US secondary school students are increasingly voting with their pocketbooks and rejecting the idea that going to college is an essential stepping stone to the American dream. Even former president Barack Obama — Columbia University and Harvard Law School graduate — proclaimed recently that “college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class”.
As a new academic year begins in the US, tertiary institutions face declining enrolment spurred by a falling birth rate, a student debt crisis, a changing jobs market and political battles over race and diversity initiatives, education experts say. “Public confidence in four-year colleges is at a record low,” Shalin Jyotishi, an expert on higher education at the New America think-tank, told me. Only 22 per cent of US adults said it’s worth getting a four-year degree if one has to take a loan to do it, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year.
Politics matters too: Pew found half of Republicans say it’s not too, or not at all important to have a four-year degree to get a well-paid job, against 30 per cent of Democrats.