Decades ago, the U.S. blundered into making the college degree an essential step for getting into a wide swath of jobs. And after enormous growth of the higher-education establishment and the credentializing of millions of students, we find that many students can’t pay back their loans and now work at jobs that high-school kids can do.
In this College Fix story, we read that 72 percent of recent grads don’t think their degrees did much to prepare them for the workforce. No surprise.
We also learn about Michael Gibson and his 1517 Fund. It invests in young people who want to get into good careers right after high school. It’s a marvelously iconoclastic idea. From reading his book Paper Belt on Fire, I know that the academic and journalistic establishments hate him. A man is known by his enemies.
The B.A. isn’t what most students want or need. Few jobs actually require knowledge that only college graduates could have.
But if students stop flooding into colleges, where will the Left get its shock troops?