A majority of Americans don’t think a college degree is worth the cost, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll, a new low in confidence in what has long been a hallmark of the American dream.
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The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, found that 56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is a bad bet compared with 42% who retain faith in the credential.
Skepticism is strongest among people ages 18-34, and people with college degrees are among those whose opinions have soured the most, portending a profound shift for higher education in the years ahead.
In 2013, 53% of Americans were bullish on college, and 40% weren’t. In 2017, 49% of Americans thought a four-year degree would lead to good jobs and higher earnings, compared with 47% who didn’t.
Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which counts more than 1,700 institutions of higher education as members, said:
These findings are indeed sobering for all of us in higher education, and in some ways, a wake-up call. We need to do a better job at storytelling, but we need to improve our practice, that seems to me to be the only recipe I know of regaining public confidence.
Dr. Mitchell cited student debt, which has reached $1.7 trillion, and the 60% graduation rate at four-year colleges as two of the biggest problems undermining confidence in the sector.
Public skepticism toward higher education began to rise after the 2008 recession and compounded during the pandemic. Enrollment in U.S. colleges declined by about 15% over the last decade while the growth in alternative credentials, including apprenticeships, increased sharply.
In 2017, doubt over the value of a college degree was greatest among men, Republicans, and people living in rural areas. That disaffection preceded a widening gender gap in higher education as hundreds of thousands of men left college during the pandemic.
This month’s Journal poll found disaffection has spread to all age groups as well as residents of cities and suburbs.
The last categories in which a slim majority held fast to their faith in the value of a college degree were democrats, those with a college degree, and those earning more than $100,000 a year.
But 42% of people with college degrees said in the most recent survey that it wasn’t worth it, up more than 10 percentage points from the two polls last decade.
Women and older Americans are driving the decline in confidence. People over the age of 65 with faith in college declined to 44% from 56% in 2017. Confidence among women fell to 44% from 54%, according to the poll.
One of the women who has lost faith in the power of college despite herself obtaining an undergraduate degree, is Danielle Tobias, a 50-year-old dialysis technician in Lorain, Ohio.
Danielle Tobias, a college graduate, advises her stepson to be cautious about education beyond high school.
Danielle worked at a horse stable giving riding lessons for several years before realizing she wasn’t earning enough money to live on or make her student debt payments. She now works as a dialysis technician and earns $36,000 a year at a medical facility, which provided training at no cost to her.
She said:
I think college is good for certain things, but I have told [my step son] he would definitely benefit from some sort of tech or skilled job. I have suggested he join a vocation, a school where they teach a skilled trade.
Paulo Eskitch, a 47-year-old violinist who lives in Tulsa, Okla., is less emphatic about whether his daughter, now 7 years old, should enroll in college when the time comes.
Paulo Eskitch, a college-educated violinist, says he could have made more money working as a welder.
Paulo has a master’s degree in music and earns about $30,000 a year playing in several different orchestras. He said a degree has become necessary in his field but he sometimes wishes he had pursued welding as a career because he thinks he could have made more money.
That said, he anticipates supporting his daughter if she decides to pursue higher education because there aren’t enough good alternatives.
He said:
There are some fields you just can’t enter unless you have a college degree I’m not saying that’s right but it’s the way it is.
