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'The Newsroom' Highlights America's Education Challenge
By Catherine Groux
Posted July 03, 2012 09:10 AM
A new HBO show highlights America's education challenges.Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show, "The Newsroom," recently stirred up controversy with its opening scene, which features a frustrated news anchor, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), explaining to a college student why America is no longer the best country in the world.
"It's not the greatest country in the world," McAvoy states."We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports."
In order to solve this problem, McAvoy tells his audience the first step is "recognizing there is one." However, Craig Wheeland, a political scientist at Villanova University, said that especially when it comes to business, one of the biggest challenges is Americans' skepticism of the government.
"We have a peculiar set of approaches to how government should act in our economy and in our society," Wheeland told CNN. "That creates a barrier to looking at best practices and borrowing ideas. The business world doesn't think like that. They look at ideas that seem to solve problems and test them out, and if they don't work, they change. They're more pragmatic."
America's Education Challenge
Regardless of the reasons for America's shortcomings, one of the biggest issues putting the nation behind others is education. According to the College Board's data, about 41.6% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 have an associate's degree or higher. This means the U.S. is lagging behind countries like Japan, Russia, Canada and Korea, where over 55% of this younger population has a degree.
Finding a Solution
Various organizations have proposed solutions for the U.S. to regain ground when it comes to higher education. For example, in a 2011 report, the College Board stated that in order for the U.S. to increase its percentage of degree holders, it must do things like give middle and high school students access to college counseling and simplify the admissions process. Additionally, like many other organizations, the College Board believes the government must provide more need-based grant aid and make the financial aid process more transparent.
Various government officials have also preached the importance of simplifying the financial aid process. For example, in June, Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Education Department Secretary Arne Duncan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray held a roundtable discussion with college presidents to discuss the importance of transparency in financial aid. According to a White House press release, these officials said students must "know before they owe" if they hope to earn a bachelor's degree without an overwhelming amount of debt.
Other political figures have stressed the importance of community colleges in increasing student graduation rates, as about 3.4 million students were enrolled at one of these institutions in October 2008, according to the Pew Research Center. On various occasions, President Barack Obama has praised community colleges as a prime way to jumpstart the economy and ensure that more Americans have degrees. Through the president's American Graduation Initiative, he plans to strengthen and reform community colleges to produce an additional 5 million degree and certificate holders by 2020.
