I won’t say you are being lied to about college today; I will say you are being misled.

JFK was president when I received my undergraduate degree. Back in the day, only 7% of high school graduates took the leap to “higher education.” College was rigorous. Students flunked out. However, Demand exceeded Supply. If you managed to be awarded a bachelor’s degree, you were on your way to a middle class or better financial life.

Three decades later, Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office and 22% percent of adult Americans had completed a four-year college degree. In the years that followed, the political rhetoric around higher education began to rapidly shift. The New Democrats—led by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council—began to make the case that college was for everyone. Higher education, as they framed it, was the key to labor market competitiveness in the modern economy.

The mantra was clear: College was a down payment on economic prosperity. Rather than being a rarefied privilege for the advantaged, higher education was suddenly a means of economic uplift for everyone. To miss making the grade was to miss out on the best chance at the American dream.

The relentless refrain that college was an investment in future earnings had a significant impact on colleges and universities. Student interest in the liberal arts plunged, while business became the top major—larger than English, history, and philosophy combined. And the idea that higher education was a personal investment, rather than a public good, allowed state legislatures to further slash their contributions, even as the cost of college continued to rise.

The biggest impact, however, was on students. Despite what you are being told, college often doesn’t pay for itself. And for most borrowers, the debt they took on grew larger over time rather than smaller, due to compounding interest. As a result, millions of the Americans who followed the rules and did what they were told ended up saddled with loans that were nearly impossible to discharge.

Even as diplomas often failed to deliver for college graduates, the mantra—and the mania—about higher education as a means of economic uplift has continued.

By 2003, 27% of Americans had completed four years of college. Ten years later, that figure was up to 32 percent. And now in 2026, 39% of Americans possessed a college diploma; 14% of them also have completed an advanced degree.

Today most Americans largely agree that the value of college has been oversold. A recent WSJ-NORC poll shows that 56% of college graduates say the costs of their education outweigh the benefits. When Gallup polled parents, nearly half said they’d prefer that their children didn’t attend a four-year college after high school. Yet another poll found that by striking margins, Americans no longer believe that it is a priority for high schools to prepare students for college.

The Wealth and Earnings Premiums of a bachelor’s degree, once perceived as unshakable, are now seen as problematical.

For example, for lucky college students like me who graduated in 1962 (the 1940s birth cohort), white families with a bachelor’s degree accumulated roughly 195% more wealth than demographically similar non-graduate families. Today the wealth premium of a college degree has collapsed dramatically, falling to historic lows or near zero for younger generations. Skyrocketing tuition and heavy student debt burdens directly subtract from a young graduate’s net worth. Older generations benefited from buying low-cost housing and stocks that appreciated dramatically, whereas younger generations entered a high-asset-cost, debt-heavy economy. Student debt and high living expenses prevent young people from buying homes or investing in the stock market early in life, missing out on major asset appreciation.

We have all heard the breathless cheerleading touting the million-dollar lifetime earning gap between those with college degrees and those without. I deal with “college outcomes” data not enigmatic average lifetime earnings numbers. I have three recent studies on college outcomes: Forbes, New York Federal Reserve, and the Burning Glass Institute/Strada Education Foundation. The data differs a bit, but the logical conclusion is clear–Supply far exceeds Demand.

Today every Tom, Dick, and Harriet (45%) feels compelled to matriculate. because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is the only gateway into the American middle class. Absurdly, a quarter of these freshmen need remedial classes, and many schools have watered down certain academic programs, to accommodate the hoi polloi. The majority of these students have a very slim chance of crossing the finish line, graduating and scoring a well-paying, professional job. In today’s economy, the white-collar job has become an endangered species. W-A-Y too many high school grads are pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the anomalous hopes of bagging a black rhino.

Here is how the jobs math works. Every year about 3,000,000 students show up at freshmen orientation. Eventually, 2,000,000 of these students graduate to discover they are in a fierce competition for one of 1,000,000 “college” jobs that are available annually. The vast majority of the 2,000,000 students who don’t score a college job, are never going to earn a respectable ROI on their investment in college.

Supply far exceeds Demand, and Artificial Intelligence is going to make this competition even more challenging.

I get a lot of criticism that I am anti-college. I am not. The late Stephen Covey wrote a famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit #2 is, “Start with the end in mind.” I am not telling you, “College is a scam; don’t go to college.” I am telling you, “You are foolish to go to college if you don’t have a reasonable shot of crossing the finish line.”

Abilities vary. Shockingly, half the children are below average. Nobody blinks an eye when this conversation is about athletic ability. However, when the subject is academic ability many people’s mind unconsciously blocks out a painful or overwhelming reality to protect themselves from sudden emotional distress.

Choosing the college path is not dependent on that with which you are interested. College is a competition, and you better be “college material” if you expect to win. I have some data on what constitutes “college material.” With a 3.5 high school GPA, you have a 72% chance of graduating college. IMO, those are reasonable odds. However, the competition for that white-collar job is going to be tough. My view is a standard test score at the 80th percentile is a good indicator. (SAT=1240, ACT=25)

Most students finishing secondary school should be spending their time, money, and energy at that pivotal point of their lives exploring vocational training opportunities that lead to lucrative new-collar or blue-collar jobs. Military service is another option. It offers structured job training, steady pay, healthcare benefits, and money for future education or certifications.

However, America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone and looks down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees. In 2009, President Obama set a national goal for the U.S. to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world without any regard for the fact that Supply far exceeded Demand. Undaunted, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the College for All Act of 2025 to make higher education accessible and debt-free for most families. The proposed bill has no provisions for academic merit, and in sixteen years the gap between Supply and Demand has widened even further.

This idiocy has to stop. Young people need an alternative. Yet the vocational and technical education now available to young Americans is too often denigrated as being for “losers” and is typically underfunded and inadequate. These programs can create winners.

Notes

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/6082705-skilled-trades-labor-shortage/

The Million Dollar Myth – Is College Really the Right Choice?

The next big step. Is college the right choice for you?

https://www.iscollegereallytherightchoice.com/million-dollar-myth/