Julie Williams bounded up the stairs of the Community College of Vermont (CCV) building on West Street to the third floor. It was one of the final weeks of her fourth-ever college class. She slid into a seat in the back, one of the few at a table in a classroom filled with computers.
Thirty years ago, Williams, now 49, approached the start of her working life much as she approached this college class. She slid into a housekeeping job at a Killington hotel immediately after high school and bounded her way up the career ladder to a managerial role in Rutland Regional Medical Center’s environmental services department.
She had learned to dread school early. She was busy child who learned best by getting her hands dirty. Sitting and listening didn’t work for her. Once she started her career, she was being paid to learn, instead of paying to learn. That was the smart way to do it, she believed.
But after 10 years at the hospital, times had changed. Her bosses now considered her job one that required a college degree. She was switched to the night shift.
Williams was not alone. Some call it “degree inflation,” and others “up-credentialing.” The Boston-based job market analytics firm Burning Glass calls this change in employer expectations for higher levels of education the “credentials gap.” The firm found, for example, that 65 percent of the ads for executive secretaries asked for a bachelor’s degree, but just 19 percent of the people already in that job had one.
Williams, who lives in Poultney, made an appointment at CCV in Rutland. She took placement exams and was even evaluated for learning disabilities. But she couldn’t shake the idea that school wasn’t for her.
Then, one of her kids got sick. Suddenly being home during her kids’ after-school and evening hours became medically crucial. But she couldn’t do that while working the night shift. Williams left her job, thinking that it would be a temporary set-back. She started applying for jobs with daytime hours.
The first surprise was that no one was interested in even talking to her for jobs similar to the one she had left because she didn’t have a college degree.
Again, Williams has company. In Vermont, the unemployment rate for high school grads with no college (4.6 percent) is more than twice the rate for those with bachelor’s degrees (2.0 percent), according to the Current Population Survey (CPS) information from the US Census Bureau. Nationally, the situation is similar. The unemployment rate for high school grads is 6.4 percent, while for college grads it’s 3.2 percent according the federal Bureau for Labor Statistics.
Williams started applying for jobs that paid a third of her previous salary. Still, the jobs were going to less experienced people with better educations.
With no job to pay tuition, going back to school seemed like a hopeless wish. Then, a state-funded education grant opened the door to a class at CCV that would guide Williams through her application for college credit for on-the-job learning. In September, when Williams walked into CCV’s blue and green lobby on the way to her first class, she was nervous, but also more excited than she had ever been about the first day of school.
Documenting and verifying every skill from a long career was a lot of work, but rather than wearing Williams down, it energized her. Through the class she retraced the journey of her working life. She remembered Six Sigma training at Hubbarton Forge. And putting that training to work by standardizing the housekeeping carts at the hospital. A former boss reminded her of the incentive program for housekeepers they had created together. This journey, she realized, was worthy one.
She left the class with enough confidence to sign up for another for the spring semester, this one in literature.
Two weeks ago, after Williams settled into her seat in the classroom, her professor, Laura Rubenis, took time out from discussing the dystopian classic “Fahrenheit 451” to tell her students about Williams’ success in creating an “assessment of prior learning” portfolio the previous semester.
“Based on her previous work experience, she was awarded 52 credits,” Rubenis said. “An associate’s degree is typically 60 credits.” Rubenis explained that Williams would probably need more than eight more credits to get her associate’s degree, since the class credits she was awarded were unlikely to match the degree requirements perfectly.
The lesson for the rest of the class, mostly young people at the start of their working lives, was unclear, but they took it in respectfully.
Williams has her eye on an associate’s degree in administrative management. It’s not just about getting a job. For Williams, it’s about getting ahead. She plans to stick with her education through to getting a bachelor’s degree, even if she lands her dream job tomorrow. She knows that when she finally holds that diploma in her hands, the statistics will finally be on her side.
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