Time to sweat a pipe

I’ve been thinking about pipelines a lot lately. Not so much about real ones, like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (bringing zillions of gallons of bituminous sludge within 12 inches of the Ogallala Aquifer—what could possibly go wrong?), though those are, of course, fun to think about. Or about the product pipelines of certain businesses—though again, they’re also a lot of fun to think about, especially what Apple will do now that Steve Jobs is no longer Alpha Nerd.

I’ve actually been thinking about the education pipeline. In this pipeline, we supposedly stuff all our cute little kids in one end and get the Productive Citizens, Job Creators and Leaders of the Future out the other end, about 13 to 25 years later. That’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. This pipeline is somewhat magical—what comes out the other end can change dramatically from what you put in it. Contrast that with a real, physical pipeline, which is doing well just to deliver all the stuff you put in it to the other end without, say, requiring the University of Nebraska to change its mascot name from the Cornhuskers to the Sludgestrainers. Even a pharmaceutical company can’t match what the education pipeline can do. For example, if Pfizer puts the ingredients for Son of Viagra in one end, the only real question is what the side effects will be when it comes out on the other.

Lately, though, our educational pipeline seems like it hasn’t been delivering the magic for our society. Of course, at places like Duke, it still seems to be working very well—I’ve met many students who I’m glad will be running The Future, once they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. But if you take a look around at the world beyond Duke, there are plenty of signs that the pipeline is not only leaky but that it’s failing at both ends.

For example, you may have seen the news reports lately that in the middle of the worst recession in about three generations, lots of specialized, skilled jobs are going unfilled due to the lack of qualified American applicants. And we’re not talking about the stuff on “Dirty Jobs” either—these are high-paying jobs that probably don’t involve touching guts, poop or radioactive stuff. But our pipeline hasn’t delivered enough people who can take these positions. How come?

This situation is a small example suggesting that our pipeline seems to spew out millions of people with a really, really low level of skill. We’re not just talking about people who can’t do engineering—we’re talking about a lack of skills all the way down to the basic one of just showing up to work on time, or even at all. It’s getting to be a legitimate question, unfortunately, that even if the government were to suddenly cough up $500 billion in stimulus spending, whether there would be enough Americans willing and able to take advantage of any jobs created by it.

And then there are the problems in the starting end. It would seem to be a good idea to stuff as many cute little kids as we can, as early as possible, into this magical pipeline. Study after study seems to show that the potential for Cute Little Kids to turn into Productive Citizens, Job Creators and Leaders of the Future is heavily influenced by their life experiences before age 5. Because of this, many states have tried to create pipeline-stuffing programs that try to get children who are younger than 5 into preschools. But these programs are generally the first ones on the chopping block when governments need to conserve money.

For example, a pipeline-stuffing program that North Carolina has, called More at Four, is routinely on the list of programs to be cut. More at Four provides funds to send 4-year-old Cute Little Kids from low-income families to day care institutions that deliver an approved pre-kindergarten curriculum. This year, the funding was not delivered by the state legislature until the end of August. Imagine how much fun that was for the parents of these children, who had to scramble for alternative care, or for the day care institutions, who faced bankruptcy-level financial shortfalls if they had been foolish enough to try to participate in this pipeline. Why bother trying to operate the pipeline under these circumstances?

So, even though the pipeline has done a pretty good job on all of you here at Duke, the truth is that it’s leaky and increasingly undependable. It’s going to be up to you to figure out how to pump a larger number of little kids into it, how to stop the leaks and how to improve the quality of what pours out the other end. I think these are going to be really difficult problems to solve—they are going to be deeply uncomfortable to face. But unless we mend our education pipeline soon, our economy won’t get the fuel it needs to keep growing.