America’s schools and colleges rightly devote attention to what young people should know. They focus on developing human capital: the knowledge, skills and credentials needed for the labor market. That matters, but it’s not enough, because knowledge, skills and credentials don’t exist in a vacuum. They move through relationships and networks.
This social capital — the knowledge of how to forge connections that make opportunities visible and attainable — is the missing curriculum in American K-12 and postsecondary education. And it’s a shortcoming with consequences.
Young people from well-connected families absorb social capital almost by osmosis when it comes to learning things like how to ask for help, follow up and signal ambition without arrogance. Others, equally capable but from less-connected families, must figure this out alone. The result is unequal starting lines and unequal outcomes — a yawning gap between social wealth and social poverty.
Social wealth means having not only knowledge and credentials, but relationships that open doors, including mentors who give advice, supervisors who challenge us when we need to grow and networks that surface opportunities. Social poverty is the absence of those assets. It is being a talented individual without advocates.
