Crisis Proofing Today’s Learners

Jean Eddy, President and CEO of American Student Assistance, joined me to discuss career preparation for young people. We talked about the lessons from Jean’s new book, Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners (buy it here!), including the importance of the middle school years, necessary attitudinal shifts, and striking the balance between passion and practicality. For those who are paid subscribers, I look forward to the conversation in the comments—and Jean and I look forward to sharing more content with you all soon with a new partnership we have in the works! More to come!

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Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. To help us with that journey today, I'm delighted that we have Jean Eddy. She's the president and CEO of ASA, American Student Assistance, a great thinker, great friend, and author of a very important book. We'll delve into many interesting things that Jean is doing. It's titled Crisis-Proofing Today's Learners. Jean, so good to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Jean Eddy:

Absolutely. My pleasure, Michael.

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The Ikigai Concept

Michael Horn:

No, it's all mine. Trust me. So let's get into it. It's a terrific book, and for those who are wondering, should I buy it or not buy it? It's a fast read, but it packs so much information in each chapter, reframing how we think about the choices that young people have before them in their lives. But I want to start up front with this concept of Ikigai in your book. Tell us what that is and why it's so important.

Jean Eddy:

Well, I think that the Japanese absolutely got this right, where they were trying to provide a balance to an individual that would give them a full and meaningful life. Ikigai is about helping a young person figure out what they love, what they're good at, what the world needs—which is very important—and what they can be paid for. If you can provide those things over the course of a young person's lifetime or journey, then they have an opportunity to have that successful, meaningful, and happy life that Japan and, I would have to say, other countries aspire to.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. It's such an important concept, balancing self and purpose with contribution to the world and society, and what you can get paid for. So it's not just underwater basket weaving or something like that. Although maybe that's more important in the future. I don't know. But I guess I'm curious, in your mind, when an education system specifically, in a society specifically gets Ikigai right, what does that look like, and how far off are we from that today in America?

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Jean Eddy:

Oh, boy. I would say that we're pretty far off. I'll start with the latter question. I think we are so focused within our systems about all the things that we believe young people need to have. It's really more about the basics and what we need to impart to our kids and less about this whole idea of discovery. I am a real fan of discovery work in that kids are looking for relevance, and oftentimes they can't see it in what they are doing in their classwork. They don't know how it relates to what they care about or what they see. In so much of the research we do, we find that kids oftentimes are even leaving high school without a sense of what they're good at. How is that possible? If our systems were more focused on that self-identification, what am I good at? What am I interested in? And then build from there, we could start to see the kind of change that we need to make in order to have our kids have the United States version of ikigai.

Reevaluating College for All

Michael Horn:

So part of the outgrowth of this focus on Ikigai is, and I think this speaks to the US as well, you have this really strong set of chapters in the book that push back on the college-for-all narrative. I have not been a college-for-all person for a long time, but your book really made me think about it in a different light. A huge part of your point is that when people say everyone should go to college, they're reducing risk for young people. But your argument, and it's really persuasive, is that actually for many people, by pushing them to go to college, we're increasing their risk. While this may seem prescient in our current moment, some people are waking up to this. Just tell us about your thinking about how for some people, college is actually increasing risk, and that's not something that I think has been popularly understood.

Jean Eddy:

Well, a college education is a really expensive endeavor. This is not something that you can ignore any longer when front page news is that some institutions cost $90,000 to $100,000 a year to attend. Think about the young person and their family who says, "We're going to go to college because that's what's expected, and I'm going to figure it out when I get to college." If you have limitless funds, that might work for you; you could stay in college for a number of years and finally figure it out. But I would say most people don't fall into that boat. Most kids come to college and they have some kind of sense of maybe what they want to do, but most don't. They end up either switching majors, which prolongs the time in college and costs money.

But I'm more worried about two populations of kids. The first is they go to college, they can't figure it out, they've stayed there long enough to accrue some debt, and now they leave college. They don't really have a path to how they're going to repay this loan, and they get into trouble early. The other population that I think we need to focus on are those kids who make choices about college being the default, but can't afford it, so they do nothing. That is a huge number of kids in the United States right now. It's something like 5.5 million people who are in this situation. Our society cannot afford that. Look beyond the individual happiness and purpose of those individuals. What about the impact on our society and the number of individuals who really don't have a purpose or a plan?

Michael Horn:

Yeah.

Jean Eddy:

That just breeds all kinds of crises.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. Wow. So it's interesting because I think you're right. When we did our book *Choosing College*, we found out a significant number of individuals were going exactly as you said because it was expected of them. They weren't particularly passionate about it. In our data set, 74% of those students transferred or dropped out because they couldn't find a compelling reason to stay there when it got tough, and college was tough. So what you just painted is really significant. I didn't realize, as you said, 5.5 million individuals are doing nothing.

Jean Eddy:

Nothing.

Michael Horn:

Wow.

Jean Eddy:

They're not in school and they're not doing anything.

Michael Horn:

Wow. That's chilling. Yeah, that's chilling. So in your mind, what I think the book starts to do is it starts to say, let's reset this societal narrative around the primacy of college. I'm curious what a better, more balanced set of potential pathways might look like in your mind for students.

Jean Eddy:

Well, I think first and foremost, it is this whole world about exploration and discovery. We've got to do a better job really early on. Our focus at ASA is on middle school because it provides an opportunity for young people whose brains are just hungry like sponges for all the information we can provide. This is the time when they can really become self-aware. And then I'm not just talking about self-awareness; I'm talking about showing them all the possibilities. We just don't do a good job of showing kids what all the possibilities are. The job is often, "Okay, let's get kids through middle school, through high school. They're going to college." It's not about what opportunities young people could have to explore all the options that are open to them. I keep talking about skilled trades because we have young people who have the aptitude and the desire to get into those areas, but we don't show them what's possible how to do it, or the skills needed for it.

Plumbers, for instance, aside from making a very good wage in Massachusetts, many of them have to be entrepreneurs. They need to have a business sense and a business plan. There are all kinds of things about skilled trades that we don't open the doors to our young people to tell them, "These are the kinds of things you need to be successful in these areas." How can someone know if they are suited to a particular job if we don't even show them what those jobs are? We can do a better job of doing that while they're in school.

Starting Career Exploration in Middle School

Michael Horn:

Yeah. So talk to us