In this New York Times Magazine article, Paul Tough reports that in 2009, an all-time high of 70 percent of U.S. high-school graduates went straight to college, poised to take advantage of the long-term wage benefits of a college degree. In the early 2010s, polls showed robust public support of a college education:
- 86 percent of college graduates said college had been a good investment.
- 74 percent of young adults said a college education was “very important.”
- 60 percent of Americans said colleges and universities had a positive impact.
- 96 percent of Democrats said they expected their children to attend college.
- 99 percent of Republicans said the same.
Recent polls show a significant change in enrollment in, and opinions about, higher education;
- Only 62 percent of high-school graduates went straight to college in 2023.
- 18 million undergraduates enrolled in colleges and universities in 2010; 15.5 million are undergraduates today.
- Only 41 percent of young adults say a college degree is very important.
- Only a third of Americans say they have a lot of confidence in higher education.
- 45 percent of Generation Z say a high-school diploma is all they need for financial security.
- Almost half of American parents say they’d prefer that their children not enroll in a four-year college.
This precipitous decline in college enrollment and public confidence contrasts with other developed nations, where enrollment and support have remained high. What happened in the U.S.?
For starters, says Tough, while the college wage premium (the earning advantage of a college degree versus a high-school diploma) has remained high, the college wealth premium (the lifetime accumulation, taking debt into account) has plummeted for people born in the 1980s and after. This decline is even more pronounced for people of color; African-American and Latin college graduates born after 1980 had almost no wealth premium compared to those with only a high-school diploma. The same is true for the post-graduate wealth premium for all racial groups.
“These are startling data,” says Tough, “and they present a kind of paradox. Millennials with college degrees are earning a good bit more than those without, but they aren’t accumulating any more wealth. How can that be?”
The answer is the debt incurred by loans to pay the doubled cost of college or graduate school, eroding income and preventing wealth-generating steps like buying a house, starting a small business, or growing a nest egg for retirement. “For many borrowers,” says Tough, “their debt is becoming a serious burden. Among student borrowers who opened their loans between 2010 and 2019, more than half now owe more than what they originally borrowed.”
This changes the calculation high-school students make on whether to apply to college. Post-secondary education used to be a solid, blue-chip investment, but now, says Tough, it’s more like going to the casino. According to Douglas Webber, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board, here are some possible outcomes in this game of chance:
- Assuming free tuition and graduation within six years, a college graduate has a 96 percent chance of having lifetime earnings greater than a typical high-school graduate.
- Factoring in the 40 percent of college-goers who don’t graduate, if tuition is still free, the odds of coming out ahead over a lifetime decline to 75 percent.
- If tuition isn’t free and you’re paying $25,000 a year in tuition and expenses, the odds of coming out ahead are 66 percent.
- If college costs $50,000 a year, the odds fall to 50 percent – a coin toss on whether you’ll wind up with more than a high-school graduate, or less.
- With a STEM degree, the odds of coming out ahead, even with $50,000 expenses, go back up to 75 percent.
- But majoring in the arts, humanities, or social sciences, the odds are worse than a coin toss, even if expenses are $25,000.
- Those who do worst in this casino are those who borrow money to attend college and don’t graduate. They are doing less well than adults who never went to college, and would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense.
Polls show another striking change, says Tough: public attitudes toward higher education now break down by political affiliation. A decade ago, there wasn’t much difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of college. Around 2015, Republicans’ views started to nose-dive. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 19 percent of Republicans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education, down from 56 percent in 2015. Why? A 2019 poll found that 79 percent of Republicans said a major problem was that professors were bringing their liberal political and social views into the classroom (only 17 percent of Democrats agreed).
This perception of left-leaning college campuses isn’t too far off base, says Tough. The percent of students, professors, and administrators who identify as liberal has increased in recent years, and college graduates, a majority of whom voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, swung in the other direction by 2016, with 74 percent voting for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Republicans have become increasingly skeptical that colleges are places where their ideas and their children are welcome.
There’s also a social-class divide, says Tough. As tuitions in selective colleges have risen and they compete for more-affluent students, they engage in affirmative action for the wealthy, creating a more-stratified dynamic among colleges. Elite colleges, more than in the past, are launching pads for high-paying careers, with the affluent paying an expensive toll to jump the queue for good jobs. One group of researchers concluded that “highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations.”
That’s the situation in the 10 percent of colleges that are selective (admitting fewer than half of applicants). The vast majority of students who attend less-selective public institutions, community colleges, and for-profit schools (who are more likely to be rural, working class, low-income, and students of color) are less likely to graduate, and more likely to incur debt they can’t repay. “For them,” says Tough, “– a large majority of American college students – the risks they face when they walk into the casino are considerably higher. Faced with those odds, it is not a surprise that young Americans, especially, are eager to believe that they will be able to thrive in the job market without having to worry about college.”
But the future of the U.S. job market points in exactly the opposite direction. The demand for people with a college degree is rising faster than colleges can keep up, says Tough. One projection found that by 2030, there will be a shortage of 6.5 million college graduates in the U.S. economy. This means the college wage premium will continue to rise.
Meanwhile, the fastest-growing jobs requiring only a high-school diploma – home health aides, food-service workers, restaurant cooks, and warehouse workers – have a median salary under $31,000 a year. True, plumbers make almost $60,000 a year, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects fewer than 10,000 new plumbing jobs between now and 2031.
Tough’s conclusion: those who don’t go to college, and those who enroll and drop out, will pay a large lifetime cost, and there will be a major societal cost for those millions of missing college graduates – a projected $1.2 trillion in lost economic output by the end of the decade. “That is one cost we are likely to bear together,” he says, “winners and losers alike.”
Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1003 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.
