"… The study surveyed over 3,000 U.S. teens and adults, including approximately 1,000 Gen Z (ages 15 to 21), 1,000 young millennials (ages 22 to 28), and 1,000 parents (ages 30 to 60).
About one in five Gen Z and young millennials say they may choose not to go to college. Many others see a less conventional path through education as a good idea. Over 30% of Gen Z — and 18% of young millennials — said they have considered taking a gap year between high school and college.
What’s more, 89% of Gen Z, along with nearly 79% of young millennials, have considered an education path that looks different from a four-year degree directly out of high school. For millennials, that’s up 18% from 2017. " …
Well when they see their older relatives taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to go get low-paying jobs with rapidly diminishing already pathetic worker protections, yeah it makes sense that they want something different.
The example student is an outlier, who was working part-time at a software company while in high school and chose to take its offer of a solutions architect job instead of going to college after graduating high school. Not exactly a typical high school graduate in terms of what opportunities were available to her.
There would probably be more agreement with the statement with the word “sufficient” instead of “necessary”. For some career paths, college is necessary, but is nowhere near sufficient.
I hope these folks will consider trades. We need good electricians, plumbers, car mechanics, builders, etc. Our state vocational high schools have become competitive and are bursting at the seams. Grads get great jobs as soon as they graduate high school. Nothing wrong with this…at all.
Looks like many are already considering the trades, as indicated by what you observe at those vocational high schools. But since they are competitive and bursting at the seams, not everyone who wants to go in that direction can get on that track.
We need all sorts of people in this world. Some of these degrees from some of these colleges don’t exactly have much potential in the real world.
I’d hazard a guess that if college wasn’t viewed as a societal norm most kids wouldn’t go.
I think there are truly only a small minority in college who attend for the pure love of learning.
Not to mention what snowflake indoctrination they receive, many parents don’t want to see their kids go into huge debt for an “ology” degree.
Other than the few who have wealthy generous well connected parents who can deploy money and connections to ensure that they inherit a suitable job and career after college, most students need to choose college and major within up front money limitations and whether post graduation career paths make it worthwhile.
@socaldad2002 because there is a reality to that statement. There are top students at top universities that have a hard time initially finding a job with the “ology” degree. What surprises me is that they are surprised they can’t find a well paying job. If your going to get a degree in sociology you need to realize that your not going to get paid much to do social work. You might even find you have to work for free for a non profit, it’s a valuable benefit to society but not to ones own pocketbook.
My son was trying to find a part time job when he was 17 and a junior in high school. He went to a lumber yard inquiring if they were hiring. They said to him, “have you been to college?” (my son did look old for his age so I don’t think they assumed he was a high school student) That was the day my son realized he had to go to college.
Sociologists do not do social work. What an ignorant statement. In my state, social workers need a Master’s degree, and do things as varied as counseling prisoners who are about to get released on how to keep a job and stay out of the criminal justice system, helping abused kids adjust to foster care, and work with chronically homeless adults on finding safe and affordable housing.
Sociology is an academic discipline which trains people who study long term phenomena in our country and develop public policies to address these issues (among the many other things sociologists do).
I worked 10 weeks at an HVAC company. The boss and supervisors were complaining all the time that they couldn’t find good people. Goofing on the job, drugs, etc. The techs were making $16 to $25 an hour, with no health benefits. He said that’s the problem that kids don’t want to train for that.
He said there were a lot of kids in the auto tech schools though…learning to work with the computers, etc.
So 2/3 of those surveyed were under the age of 30. The odds are good that the overwhelming majority of them are not yet living on their own, or are responsible for the care of another human being.
I agree that college is ridiculously expensive. And that it’s not the right choice for everyone-- that it never was “necessary” for everyone.
But it was absolutely the right choice for me.
I wonder how the results would change with a sample that was 2/3 people over the age of 50?
I’ve heard the line that college is meaningless with many opting not to go since I’ve been in high school. There was even a parent (then) who insisted college was only “a place where kids go to learn to drink.”
I’m not really sure why this is new news. Most high school students don’t go to 4 year college. Many opt for 2 year schools and at least around us, that often (not always) means various 2 year job certification programs. It may or may not come with an Associates Degree.
The 33% of adults with a college degree has been increasing - “steadily climbing over the past decades.” (same article, further down)
There have always been humans who have done well without college too, but a much smaller number of them. Is college the best path for Student X? It really depends upon Student X.
Around us too some do well in the trades, but there are plenty who “fail” to be good at that too. I’ve heard that there are oodles of jobs for construction workers and it’s difficult to find any who actually work regularly - dependable workers. Those jobs pay from $17-$25/hr. At $25/hr assuming a paid vacation that’s 52K if one doesn’t add in overtime. Seems to be an awful lot of work (more if overtime is needed) for about the same amount of pay many college grads get by my calculation. Is it a good path? For some students, certainly. For all? I have my doubts. It’s not a path any of my lads wanted.
My son left college and has been working full time. Without a degree, he’s managed to support himself and earn enough to pay for two 2-week trips, one to the Pacific Northwest last year, one to Japan this year. So on the face of it, he’s doing OK. But he’s frustrated. All his friends have finished their undergrad and are working, Monday - Friday. All the jobs he’s landed, or interviewed for, include working weekends because they’re in the service industry. It’s finally dawned on him that if he too wants weekends off so he can hang out with his buddies, he will have to get out of the service industry. And the alternative requires a college degree… not so much because the work entails college-level education, but because the fact of having a college degree is being used to weed out applicants by computers/HR people. He has decent/above average computer skills but hasn’t been able to avoid that when applying for jobs. It’s not necessarily fair. But it’s the way it is, at least in my son’s experience. This is just a real-world anecdote about the experiences of one college drop out – a nice, presentable, middle class white young man, whose horizons have been curtailed by the lack of a college degree. YMMV.
There is such credential creep that it is easy to use a bachelor’s to just filter for those literate. The problem is that the kids going to college, often at great expense, thought the degree conveyed more. It does not, any longer.