiken, a young Canadian striking out on his own but unsure of what he wanted to do, decided he’d try a job a week for a year. Savvy, charming, and with a certain marketing genius, he blogged about his jobs, and in a flash was on Good Morning America and had a book contract. Compete with that.

  Getting It Right

  Vanna came from the same kind of background as Tyler, with parents who weren’t equipped to help her navigate college. But she had the aptitude and ability to connect with the right mentors to see her through this difficult time. Her experiences show just how critical adult mentors are in the college game. Vanna drew support to her because she was a good student. Without it, she likely would have floundered as Tyler and Benny did.

  Vanna’s parents had no idea how to help their very bright daughter secure her future, but she was resourceful, and important people in her life spotted her talents and nurtured them. Now a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student in Minneapolis, Vanna immigrated with her family to the United States as Hmong refugees. Her parents were middle-aged when they left Laos, and they did not adapt easily to the United States. They struggled with the language, and Vanna would help them in their new country as she tried to keep her eyes on her future.

  As in many cultures, Hmong parents do not invest as heavily in their daughters as they do sons. Daughters, after all, leave the family for their husband’s family. Vanna was no different. “As a woman,” she says, “that’s what they teach you to do—how to be a good housewife, how to be able to cook and be someone’s daughter-in-law.” While her parents did not actively discourage her in school, she was not encouraged to express her opinion, “so I think that made it harder for me to.”

  While many young people are in situations similar to Vanna’s, with parents who cannot directly foster their skills or guide them in school, she was able to tap into a wide network of people who helped her figure it out. “I was lucky enough to have mentors and have parents who loved me and nurtured me so that I could find people and be able to find my own way.”

  High school came easily for Vanna, and she was surrounded by supportive, high-achieving friends who were also taking AP classes, going to math camps in the summer, and participating in study-abroad programs. Those who influenced her most, however, were two Sunday school teachers. “They spent all kinds of time with a group of us,” she says of the pair. “They were college-educated, so they always encouraged us to do this thing called college.” Later on, as a very bright student, she received support from several teachers. In her junior year, she visited college campuses with her high school guidance counselor. “I don’t know what got her doing this, but [the counselor] met with a group of us girls to explore college and college options, and we visited a couple of colleges. I really remember her because of that. She took time outside of her job to do this with us. That was really important.” It was important because it gave Vanna a sense of what college was for and how it connected to her future. College for her made sense, personally. It also made sense because she was college material. Although her parents didn’t know how to guide her through college, others did.

  Vanna applied to four colleges in the Twin Cities, knowing that she should stay close to her parents. She chose an all-girls private school with a small student body. Like many eighteen-year-olds, Vanna had only a vague idea about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Because she thrived in English classes during high school, she entered college thinking she would major in English. But encouraged by a professor, she attended a seminar where a physician spoke. The lightbulb went on. She knew she wanted to be a doctor. She changed her major to biology and set her sights on graduate school, where she was when we interviewed her.

  Young people today need a cheerleader on their team, whether a parent, a mentor, or a counselor or teacher. The game is competitive, and too many are falling behind. Elite parents hover like helicopters because they know how easy it is to fall—and how expensive. Students themselves recognize the boost that parents and families can give them, and more often than not they welcome the advice and guidance. In 2007, at least three-fourths of students said that their parents gave them the “right amount” of help (versus too little or too much) with decisions about whether and where to go to college, the application process, how to deal with officials at college, and even choosing college courses. Unfortunately, minority students, who are also more often from lower-income backgrounds, are much more likely to say that their parents had not helped enough, particularly once they arrived at college.9 For some, there are mentors and other supports. But too many simply drift. They drift because the message is “go to college,” but the distances among saying it, getting in, and actually graduating require remarkable leaps, and without the kinds of supports that parents or other mentors can provide, the odds of succeeding are low.

  Vanna had a sense of her future because adults helped her shape that vision and showed her the steps to get there. Getting there meant going to a four-year college. While Vanna was college material and key adults spotted her potential early, Tyler and Benny went unnoticed because the system as it is set up has no room for them. They were not college material—academically for Tyler and motivationally for Benny. But for them, there were no other options, at least not ones that could be clearly identified. A large share of young people like Tyler and Benny end up by default in another college track—the two-year plan at a community college.

  The Revolving Door of Community Colleges

  Community colleges are the workhorses of the higher education system. In 2008, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, more than 11.5 million students—46 percent of all undergraduates in the country—were enrolled in community colleges.10 Jobs requiring at least an associate’s degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience. Less glamorous, with smaller budgets and strained faculties, community colleges train students for nursing, firefighting, policing, and a host of other meaningful and practical careers. As the Network finds, community colleges are often the avenue for those high school students who have l
ess-than-stellar records, and who need to catch up before transferring to a four-year college. Indeed, nearly half of community college students require remedial course work to get started.11 Community colleges are also more often the choice of older, lower-income or working-class students, as well as students of color. The average community college student is twenty-nine.

  Community college students are approaching school for different reasons from those who attend four-year colleges. They may be retraining for work, or going back to school after having children. They may not know what they want to do in life, so they start in community college with a smattering of classes while they figure out what interests them. The typical plan is to get some credits under their belt before transferring to a four-year program. That’s the idea anyway. However, this is the very group of students that has a less formed sense of their futures and of why they’re in school—not exactly the makings of success.

  Indeed, this approach trips up many students, according to Robert Ivry, senior vice president of MDRC and a nationally known expert on education and social policy. The Network and MDRC collaborated in developing Opening Doors, a program designed to retain and engage more community college students. “Many students don’t take a coherent set of classes. They aren’t typically given much mentoring by advisers and other faculty members, and they often first have to take ‘development courses,’ which were once called remedial courses. They’re not sure what they want to major in, and so they take a smorgasbord of liberal arts classes that don’t fit together.”