Last year, I committed to spending this year exploring the education-to-workforce pipeline. Higher education has long been seen as the start of that pipeline, with graduates transitioning from classrooms to careers. My interest in this topic dates back to my time working for Governor Phil Bryant in Mississippi, where I assisted Laurie Smith in studying how the state’s community colleges and training programs prepared graduates for the workforce. The results were underwhelming—a topic for another day. For now, a more pressing issue is the role of the H-1B visa in this pipeline.
In this week’s top article, Rob Jenkins connects higher education to the H-1B visa program, framing the debate over whether to support the program as a proxy for assessing the quality of U.S. education. He poses a critical question: Are colleges and universities producing enough top-tier talent to meet economic demands—and if not, why?
Jenkins argues that American higher education bears responsibility for leaving graduates behind their international peers. He cites a June 2024 Gallup poll showing that only a third of Americans have confidence in U.S. universities to prepare students for the workforce. This crisis of confidence, Jenkins contends, stems from a combination of social promotion in K-12 schools, the dilution of college curricula, and the prioritization of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) over academic rigor—all of which, he believes, contribute to the nation’s reliance on foreign labor.
Hellbound and Down 