“Access alone is not enough” Josh Jarrett, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Ruth Suehle | OpenSource.com | October 26, 2011

Josh Jarrett, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered today's keynote at the Open Education Conference with a simple message (but no simple answer): Access alone is not enough to help people realize their dreams.

The Gates Foundation focuses on education because it is still the "primary arbiter of opportunity in this country," he continued. For many people, if you could change one single factor to change your future, the best thing you could choose would be your mother's education. The correlation between your economic standing and that of your parents lies strongly on their education, far more than race, health status, location, or many other factors. Jarrett offered four challenges for improving education over the next decade...