College? Maybe Not.

The lure of decent-paying jobs available without college degrees has some people rethinking whether college is necessary. The trend has big implications for the work force, society, and the communities where people live and work.

Guest: Eric Kelderman, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education

Related Reading:

• The Lure of Work: In Iowa, enrollments are falling as businesses recruit high-school grads. Can colleges come up with a better pitch?
• College for All? Not Anymore. Democrats have drastically changed their tune on the necessity of a bachelor’s degree.
• The Public Perception Puzzle: A series by The Chronicle to examine higher ed’s public perception problem — and the solutions to it.

Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling This is College Matters from the Chronicle. I’m Jack Stripling.

Eric Kelderman This idea of uncertainty, of self-exploration, of education for the sake of education, is no longer fashionable or desirable for many students that the economic uncertainties that they’re worried about are so compelling that they feel like they have to work right away after high school.

Jack Stripling 18 bucks an hour. That’s about what a new employee can expect to make at Bertch Cabinet, a manufacturer based in Waterloo, Iowa, for a high school graduate in the Hawkeye State, that might sound like a pretty good deal. So good, in fact, that a sizable number of recent grads are skipping college and heading straight into manufacturing jobs like the ones at Bertch. What’s happening in Iowa, where college going rates are in decline among key groups, reflects a larger trend that’s happening to varying degrees across the nation. A confluence of factors, from fear of debt to better opportunities for people without degrees, have convinced a growing number of people that going to college isn’t worth it. Whether that’s true is a matter of both economic and philosophical debate. But what it means for the workforce, society, and the communities where people live and work is profound. Today on the show, we’ll talk about what’s driving a rethinking of the value of college and what it may reveal about where the country is headed.

So I brought Eric Kelderman here to talk to me about this. Eric is a senior writer at The Chronicle and he’s written extensively about colleges facing enrollment declines. He’s also done a lot of reporting on how Americans feel about higher education. Hey Eric. Thanks for coming. Great to have you.

Eric Kelderman Thanks. Great to be with you, Jack.

Jack Stripling So I’ll ask the big question: Why are students choosing to go into the workforce instead of college?

Eric Kelderman Well, Jack, here at the Chronicle, we’ve been concerned about what we see as declining positive views about higher education. So we did some national polling on this, and we found that while overwhelmingly most people believe in the value of a college degree, they were less certain about the value of higher education. And interestingly, among our polling, we found that people in the Midwest were less positive about recommending whether a family member or a close friend should get a degree. Now, it was still pretty high, but about 70% said yes, you should get a college degree. That still leaves 30% of the population that are telling their close family members that, no, it’s it’s really not worth it. And so I also went to Iowa to do some reporting on this, to find out why folks in the Midwest were less positive about the college degree. And what I found was students want something certain. They want a job that they know they’re going to get money right away. If they go to a college, they want to know that the degree and the debt that they accrue are going to be worth it, with a solid paying job at the end.

Jack Stripling What are these stats say to you out of the gate? What strikes your curiosity most?

Eric Kelderman Overall, what we took away from the polling was that in large part, people still value the college degree as a means to their own personal economic benefit, but that they have less assurance about the value of higher education, sort of writ large, right? Are colleges doing a good job of educating their students? Are they leveling the playing field for economic opportunity? Are they creating a well-informed citizenry for our democracy? And on those counts, a lot of people were not very positive.

Jack Stripling So you’re seeing some skepticism about sort of the institution of higher education.

Eric Kelderman Right. And we see that in other polling from places like Pew and Gallup where, you know, since 2015 or so, we’ve seen a sharp downturn in people who say that higher education is good for the nation. Our poll wanted to find out a little bit more about that, and I think we did. We found that people are really positive about the value that they get from the degree, but not so much the institution. Yeah.

Jack Stripling Are we seeing this translate into fewer students actually going to college? Do we have data on that?

Eric Kelderman Oh, absolutely. We’ve seen some pretty steady declines in enrollment since 2010 or 2011, after the end of the Great Recession. The first two years of the pandemic really supercharged that trend. During the pandemic, Higher Ed lost nearly 1.3 million students, and college enrollments haven’t entirely bounced back..In fact, the latest estimates show that college enrollments are still down about 800K students from where they were in 2020.

Jack Stripling What’s striking here is that it seems like students are resisting to go to college at even some of the most affordable institutions, like community colleges. What do you make of that?

Eric Kelderman There seems to be a little bit of a dichotomy. We’ve seen certainly more expensive, more prestigious institutions maintain their enrollment, while more affordable options have seen many fewer students. Part of that might be that the students who go to those institutions are less economically able to afford their education in the first place. Certainly during the pandemic, we had a lot of people who dropped out of community college because they’re working adults. They have families at home. And so community college, even online, wasn’t an option for them.

Jack Stripling We look at this national picture. We see college enrollment declining. You’re seeing public skepticism about higher education broadly in your polling and in other polling, but you decided to focus on your home state of Iowa. Why is that?

Eric Kelderman Well, you know, when I grew up, there was a pretty strong educational history in the state. It was the state where the ACT was developed. Many people may not associate that with education, but education was always emphasized. It was seen as desirable to not only graduate from high school, but go to college. Get a degree. Set yourself up for the future. And so I wanted to see, you know, what had changed there.

Jack Stripling In what ways is Iowa representative of the rest of the country?

Eric Kelderman If you look at Iowa, you see a pretty significant decline at less selective public colleges. So we saw declines nationally, and that’s reflected at the University of Northern Iowa. Their enrollment fell about 25% between 2013 and 2023. That’s a pretty significant decline. Community colleges in the state lost about a 9% decline over that period.

Jack Stripling And are there jobs where people can make good money in Iowa without a college degree?

Eric Kelderman Sure. You know, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has done some prep on this that found that, in fact, in rural areas, manufacturing and other kinds of jobs that don’t require a college degree are somewhat more plentiful. So, for instance, in Iowa, you have major manufacturers like, say, John Deere, right, internationally known farm implement and construction equipment manufacturer in the middle of the state. You have a place like Pella Windows, right? Which is another major corporation. You have many smaller manufacturers in the state that are catering to the farm economy as well.

Jack Stripling You know, I’m curious, the question of whether college is worth it is right at the heart of this. Right? It’s right at the heart of conversations you’re having with people in Iowa and in our polling and reporting. I think for most of my lifetime, that’s not really been a question. Is that conversation changing at all among academics than economists?

Eric Kelderman You know, among economists, it’s pretty clear that college is still valuable, right? If you go to college and you finish your degree in a reasonable amount of time, right, for six years, that’s going to pay off for you over your lifetime, you’re going to make more money. The figure that used to be tossed around a lot was $1 million more in earnings over your lifetime. There’s quite a bit of variation depending on your major. So STEM focused, health care, computer science, things like that, engineering degrees like that are much more likely to pay off than things that are lower paying, like say, social work or early childhood education that have a social good but maybe don’t earn as much.

Jack Stripling Right? Did did you make a good decision in that regard, Eric? Personally.

Eric Kelderman I, full disclosure, I did not make a good decision in that regard. I went to my alma mater, Luther College, in tiny little Decorah, Iowa, in the northeast part of the state. As a music major. I was just good enough to pull that off in college. And I went and got a master’s degree in music theory and composition. And then I found out that, you know, the competition for those jobs and the availability of them wasn’t really something that provided me long term financial security, and I loved it, but then I went and got a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. And despite all the hardships that have happened to the journalism industry over the past 20 years, it’s turned out to be a much better choice for me.

Jack Stripling So, Eric, I think listeners will want to know what instrument did you play?

Eric Kelderman I started my college career as a vocal major, but I ended up focusing more on theory and composition. But my, I made my living such as it was, as a trombone player, and probably most successfully, as in a professional brass quintet here in the Washington, D.C. area. I soon realized that it was a little bit like playing in minor league baseball, right? You get to that double or triple A distinction, and you realize I’m probably not ever going to get the call up to the show, so maybe it’s time to do something different. But it was, it was a great time.

Jack Stripling So this essentially ended with a sad trombone.

Eric Kelderman Womp Womp.

Jack Stripling Well, I am curious, though, you talked to some people in Iowa about the choices they’d made and their thought process on whether college was worth it. Tell me a little bit about what you heard, people you met.

Eric Kelderman A lot of the students I talked to, for instance, at at the University of Northern Iowa, it was very interesting because when I sat down to talk to them in their, in their student union, I asked them whether their parents expected them to go to college. And and in many cases, they said, you know, my parents didn’t force me to go to college. It wasn’t mandatory. They supported me in that decision, but they knew that I had other options, like the trades, for instance, or military service. And that bears up some of the polling that we did as well, where we found that, you know, a large percentage of our respondents thought that people who took on apprenticeships or internships or military service, would have an equal chance of succeeding financially. One of the more interesting people I talked to was the human resources manager at Bertch Cabinets, which you referenced in the introduction to the show. This was a relatively young woman who had a college degree, a bachelor’s degree from a small place in Dubuque, Iowa, a place called Loras College. And she got a degree in marketing and couldn’t find a job in marketing right away, had a bunch of student loans, was also a single mom, and kind of resented that decision, and then pivoted, taught herself some human resources skills, got that background, and then was pretty happy in her current career. Now, some folks in higher ed might think, well, you know, maybe it was her liberal arts degree that allowed her to learn how to learn, right? We see in salary outcomes that folks in liberal arts actually do pretty well with their background. But she saw it as having been kind of a waste of time and money.

Jack Stripling So there’s two ways of looking at this, as you say. One is she adapted to the job market and was able to sort of upskill in a way, and that might be a product of her education, or it might be what she seems to believe that it really didn’t pay off for her, and she ended up going in a different direction than what she’d studied.

Eric Kelderman Again, that speaks to a lot of the the sentiment of students coming up through high school in Iowa. They’re not sure that the time that it’s going to take them to get that degree, and the debt that they might have to take on will be worth it. If they can make starting, you know, at $35,000 or $40,000 a year. And they do that for four years, right? The time that they might be in college. They might be $120, $160,000 ahead, instead of having lost that four years of earnings and then be, say, $30,000 in debt on top of that.

Jack Stripling And it’s very enticing, right? You can make pretty decent money now.

Eric Kelderman Right. And the cost of living might be less in those rural areas. And if that’s your aspiration in life to live a comfortable middle class existence, then I think for some students that’s the right choice, right? Economists might argue that that’s a short term decision. We know that if you get a college degree, not only do you earn more, but you know your lifespan is longer, you tend to be healthier. Your social connections are deeper. And then there’s the issue of recession, right? When an economic recession comes along and your manufacturing job goes away, what are your options? If you have a degree in accounting, it might be easier to switch to another firm, right? But if all you’re trained to do is manufacture John Deere tractors or something like that, then a new job might be harder to come by.

Jack Stripling Interesting, yeah.

Eric Kelderman So another interesting discussion I had was with Mark Putnam, the president of Central College in Pella, Iowa, right? And he talked about sort of the attitudes that he encountered when recruiting students to central, which is a small private school there. And he said, you know, farm families understand the economics of buying, say, a large piece of farm equipment, right. They’re willing to go into six figures of debt for that because they see where that pays off, right? They know the lifespan of that equipment, and they know about how much they’re going to get per year for their crops, but they don’t necessarily see the clear outcome from a college degree. And students aren’t willing to be undecided anymore about when they go into college and sort of figure it out. They want to know that there’s something on the other side.

Jack Stripling Stick around. We’ll be back in a minute.

Jack Stripling So Eric, It sounds like you heard a lot of things that speak to purely economic skepticism. You know, is this going to be worth it to me financially? But we also know that higher education is a bit of a political football right now. What are politicians saying about the value of a college degree?

Eric Kelderman Certainly, the attitudes seem to have shifted, particularly on the left, about whether students should go to college, whether it’s for everybody. President Obama, during his time in office, you know, set a goal that the whole nation should or that all high school graduates should have some sort of post-secondary training. But more recently, talking about Vice President Harris said, quote, “she also knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of governors like Tim Walz, who said, if you’ve got the skills and the drive, you shouldn’t need a degree to work for state government.” More recently, and what I think is very interesting is Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers union, said at an event with teachers in in attendance, she said, quote, we have said for years to everybody, go to college, go to college. College is your ticket to success. Frankly, we probably overplayed college and didn’t do enough about rethinking schooling and high school and how you create other kinds of pathways to good middle class jobs. So from the left, that’s a pretty major change in attitude about whether college really is for everyone.

Jack Stripling Yeah, it certainly seems that. I mean, you and I both wrote about the Obama administration’s completion initiative, right? And it was not only that everybody should get some post-secondary education, but it was also sort of a space race vibe, right, that we want the United States to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world. That’s profound. To hear him make such a different statement on this front.

Eric Kelderman I think it’s an appeal to voters who don’t have college degrees, many more of whom in the past have begun to vote for the Republican Party, and particularly for Donald Trump. So I think it’s part of that. I think it’s also a recognition that maybe, you know, stoking the go to college thing…it’s not a barrier for people to enter the middle class and unnecessary barrier. And interestingly, I think what’s played into that is the left’s focus on student loan forgiveness. You know, before the 2020 election, we saw the progressive wing of the Democratic Party say, Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders pushing hard for universal loan forgiveness. And President Biden sort of took up that mantle, found that it was very difficult to do. And the Supreme Court shot down his initial plan to do that. But I also think emphasizing the student loan forgiveness policy really, in a way, maybe undermines their message that everybody should go to college. In other words, if we have to forgive your loans because they didn’t pay off, was it really worth it?

Jack Stripling Oh, wow. That’s fascinating. So a public policy position that is designed to help students who went to college may actually send the message that it’s not such a great idea to go.

Eric Kelderman Yeah, potentially.

Jack Stripling So you’ve described a lot of reasons fewer people are going to college right now, where do you see this headed longer term?

Eric Kelderman Well, I think it’s a very tough place for colleges and universities. Not only are enrollments down over the last decade or so, but we’re looking at a significant what’s called an enrollment cliff, driven by a decline in birth rates after the Great Recession. So after 2025 or so, the number of high school grads is expected to decline about 15% in the next ten years after that. And again, that doesn’t sound like a huge percentage, but 15% could wipe out scores of small private colleges or even, say, community colleges like we see closing in Wisconsin currently. So it could have a big impact on the sector. We could end up with significantly fewer colleges and universities in 10 or 15 years than we have now.

Jack Stripling So why does that matter? I hate to be glib, but when I think about whether a student goes to college, I think about the life that person might have. When I think about a college going under, explain for me the ripple effects of that...

Eric Kelderman The college I went to, many of the colleges across the state of Iowa…they are the lifeblood of those small communities, right. So if you’ve got a town of, say, 4 or 7000, and you’ve got a college that enrolls another two, that’s a significant part of your population during the year. Those students go to restaurants, they go to bars, they shop at the hardware store to build their bunks in the fall before they move in, and they go to Walmart to get their groceries potentially, right? The college also employs a large portion of the population of many of those places. And not only that, they contribute to the civic life. So they bring in concerts and speakers from across the country, around the globe, perhaps. And then there’s the athletics that many of them host on their campuses. Those become places that the community gathers to root on their team. And we’ve seen this play out, for instance, in Wisconsin, right, where the population has already been declining. We’ve seen several community colleges close. That’s highly unusual for any public college to close. And again, for a community college that, you know, is serving really students who are who are just trying to, you know, skill up, maybe, right between jobs or they don’t want to spend four years in a college, so they get some training in a particular field, or maybe it’s the cheaper way for them to earn the first two years of their bachelor’s degree. So the loss of those institutions can also be very damaging to the community.

Jack Stripling Is it a realistic scenario that we’re going to see large numbers of colleges closed? Do you have a view on that?

Eric Kelderman A large number of colleges could close. It won’t be a large percentage of the student population. There’s still plenty of capacity in the country for students to get an education. It makes it more difficult, though. We know that a majority of students go to college within driving distance of their home, usually within an hour or so. So if you’re in a very rural, say, mountainous state or the upper Midwest, right, and the college in your area closes, it might make it much more difficult and much more expensive for you, if you have to drive to a residential campus that’s a couple hours away, right? So the opportunities will be more limited for students. There will be enough seats, though. But it creates another barrier.

Jack Stripling Right. So what do you think it means for the students who decide not to go? What is the road ahead look like for those individuals?

Eric Kelderman More than half of this country already doesn’t have even an associate’s degree. And so it will look, you know, a lot like what we already have, which is citizens who take a job, say, out of high school, try and progress as far as they can in their career. And then, you know, maybe economic headwinds hit them, maybe not. But certainly people with college degrees have tended to weather those situations better.

Jack Stripling Eric, what, if anything, can these colleges do to adapt?

Eric Kelderman I think what we’ve seen from higher education institutions writ large is the focus on the salary question. Right? You’ll earn more money over the course of your life, but you’re essentially comparing sort of salary now to salary in the future. Right. And that’s I think that’s hard for 18 year olds to understand, right? I certainly didn’t understand at the time when I was considering my college options. But I think what colleges can do is try and emphasize, you know, some of the other benefits, right? Not only will you earn money when you get out of college in your chosen field, but you’ll be able to adapt when you have to get that next job. It’ll be easier when a recession comes along to maybe go work for a different firm. And then, of course, there’s the social and health benefits that are often associated with people who have college degrees, the longer life, the deeper social connections. So I think to the extent that colleges can emphasize sort of a more holistic approach to the benefits of a degree, that might be something that attracts more students.

Jack Stripling We started this conversation with you talking about Iowa being your home state and the view that Iowans tended to have about education and higher education, particularly. What did you learn on the ground there that maybe was surprising to you?

Eric Kelderman I think what was surprising to me was this idea that you would want to chart out your future so specifically already by the age of 18, right, that you wanted to know that ten or 15 or 20 years down the road, you would have had a career already in a certain field. I think this idea of uncertainty, of self-exploration, of education for the sake of education, is no longer fashionable or desirable for many students, that the economic uncertainties that they’re worried about are so compelling that they feel like they have to work right away after high school, that they can’t take the time to sort of figure things out the way for instance, I did, or maybe you did, right? They couldn’t take that journey of discovery to figure out sort of what’s best for them in the long run, that they have to make a decision very quickly.

Jack Stripling And what’s lost there in your view?

Eric Kelderman You know the development of self, right? I got to travel because I was a musician. I didn’t make a lot of money, but I got to see…. I’ve been to all but two states in the country, I got to play concerts in front of thousands of people in small towns across the country, in civic centers and small community concert events, and meet all those people and find out sort of what the world is about, and learn a little bit about myself in the process. If I had taken a job at a factory or on a farm or something like that after high school, I’m not sure I would have had those opportunities to see the world and sort of find out as much about myself along the way.

Jack Stripling Well, Eric, I’ve learned a lot today and I didn’t even have to go to a college class for it so thank you.

Eric Kelderman My pleasure Jack, thanks for having me.

Jack Stripling Say did you bring your trombone with you by any chance?

Eric Kelderman Believe it or not, I actually do have my horn with me.

Jack Stripling Well let’s see what that education got you!

Eric Kelderman And this totally wasn’t planned either by the way.

Jack Stripling College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you like, drop us a note at collegematters@chronicle.com. We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our original podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Laura Krantz, Sarah Brown, Ron Coddington, Josh Hatch, Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.