In 2009 President Barack Obama used his first speech to Congress to ask “every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training,” touting postsecondary learning as a necessity for economic success.
Last month he had a very different message.
In a speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama said that Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, “knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class.” Obama also praised Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential nominee, for removing the bachelor’s-degree requirement for some state jobs.
After more than a decade of pushing for increased college enrollment, Obama’s remarks show a significant shift in the way that Democrats and even some education advocates are talking about college — an acknowledgment that a bachelor’s degree is a doorway to opportunity for some, but a wall for others.
While Democrats’ “college for all” push was meant to shore up work-force prospects and financial stability for families, Republicans have used it to portray Democrats as elitist and out of touch with blue-collar workers. Several Republican governors have questioned having government subsidies for students who are pursuing liberal-arts degrees that are not directly tied to a career outcome.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Chronicle that Democrats “made a mistake” by putting all the emphasis on going to college, because high-school students need more than one pathway to success. More recently, she said, “We’ve been saying that high school should be a way to prepare you for career and life, not just college prep.”
“The fact that 60 percent of students don’t go to college right away,” she added, “should have been a wake-up call.”
The push to increase college-going was more than rhetoric, though it has had mixed results. During their terms in office, Obama and President Biden both advocated unsuccessfully to make community college tuition-free — an approach that has taken hold in more than half of the states but not at the federal level.
At the same time, both Democratic presidents embraced policies that aimed to lessen the burden of student loans and that also held for-profit and career colleges accountable for poor outcomes. The Biden administration has forgiven $170 billion in debt for students who were enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness or were defrauded by their colleges.
A positive thing to come from this shift is the respect for students who don’t want to go to college and demand career opportunities without a degree.
Stephanie Hall, senior director for higher-education policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said the college-for-all movement was driven by the politics of the 2010s, but didn’t really consider the needs of students who might be more inclined to pursue a skilled trade rather than a bachelor’s degree.
Now, policymakers have awakened to the reality that having a college degree isn’t the solution for everyone, Hall said.
“A positive thing to come from this shift,” Hall said, “is the respect for students who don’t want to go to college and demand career opportunities without a degree.”
Is that degree necessary?
The changing political rhetoric reflects economic trends that have undermined the college credential as a marker of career readiness, said Nicole Smith, a research professor and chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
In particular, she said, the nation’s low unemployment rate has made it difficult for employers to have strict qualifications for jobs.
Following a spike in unemployment after the start of the pandemic, the unemployment rate has been near or below 4 percent since November 2021, according to federal data.
We have this notion that you need a sheepskin to prove that you have the skills.
The reality, Smith said, is that employers had adopted a degree requirement for many jobs where people had always learned on the job or received skill-specific training from other entities.
“So many people are working at these jobs,” she said, “yet we have this notion that you need a sheepskin to prove that you have the skills.”
Policies focused on job creation are also looking beyond the college degree, Smith said. One example is the CHIPS Act, a 2022 federal law meant to spur more domestic production of semiconductor chips.
The law directs a “significant” amount of its $250 billion toward “skilled technical jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. Another study from Brookings estimated that 60 percent of jobs in semiconductor manufacturing don’t require a bachelor’s degree, and that “employees hold everything from an associate degree or a postsecondary nondegree to a high-school diploma or no degree.”
Federal loans and Pell Grants are already available for many work-force preparation programs that last less than a semester, according to a report from the left-leaning think tank New America.
At the state level, some governors from both parties have removed college-degree requirements for certain state jobs, Smith said.
What hasn’t emerged, Smith said, are better ways to evaluate a job seeker’s abilities or readiness for career advancement.
In health care, for example, the way to become a registered nurse is to earn a bachelor’s degree, Smith said. But there is no way to progress from being a phlebotomist to a more advanced position without going to college.
Is there a better pathway?
While Republicans have argued against the college-for-all movement for decades, the Democrats’ less-rosy rhetoric about college comes at what’s already a difficult time for the sector, which is facing long-term declines in enrollment, a spate of campus closures, and flagging public support.
While a large majority of the public still believes in the economic value of earning a degree, many people are skeptical about the role of colleges in developing a skilled work force or leveling the playing field for success, according to a 2023 national poll from The Chronicle.
More than a third of respondents to The Chronicle’s poll also said that trade schools or apprenticeships provided a better pathway to a successful career than a college degree.
Jason Delisle, a senior fellow in the Center on Education Data and Policy at the left-leaning Urban Institute, said the rising skepticism reflects concerns about the price of college and questions about whether student debt is worth it.
Finishing a degree still does provide a large economic payoff, Delisle said, but if you factor in the large percentage of students who don’t finish their degree, “maybe throwing everybody into this system isn’t the best idea.” Nearly 40 percent of full-time students don’t complete college within six years of initially enrolling.
The argument for universal student-loan forgiveness may also be undermining the argument for college for all, Delisle said. By pushing for all loans to be forgiven, Democrats could imply that the degree wasn’t really worth it, he said.
Hall, at the Center for American Progress, said the push for loan forgiveness is less about criticizing the value of college and more about increasing government investment in higher education to keep tuition low.
But the long-term way to ensure that students aren’t saddled with unnecessary debt is not just sending fewer students to college and more into the work force, Hall said. Instead, colleges and policymakers need to find a better way to determine who can succeed in college — without screening out the disadvantaged students who would most benefit from earning a bachelor’s degree.
“We need a both-and solution,” she said, “addressing career pathways that don’t require college, and also continue to support college opportunities for all who want them.”
