Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

[Dannymacfan]

A decade or so ago, Americans were feeling pretty positive about higher education. Public-opinion polls in the early 2010s all told the same story. In one survey, 86 percent of college graduates said that college had been a good investment; in another, 74 percent of young adults said a college education was “very important”; in a third, 60 percent of Americans said that colleges and universities were having a positive impact on the country. Ninety-six percent of parents who identified as Democrats said they expected their kids to attend college — only to be outdone by Republican parents, 99 percent of whom said they expected their kids to go to college.

In the fall of 2009, 70 percent of that year’s crop of high school graduates did in fact go straight to college. That was the highest percentage ever, and the collegegoing rate stayed near that elevated level for the next few years. The motivation of these students was largely financial. The 2008 recession devastated many of the industries that for decades provided good jobs for less-educated workers, and a college degree had become a particularly valuable commodity in the American labor market. The typical American with a bachelor’s degree (and no further credential) was earning about two-thirds more than the typical high school grad, a financial advantage about twice as large as the one a college degree produced a generation earlier. College seemed like a reliable runway to a life of comfort and affluence.
 

read more: https://dnyuz.com/2023/09/05/americans-are-losing-faith-in-the-value-of-college-whose-fault-is-that/

[Censored by Laurie]

it's a pretty simple cost benefit analysis.

20 years ago when I was in school, I had a confidence that between loans and part-time work I could pay for 4-5 years of public university tuition and that the entry-ish level salary from my college degree would afford myself not a luxurious, but a comfortable life...apartment, car, groceries, a bit of extra-curricular income...and the ability to pay down those loans in 3-5 years.

this is what was promised to my entire generation (and the subsequent). that math no longer works. 

and the fault is everywhere. it's on state governments for deregulating tuition...on universities for sky-rocketing costs...on employers for not raising salaries to meet the added costs of the education needed for those particular fields.