A college education still easily beats the alternatives

Until recently, most Americans considered college a good investment. But only 22 percent now believe a four-year degree is worth pursuing if it requires taking out loans.

Given a choice of five alternatives, ranging from trade school to apprenticeships to military service, large majorities think each is “about the same as or better than a bachelor’s degree in trying to achieve a successful livelihood,” in the words of education reporter Eric Kelderman.

Skepticism about the value of a college degree is growing, even though the earnings advantage associated with a college degree remains strong. Calls to offer more young people career and technical education are multiplying, even though such training does not offer many of the benefits of a college education.

For decades, increasing college attainment was seen as essential to individual and national prosperity. The “college for all” movement sought to give every student, not just the most privileged, a shot at college.

College graduates on average earn 84 percent more over their lifetimes than those who only complete high school. In 2019, the median income for families with at least one college degree holder was 24 percent higher than it was in 1970, but only 4 percent higher for families without a college degree. By 2021, life expectancy for someone with a bachelor’s degree was 83, but only 75 for someone with no degree. As Nobel laureate Angus Deaton put it, “the bachelor’s degree has increasingly become a passport not only to a good job ... but also to good health, to longevity, and to a flourishing social life.”

But opposition to “college for all” has intensified in recent years. Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars aimed at improving college readiness, less than 70 percent of high school graduates go to college, as Harvard’s Graduate School of Education pointed out in 2011. Only 56 percent who start a four-year program graduate within six years; less than 30 percent who begin community college receive their associate’s degree within three years. And only 30 percent of Black students and 20 percent of Latino students earn an associate’s degree or higher by their mid-20s.

The Harvard report recommended offering K-12 students a range of “high-quality pathways” in addition to college. Kathleen deLaski, one of the authors of that report, builds on its arguments in her new book, “Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter.” She contends that the degree’s “status as the scaffold to the American Dream is breaking down,” especially for “new majority” learners, defined as “anyone for whom college was not originally designed.” She looks for “solutions through the eyes of the end user,” especially students who are unable or unwilling to complete college.

DeLaski envisions a world in which “every skill you gain, likely starting in high school — on the soccer field, in the theater, at after-school-jobs — will be digitally documented,” assembled in a “skills wallet” and used by employers to “expand the talent pool” beyond the four-year degree and “open more doors to meaningful careers.”

Recognizing that employers still prefer college graduates, deLaski argues that we need better non-degree programs and work experiences that provide the technical skills and credentials required to land good jobs. She offers helpful assessments of those alternatives, including bootcamps, industry certifications and apprenticeships.

Her argument reinforces our judgment, however, that none of the alternatives come close to offering the full benefits of a college education.

Coding bootcamps were an early attempt to “unbundle the degree” by providing “learners a more direct training path to high-paid professional jobs.” But 75 percent of their market turned out to be people “already in the workforce.” As deLaski acknowledges, bootcamps “struggled to scale” because students found them too expensive or, in the case of apprenticeships, too difficult to secure.

Because many students who enroll in college don’t graduate, and many who graduate struggle to find their first job or are underemployed, deLaski (who glosses over hands-on project learning in higher education) thinks colleges should shift from “lecture-based learning” to an “experience-first” approach, providing “skills mastery” and career-related “validation services.” And even as she profiles competency-based degrees, certificate programs, “micro-pathways” and co-op placements, she recognizes their limitations, including “valid concerns that we should not let the pendulum swing too far from preparing scholars to preparing workers.”

Nonetheless, deLaski wants the pendulum to swing. When guidance counselors explain that the alternatives to college are “unclear, underfunded, unproven, and mostly noncredit, meaning financial aid hasn’t covered them,” she urges high schools to “blend” career and technical education with college preparation; offer more hands-on learning, career sampling and industry certifications; and make alternative pathways to professional success more visible.

DeLaski acknowledges that “staying current with different employers’ skill needs is not for the faint-hearted,” and that, in a dynamic economy, a college degree “may be the best antidote to becoming irrelevant.” Her approach, we believe, would also lead to a new form of tracking. As one of deLaski’s interviewees put it, “many times it is white people in power saying, ‘Those kids can go to trade or vocational,’ when they would never choose that for their own children.”

DeLaski lists several categories of students who “need” college: those who want to move into the middle class or higher (a category at odds with her thesis); those who feel society “won’t take them seriously without a higher degree”; those who seek jobs requiring a degree; and those who want the community that colleges provide. Unfortunately, as she points out, most of these people “can’t afford or access the colleges best set up to help them.”

In discussing who needs college, deLaski focuses almost exclusively on career preparation. But education plays a crucial, often transformational role in developing human potential. College cultivates critical thinking, aesthetic appreciation, scientific literacy and intellectual curiosity. It teaches students how to conduct research, evaluate evidence, construct and critique an argument, work with others, appreciate different perspectives, communicate effectively and engage in their communities. College graduates pay more in taxes and make “better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting.”

Ultimately, deLaski admits, “if a learner is just starting out, and they have the money, of course, they should go to college.”

Nonetheless, she believes a “Great College Reset” has begun and that college should become an “umbrella for a variety of more specific market signals,” and just one of three paths to employment, along with “a localized experiential journey” and a “shorter residential experience.”

It is tempting to suggest instead that we double down on college for all — surely much can still be done to improve access and completion rates — but, alas, the past quarter-century shows the limits of that approach. Acknowledging those limits, however, is not the same as suggesting that other pathways are just as good. Perhaps this is so for some students, but college remains — and should remain — the gold standard for most.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.