“It’s an enormous tragedy in my view—a civil rights tragedy,” he said. “It feeds into a lot of the other problems you hear about in the educational system, like student debt. Find someone who needs remedial help in the first year they show up in collge, they will probably have a failure to graduate or take too long to graduate. It’s an enormous disqualifier of the future.”
The educational system also needs to be reformed to help retrain workers to find employment and thrive amidst a period of automation, said Holtz-Eakin.