NRBP Hosts Insiders Forum on Education & Employment

Newark Regional Business Partnership recently hosted a discussion as part of their Insiders Forum series entitled “Driving Prosperity For Newark Through Education and Employment” at the PSE&G headquarter building.  

Peter Englot of Rutgers University-Newark gave an engaging talk on the Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC).  His talk was refreshingly honest and challenging to the audience, making the observation that “We have the same problem in higher education that the business sector has – we’re not good at identifying talent. Higher education institutions across the country need a values readjustment.”

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He went on to illustrate the fundamental flaw in the model that higher education institutions tend to use to identify high school talent.  Evidently, the correlation between SAT scores and first-year performance in college is only at a .5 differential.  And when SAT scores are combined with high school GPAs, there is only an additional .5 bump.  Essentially, what the data reveals is that academic rock stars in high school virtually never transition to rock star first-year college students.

Then he spoke to the mission of the NCLC.  The college attainment level in Newark is only at about 17%.  That number becomes especially alarming when compared to the college attainment level for New Jersey, which is 40% – one of the highest rates in the country! NCLC’s goal is to raise the college attainment level to 25% by 2025.

One of the areas to focus on that was made clearly apparent is that of collaboration.  There must be strong collaborations between the business sector and academic institutions in order to equip students to be truly competitive in the job market.  There must be collaboration between K-12 schools and colleges.  There must be collaboration between community colleges and 4-year colleges.  half of Rutgers University’s student body come from community colleges.  There must be more and better bridges built between institutions and thought leaders, business leaders, and education are in a great position to build those bridges.