There are two basic orientations to education policy in this regard. We can take the student body, in all of its diversity, and focus on getting them to fit within the constraints of the system that we have or we can attempt to change the system that we have, to permit a greater range of diversity. It is the latter that we're trying to do at KPU, and I think we need to do that more broadly across the country.
For example, when we have new immigrants, they come with an extraordinary range of skills and abilities, but essentially the only mechanism we have to understand what they can do is a pretty cumbersome process to transfer their credentials, which is where you get all of these clichés about highly educated people performing low-skill jobs because their degree from their home country is not recognized here. An education system that respects the knowledge and capacities of these disadvantaged groups needs to be based on competencies. It needs to be based not on the credentials that you have but on what it is you're actually able to do, whether that is with credentials from here or from somewhere else. Having a broader sense of what their capacity is would empower and enable all of those marginalized persons.