Increasingly, students want college to open the doors to employment right after graduation. If they’re going to spend and borrow heavily to get their credentials, they want a decent ROI. Many haven’t been getting that.
UCLA’s Walt Gardner reflects on the market for college education these days in this Martin Center article.
He writes, “Enrollment in the humanities is declining, as students likely see little relevance in those studies for their career aspirations. In contrast, business majors are the most popular undergraduate degree, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Notably, the movement to career-oriented education is growing among private and religiously affiliated colleges and universities. It is growing because it’s what students demand: Surveys show that students’ main reason for going to college is to obtain employment.”
In our earlier history, a high-school diploma was considered evidence of a good education, and, whether you had one or not, there were abundant job opportunities for young people through apprenticeships and on-the-job training. Sadly, such opportunities have declined as the government pursued its college-for-everyone policy.
When you overproduce anything, the value starts declining, and so it has been with college. Gardner observes, “As a degree becomes more commonplace, its touted marketable value has taken a hit. A closer look reveals that the widely-cited ‘wage premium’ attached to a bachelor’s degree is more nuanced than believed. A recent study by the Manhattan Institute, for example, found that the top 25 percent of those with only a high school diploma earned more on average than the bottom 25 percent of college graduates.”
We have badly oversold college, and now the bloom is off that rose. Schools will have to figure out how to provide education — often “training” — that will be worth what it costs. Those that don’t aren’t likely to survive.