Writing for Substack, Sherman Criner cites a Pell Institute survey which found the following.
Only 44 percent of American high school students expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in 2022, down from 72 percent in 2002. The study also revealed a parental gap among high school students, with only 33 percent of first-generation students aspiring to a bachelor’s degree in 2022, compared to 60 percent two decades earlier.
High schoolers are not systematically abandoning college as an option. Rather, when read in conjunction with the Pell Institute’s findings, they seem to believe that higher education has less of a comparative advantage.
If young people are still enrolling at consistently high rates, are they so skeptical? (see below for my answer as to the enrolling)
The internet has effectively dismantled the cultural bottlenecks that historically upheld the fiat value of a college education.
Everyone overlooks a major reason kids go to college when not especially interested in any particular career. Simply, to postpone the otherwise head-on collision with icky adulthood. College enables the extension of adolescence into the early twenties.
As opposed to an 8 to 5 job five days a week, 50 weeks a year, they do college 32 weeks a year, with frequent breaks. The school day averages 3 hours in-class for 15 hours per week.
Hanging out with age peers and little adult supervision, experimenting with sex, alcohol, and drugs. Imagine how long four years seems in prospect to someone who has lived only 18 years ... it's a near-eternity.
This was brought home to us recently when a young woman who is a protege of the other DrC graduated from nursing school and accepted a job. She then complained of not liking the drudgery and responsibilities of "adulting."
In her mid-20s, she'd put it off longer than 4 years. In her case, more like 6 years.
