What U.S. leaders can learn about promoting opportunity pluralism
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The U.K.’s Labour Party recently won an overwhelming victory in the country’s general parliamentary election. Its five-part policy platform contained a commitment to break down barriers to opportunity, including creating diverse education and training pathways so individuals can have an alternative to the college-degree pathway to jobs and opportunity. Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. have proposed similar measures at the national, state, and local levels. This approach is encouraging since it could hold the key to developing the types of pathways needed to ensure that young people and workers acquire the knowledge, skills, and social connections they need for upward mobility and prosperity. I call this “opportunity pluralism.”
Vice President Kamala Harris recently described America’s current pathways problem, and what a better approach could look like: “For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success: a four-year college degree. Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths, such as apprenticeships and technical programs.” This issue can unite Democrats and Republicans, as recent proposals make clear.
While education governance in the U.S. is more decentralized than in the U.K., American policymakers should recognize the appeal of this approach and look to the U.K. example to inform how the U.S. pursues opportunity pluralism.
From the College Pathway to Multiple Pathways
The primary aim of U.S. K-12 schools for at least the last 25 years has been “college for all”—ensuring all high school graduates are prepared to go to college and encouraging them to do so. Schools typically neither make career education central to what they do nor provide young people with work experience that prepares them for entry-level jobs in their field of choice.
For many young people, the traditional high school experience doesn’t even give them enough information to figure out what that field may be. A Morning Consult poll found that less than half of U.S. Gen Z high schoolers said they had enough information to decide the best approach after high school. Two-thirds of high schoolers and graduates said they would have benefited from more career exploration in middle or high school.
This gap between what young people want and what schools provide leaves them with little understanding of practical pathways to jobs, careers, and further education. Moreover, young people struggle to transition from school to work, earning lower wages when they enter the workforce relative to their expectations.
On the other end of the pathways spectrum, the traditional college approach is losing public support. According to a 2024 Gallup and Lumina Foundation poll, only 36% of adults say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, down from 57% in 2015. And they don’t think the institution is likely to improve, with only 31% saying it is headed in the right direction and 68% saying the opposite.
A 2024 Pew Research Center report found similar sentiments, with only a quarter of adults saying that having a four-year degree is a “very or extremely” important part of getting a well-paid job while 40% said it is “not too or not at all” important. About half (49%) said that a four-year degree is less important to get a well-paying job now than 20 years ago.
And it isn’t as if those who don’t go to college feel like public policy meets their needs, either. A Progressive Policy Institute/YouGov survey of working-class voters found that less than half said the federal government is responsive to their needs compared to 70% who saw government as primarily focused on the needs of the college-educated.
Career Education Pathways
The U.K.’s Labour Party offers a way forward that American policymakers should consider. Labour’s agenda includes “career education pathway programs” for those 16 and older, which would provide job training, apprenticeships, and job assistance. It also would create a national and local revenue-sharing apprenticeship partnership for job training tailored to the needs of local labor markets. Finally, it would allow current Further Education Colleges, which provide general vocational programs, to become specialized Technical Education Colleges, which could offer specific academic and technical training based on local labor market needs. Taken together, these measures represent a targeted plan to prepare young workers for the jobs on offer.
Adopting a similarly specialized approach could offer the U.S. a more tailored way to supplement efforts in the non-college pathways space. Current programs are typically public-private partnerships created by nonprofit and for-profit organizations to educate, train, and provide work experience today. Program models include apprenticeships and internships; career and technical education; boot camps for learning specific skills; and staffing, placement, and other assistance for those seeking jobs. But more needs to be done, particularly around tailoring these programs to specific jobs and localities in demand, as others have argued on The Commons.
Moreover, the U.S. would profit from learning about how the U.K. has promoted apprenticeships, since participation in such programs since the 1990s has increased dramatically there. Two factors especially relevant to the U.S. are the U.K.’s financial support for more training providers and the development of national frameworks to describe the knowledge and skills needed for occupations. Both are instrumental to get domestic programs off the ground.
Likewise, Labour’s agenda includes a makeover of the nation’s school and adult career services, including placing career leaders in all schools and requiring schools to join the current national network of Career Hubs. These Hubs assist in developing programs aligned with the Gatsby Benchmarks, eight national career guidance standards. This work is coordinated by a national organization that since 2014 has expanded the reach of Hubs to 92% of U.K. schools and colleges. Schools can also access career planning resources and job search tools through Hubs, including a job mentor for every student—something American young people desperately lack.
The Benefits of Opportunity Pluralism
Research consistently shows the benefits of career services programs. Consider the U.S. Youth Development Study, which followed those born in the mid-1970s to age 30. It found that young people who had an internship or apprenticeship at 14 or 15 were meaningfully more likely to report that they had had the job they wanted by the time they were 30.
These programs nurture both the technical and material aspects of success and its relational dimensions, including mentoring and professional networks that help individuals throughout life, at and beyond work.
They also deepen individual’s knowledge of the culture of work and foster their capacity to aspire to, create, and navigate the pathways that make a reality of their ambitions. Additionally, they help individuals develop an occupational identity and vocational self, which give them a better sense of their values and abilities.
On a practical level, these programs create faster and cheaper pathways to jobs and careers. And they foster local civic engagement from employers and community partners by cultivating the conditions essential to innovation, economic dynamism, and a flourishing local civil society.
Adopting the types of programs proposed by the U.K.’s Labour Party could provide many benefits for millions of Americans who currently feel underserved by government education efforts, unlocking more than just financial benefit.
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