Chapter 6: Higher Education and Youth Work: Opportunities for Expanding the Field

Skillfully and authentically executed youth work—wherever youth can be found—is one of our most critical means for countering harm, resolving conflicts, and catalyzing meaningful societal change. Through the support and development of our nation’s most valuable resource, our youth, youth workers are fostering current and future leaders and innovators around climate change, racial justice and reconciliation, and other global threats which affect human well-being. Despite the importance of youth work in shaping the social and economic fabric of our country, youth workers are notoriously and frequently undervalued and inadequately compensated. This issue extends from childcare workers to out-of-school time (OST) program staff, with the people who care for and cultivate the talent of young people often relegated to the margins of the workforce. Furthermore, it is not just the workforce that tends to marginalize youth work. Institutions of higher education, despite their marketing efforts to educate the next generation of leaders and innovators, typically do not prioritize youth work within their curricula. Despite growing pressure on colleges and universities to meet the needs of the work force more directly, youth work is seldom a focus in higher education.