Education: More Americans say college isn’t worth it

Three young students sitting on university steps, wearing graduation gowns and holding diplomas — Blue-collar work 'is looking like a safer bet' these days

(Image credit: Alberto Menendez Cervero / Getty Images)

The advantage of having a college degree while job hunting is “becoming a thing of the past,” said Jonnelle Marte in Bloomberg. Historically, recent college grads have snatched up jobs more quickly than peers with only a high school diploma. But the job-finding rate for college-educated workers ages 22 to 27 has dropped sharply over the past 20 months, and is now “roughly in line” with that of young high-school-educated workers, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. That concerning convergence is another sign of the dearth of entry-level opportunities for young, mostly white-collar workers. The overall unemployment rate overall for 20-to-24-year-olds hit 9.2% in September, “up 2.2 percentage points from a year prior.”

Given those vanishing job prospects, it’s no surprise that more Americans are saying college isn’t worth it, said Ben Kamisar in NBCNews.com. As recently as 2017, 49% of Americans felt that an advanced education improved their chances “to get a good job and earn more money,” compared with 47% who did not. Today, the sentiment has completely flipped, with 63% now disputing the value of a college degree. “Exploding tuition prices” are a huge factor, but the labor market is also making Americans sour on a traditional “ingredient of the American dream.” Artificial intelligence is making white-collar jobs feel riskier, while blue-collar work “is looking like a safer bet,” said Julie Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. Just ask Hannah Talley, 25, who dropped out of Texas A&M to become an auto mechanic and is now earning $53,000 a year at a Firestone shop. Meanwhile, her 22-year-old sister, Sophia, is struggling to find her way as a freelance journalist after graduating from the University of Texas.

“We can’t all be plumbers,” said Callum Borchers, also in The Wall Street Journal. There was a time after the pandemic when “skills-based hiring” that ignored credentials was in vogue. Employers at the time “didn’t have much choice” in a tight labor market. Now they “have their pick of available talent.” Faced with options, employers will increasingly “revert back to the degree as a proxy,” HR experts say, partly because it takes “more effort to determine whether someone without a degree can handle a job.” The value proposition of going to college “has stopped being a no-brainer,” said Allison Schrager in Bloomberg, but that doesn’t mean it “isn’t worth the expense for many people.” Having a degree is “a lifetime asset,” and “the average college graduate can still expect to earn $1 million more over their lifetime” than those with high school diplomas. That’s enough to give college at least a passing grade.

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