College Degrees: the New Landlines?
No job, massive debt, thanks academia!
In what may be the most overdue revelation since “maybe don’t put asbestos in baby powder,” nearly half of American families now believe college is not a worthwhile investment. The other half apparently are still under the impression that four years of hard-core partying and a degree in The Science of Imaginary Solutions (yes, it’s a thing) will lead to stable employment and a starter home.
According to Newsweek, confidence in the usefulness of college has plummeted from 85% in 2015 to just 56% in 2025. (To put that in perspective, significantly more of your neighbors now believe in karma than in a solid ROI from a bachelor’s degree.)
And honestly—who can blame them?
[Side note: Once upon a time, a bachelor was a young man too broke to own land or attract a wife—basically a medieval couch surfer with a sword. Universities borrowed the term for guys who hadn’t quite made it to “master” status, which is academic code for “still figuring it out.” Fast forward to today, and we still use bachelor for both a degree and a dude who hasn’t settled down. Honestly, it’s kind of shocking woke culture hasn’t canceled the term or tried to introduce a spinster’s degree.]
For decades, the punchline of the wasted-degree joke was the meathead majoring in underwater basket weaving. Now that we’ve evolved—undergrads can choose from Gender Fluid Typography, Climate Justice Through Interpretive Dance, or The History of Protest Signs as Performance Art—all students can be equally unemployable. Equity! Inclusion! Progress!
It’s as if colleges saw enrollment dropping and said, “You know what’ll bring them back? Degrees with even less career potential!”
According to EducationData.org, the average cost of college tuition and fees is now $38,270 per student per year. As the mother of a recent college graduate, I can tell you that doesn’t even include things like getting the kid home for holidays and summers and minor breakdowns, fraternity or sorority dues, therapy, lost ID cards, fines for leaving your car parked on campus all weekend, or the staggering number of $7 iced lattes it apparently takes to get through a single sociology paper.
Students are graduating with six figures in debt and the most promising job listing on Indeed reads, “Administrative Assistant, $15/hour, Bachelor’s Degree Required, Must Know QuickBooks, CPR, and How to Diffuse a Bomb.”
More and more Gen Zers are skipping four-year institutions and going straight into trades. And why wouldn’t they? Plumbers can charge $300 just to jiggle a handle, while liberal arts grads are Googling “entry-level jobs that don’t require experience, skills, or hope.” Plus, the good old-fashioned hands-on professions are the ones AI will come for last. You want great pay, no student loans, and solid job security? Learn how to install a ceiling fan, frame a house, or rewire a breaker box. ChatGPT might be able to tell you how to do these things, but it can’t run conduit or swing a hammer (yet).
The takeaway here isn’t “nobody should ever go to college.” (If you’re planning to be a heart surgeon or airline pilot or the person who designs bridges so they won’t collapse, please get extensive professional instruction, price be damned.) It’s “don’t mortgage your future for a diploma that’s basically a $150,000 coaster.”
Yes, I know that college is a lovely buffer between childhood and real life. And sure, you make lifelong friends and one of them might one day deliver your wedding toast or slip your résumé to their boss. But if you can argue about pronouns with surgical precision and also can’t afford to move out of your parents’ house (*unless they had to sell it to pay for your tuition and you’re all homeless), you may have just financed four years of regret.
I didn’t used to feel this way, for the record. When my girls were growing up, college was the unspoken plan; practically a non-negotiable. (Also my dad was a high school dropout and my mom had one year of secretarial school. We were going to do better, be better!) In fact, when my oldest mentioned dreaming of a “van life gap year” after high school graduation, you’d have thought she’d announced she was planning to take up trapeze and join a traveling circus. “You can play housing-insecure hippie all you want after you get a degree,” I informed her, having seen in my day how those “gap years” tended to morph into decades of soul-searching and a blog nobody reads.
But not any longer. My youngest skipped university and spent the last two years living and working in New York City, Milan, and Seoul. She’s learned how to navigate complex public transportation systems in foreign languages, haggle over fruit prices in three currencies, and convey baffling medical symptoms using only hand gestures. She’s done and seen things at twenty that most people will never experience in their lifetimes. Call me crazy, but I doubt she will ever regret not spending an entire semester learning PowerPoint best practices for group projects with three slackers from a guy in a sweater vest.
Don’t forget to tell me how you voted in the comments. :)
I am a former college instructor. Many of my students would have been better served outside of the institution.
BTW, I can't recommend this insightful book highly enough:
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic is a 2011 book by an adjunct professor of English, who writes under the pen name Professor X. It is based on an Atlantic Monthly article of the same title.[1] "Professor X teaches at a private college and at a community college in the northeastern United States"[2] and argues that "The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth."[1]
El Gato’s ‘stack yesterday was also about the uselessness of a college degree, college “experience,” how dumbed down it all is & all the midwits it has churned out the past few decades.
Back in my day (1976-1980) I feel like it still meant something, it was a helluva good time & colleges still taught meaningful classes. You were also considered an idiot if you didn’t graduate in 4 years…. Compare that to today where “college” drags on & on as an endless “career”.
I fully agree that today, what college has become is not worth it. 1st grandchild coming in Oct & I’ll be curious what son & DIL will think about college as an absolute.