National Survey Reveals Disconnect between Parental Aspirations and Opportunities for Students after High School

A survey by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup surfaces families’ views of how well the American education system is preparing high school graduates for postsecondary learning and work

By Carnegie Corporation of New York April 7, 2021

Future of Learning & Work

What Is Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work?

Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work is a public opinion poll and related report by Gallup and Carnegie Corporation of New York that aims to better understand how well parents think the American education system is preparing young people for life after high school. It offers new insights into the aspirations that parents have for their children, their perspectives on what will best help them achieve those hopes, and the barriers they face.

The Corporation commissioned the survey as part of its efforts to prepare students with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing global economy, particularly in light of the increasingly complex challenges facing our society. Our efforts to advance that vision involve a commitment to ensuring that everyone with a stake in student success has a meaningful voice in shaping educational policy and practice.

What Are Parents Saying?

The results of the survey are sobering, revealing a disconnect between the opportunities families want for their children and the postsecondary pathways available to them.

While having their child attend a four-year college remains the ideal for many families, 46 percent prefer other options. Even among parents who hope their child will earn a bachelor’s degree, at least 40 percent are interested in career-related learning opportunities such as internships or apprenticeships.
Forty-two percent say that trade or technical skills training provides excellent preparation for a successful career, the highest rating of any option offered, followed by apprenticeships (40 percent) and a four-year college degree (34 percent).
Thirty-nine percent of parents who had hoped their child would enroll in college or a training program after high school say their child did not do so, with 49 percent of those same students entering the workforce instead, an outcome associated with lower lifetime earnings.
Sixty-five percent of parents say their child faced one or more barriers to a preferred postsecondary pathway. While cost is a major hurdle, absent other barriers, families often manage to overcome it. Nonfinancial barriers, such as a lack of information about available programs or local access to a desired program, are more often insurmountable.
Parents of Black children and parents who prefer training programs are disproportionately affected by nonfinancial barriers. Those who prefer training programs were twice as likely to say that they lacked information or guidance, and nearly seven times as likely to say those programs were not available to their children compared to parents who prefer four-year college. Parents of Black children were also about twice as likely to report facing information and access barriers.

Additional information about the survey and its findings may be found here.

Why Is It Important?

The message from the survey is clear: we need to expand and strengthen postsecondary pathways so that young people are exposed to the world of work before graduating from high school and have access to a robust array of career-related learning opportunities afterward.

The survey identifies gaps in our education system, among them:

The nation’s longstanding focus on making college degrees accessible to all has had the unintended consequence of leaving behind those students who are either unable or uninterested in pursuing a traditional college degree. We must work to remove barriers and create alternatives for lifelong learning for all students.
We need to provide better guidance to students as they consider next steps after high school, and we need a seamless education system that supports students at critical transition points from high school to postsecondary learning and to their first good job.

We hope policymakers and education leaders use the survey’s findings to build a cradle-to-career education system that prepares all of our nation’s young people for the bright futures they deserve.

Gallup