Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

No, Obama didn’t say that everyone should go to college. But we do need a different word for education and training beyond high school.

In early 1997, as the speechwriters in the Clinton White House were developing the text for the State of the Union address, my role was to weigh in as the content-area specialist in higher education. In his reelection campaign just ended, Clinton had promised a tax credit — dubbed the Hope Scholarship after a popular Georgia plan — for college tuition. I advised the speechwriters of a tough problem that I hoped, with their wordsmithing wisdom, they could help solve.

Federal financial aid, including the tax credit, could be used, and was commonly used, for far more than just a four-year college degree. Many Americans instead enrolled in shorter programs preparing to be emergency responders, or health care aides, or to work in the trades. Most people were not seeing these options, and we needed teachers, parents and students to broaden their view. The public policy definition of “college” included the broader array of options, but the public did not hear that flexibility in the word college. Instead, they heard a smarty-pants Rhodes Scholar pushing bachelor’s degrees.

I knew the speechwriters would not use the replacement word used then (and now) by think tanks and foundations: postsecondary. It’s a truly awful word. So instead I threw a Hail Mary. I suggested the English term used in Europe, tertiary. It’s mellifluous: TERSH-ee-airy. And yes it’s weird, but its use by POTUS in a speech to Congress and the American people would prompt thought and realization: “wtf is that? Oh, I get it: primary, secondary, tertiary. Why did he say that? Oh, I get it: it’s not just college, it’s vocational training too! Not elitist at all!” (Digging myself deeper, I recommended an acronym for the policies we were proposing, TEAM: Tertiary Education for American Mightiness.)

Ultimately, the speech included a few words that arguably responded to my caution, but the message still came out college, college, college.

As a candidate and as president, Obama faced the same dilemma. His plans for education involved far more than aiming for a BA, but the shorthand in the media inevitably devolved to college, which was interpreted narrowly by the public. To his credit, President Obama made a valiant effort in his first State of the Union address to explain the broader options:

And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

Nice try, but it didn’t work. Twice recently I have had to listen to pundits analyzing how Democrats lost the working class, in which they claimed it was a “mistake” for Obama to say that college — meaning a four-year college with a quad and dorms and all — is right for everyone. Geez, why did he think it was okay to be so elitist!? Of course, he never said or meant that. But the belief that liberals have been pushing Princeton-for-all is so strong that Randi Weingarten’s op-ed last week, making the case for career and vocational education, feels like something new from the left flank, even edgy.

Her essay again exposes the problem of the word college. As much as Weingarten tries to be critical of “four years” to allow for the fact that college includes shorter programs, even the New York Times headline-writer wasn’t having it (“Stop Trying to Make Everyone Go to College”). No matter what we say, to most people the word college means a bachelor’s degree. Postsecondary policy remains trapped in a prison of inadequate vocabulary.

I return, therefore, to my 1997 assertion that if we want the American people to hear a different message, we need a different word. If it isn’t tertiary, then what do you suggest?