Joint Center Senior Policy Analyst Discusses Black Student Enrollment with Inside Higher Ed

Joint Center Senior Policy Analyst of Workforce Policy Brian Kennedy II was interviewed for Inside Higher Ed’s article in response to a report from a network of academics, college presidents, bipartisan policy makers, and business leaders, calling attention to a decade-long decline in college enrollment among Black students and its ripple effects on the country. The Joint Center’s study on the Black community college students’ experience was also mentioned in the article.

According to Kennedy, “[e]ven though there certainly is a wage premium to gaining degrees, racial gaps are still pretty pervasive. It’s worth asking the question ‘is this investment worth it?’ because oftentimes they’re not being rewarded at a rate similar to their counterparts.” Additionally, “our postsecondary education systems, our workforce training systems, are designed by policy, and just like any other policy, they are ripe and have vestiges of racism and sexism, and so we have to actively work to make these systems better and make sure they’re more accessible and make sure they’re delivering the same results for folks no matter who they are.”

Read the article here.