College Costs

Introduction

A student at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, Calif., wears a lei made of dollar bills to her commencement in June. While college graduates will earn more on average than people with only a high school degree, tuition costs have been rising faster than inflation, raising questions about the worth of a college degree. (AFP/Getty Images/Robyn Beck)

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Overview

When Kyle Wilnewic graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2010, he hoped his bachelor of arts degree in audio arts and acoustics would help him land a music industry job, and dreamed of someday running his own recording studio. But he quickly learned that audio jobs were hard to come by.

Until last year, he could find only sporadic and part-time positions, working for bands or music venues in Chicago and New Jersey. Now he has a full-time job in his field, working nights mixing music for live bands at a San Diego music club — a job he says he could have gotten without a degree. The 32-year-old also is working full-time during the days as service adviser at an auto shop. He says he needs both jobs to pay off his $70,000 college loan, which costs him $600 monthly in payments.

A Northeastern University graduate's mortarboard displays a common anxiety about the burden of college debt. Graduates earning a bachelor's degree in 2019 left college, on average, nearly $30,000 in debt. (Getty Images/The Boston Globe/Suzanne Kreiter)

“If I didn't have that [debt], I wouldn't have to work so many hours. If I had to do it again, I would not go to college. Costs seem to far outweigh the benefit,” he says. “Someone, somewhere, is making way too much money off kids looking to improve their lives.”

As Wilnewic's experience demonstrates, with college costs growing three to four times faster than inflation in recent decades, many students are graduating with high college debt — and many are questioning whether a bachelor's degree is worth the time and money. And like Wilnewic, about 40 percent of today's graduates end up underemployed in their first jobs — working in positions that do not use their degrees — even as good-paying jobs that require only a high school diploma go unfilled.1

This has sparked a debate among experts, with some calling for expansion of quick, low-cost alternative job training methods, such as apprenticeships or certification programs, while others say a four-year degree boosts lifetime earnings over those with less education and provides invaluable nonfinancial benefits.2

According to the Census Bureau, a record 35 percent of Americans had attended four years of college or more in 2018 — up from 4.6 percent in 1940. But the average tuition at a public four-year school has risen more than threefold in 30 years — from $3,200 in the 1987-88 academic year to $10,000 in 2017-18, adjusting for inflation.3

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Despite the rising costs, studies show that most students with bachelor's degrees will earn significantly more over their lifetimes than those with only a high school diploma, say defenders of undergraduate education. But critics of escalating college costs say that while degree-holders earn more, their debt makes it harder for them to save, build wealth, buy a home or start a family.4

According to a recent study by economists Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the average bachelor's degree-holder earns $78,000 a year, compared with $45,000 for someone with a high school diploma. The lifetime return on investment of a bachelor's degree is about 14 percent, they calculate, down slightly in recent years but still better than investments such as stocks (7 percent) and bonds (3 percent).5

However, for about 25 percent of graduates — those making the lowest wages — “college does not appear to have paid off,” they said. For one thing, they pointed out, rosy earnings projections usually are based on graduates finishing in four years. Only 41 percent of first-time, full-time students finish in four years, according to the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics.6

This drops the return on investment to 11 percent for those taking five years to graduate and 8 percent for those taking six years, said Abel and Dietz. The decline is due to the additional tuition required and the lost “opportunity cost” of delaying employment.7

Factors such as a student's major, race, gender and family income can play a role in how much return they get on their bachelor's degree investment.8

For example, graduates from low-income families tend to make less than those raised in middle- or upper-class families, according to economists Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich. Their 2018 study found that college students raised in low-income families typically receive only slightly more pay than middle-class high school graduates, while college graduates from middle-class families earned 162 percent more.9

“Individuals from poorer backgrounds may be encountering a glass ceiling that even a bachelor's degree does not break,” concluded Bartik and Hershbein.10

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In addition, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported in 2019 that financial benefits from college degrees “appear to be lower among people born in the 1980s, and they remain unequal across racial and ethnic groups.”11

Researchers also have found that students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) get higher-paying jobs initially when compared to those with liberal arts degrees, but those differences often narrow substantially within a decade.12

Job earnings aren't the only benefit to bachelor's degrees, researchers say. Bachelor's degree-holders enjoy greater health, happiness and even a longer life than high school graduates, according to the Lumina Foundation, a private educational advocacy organization. People with college degrees also contribute more in taxes, use fewer social services and tend to commit fewer crimes, producing a cumulative positive societal benefit over their lifetimes worth about $355,000 per person, Lumina found.13

Employers give mixed messages on whether prospective employees should get a degree, depending on the job market. For instance, in a 2018 survey more than three-quarters of employers said finishing a degree shows perseverance and self-direction, and more than half said a college degree is a fairly reliable marker of skills and knowledge. According to a different survey, however, half of employers today say they are hiring more employees with no formal college education — partly due to today's tight job market — and 69 percent said their organizations were prioritizing skills over formal education and degrees.14

When unemployment is low, employers often drop degree requirements so more people will apply. Conversely, when joblessness is high, employers often weed out excess applicants by resorting to so-called degree inflation — requiring higher degrees than are actually needed for the job.

Meanwhile, technological changes are creating “a steady upward trend in skills” employers require, says Hershbein, and college STEM courses are not always teaching students those skills. Some 2 million STEM jobs are expected to go unfilled because candidates are not being properly prepared in college, according to researchers, who said the United States will need to fill 3.5 million STEM jobs by 2025.15 Universities were spending too much time on lectures instead of hands-on learning in undergraduate STEM courses, according to a study published in Science magazine.16

Recently, companies such as Apple, Google, Netflix, IBM and Houghton Mifflin have eliminated requirements that applicants have four-year degrees, and some employers, particularly in the tech sector, are more open to accepting some of the 475,000 alternative credentials now available, such as “digital badges.” These are credentials that can be posted online showing that someone has mastered a particular skill.17

The number of apprenticeships also is up 56 percent over 2013, and are being offered in white-collar fields such as finance, insurance and information technology in addition to traditional skilled trades such as carpentry and metalworking.18

Online learning continues to grow as well, with fully online enrollments at public institutions up 7.2 percent in 2017 over 2016, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Employers increasingly are accepting degrees earned online, if they are from a recognized, credible institution. Online classes may better suit today's undergraduates, 40 percent of whom are 25 or older and often are working and raising families. Due to declining birthrates, the number of 18- to 24-year-old students is expected to fall, reducing college enrollment by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029.19

Enrollment at four-year institutions has already begun to decline, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the research arm of a nonprofit organization that provides educational reporting, data exchange and degree and enrollment verification. Some economists say the decline may be due to the strong economy keeping more people in the job market rather than attending school.20 Declining enrollments may be a factor in escalating tuitions, according to experts, as is the falling number of international students, who usually pay higher out-of-state tuition. Foreign enrollments were down 6.6 percent in 2017-18 and 3.3 percent the previous academic year. Some education experts attribute the decline to the Trump administration's restrictive visa policies and the stronger U.S. dollar, which can raise tuition costs for foreigners.21

Cuts in state aid to public universities also drive up college costs. And, in an effort to attract new students, some colleges are spending heavily on fancy buildings and amenities such as climbing walls, lazy rivers and enormous hot tubs.22

As students, parents, employers and educators question the value of a four-year college degree and contemplate the challenges facing universities and college-age youths, here are some of the questions they are debating:

Should colleges and universities focus more on job training?

Even with today's strong job market, 43 percent of bachelor's degree-holders are underemployed in their first jobs — meaning they are doing work that does not require their degrees — and earn, on average, $10,000 less than the typical bachelor's degree starting salary of $46,000.23

Meanwhile, employers say many applicants lack the skills and competencies needed. Fifty-two percent of human resource professionals report that the skills shortage has worsened in the past two years, particularly in fields such as data analysis, science, engineering and medicine, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, an organization of human resource specialists. Yet at the same time, computer science programs report more students than classes due to a shortage of qualified faculty to meet the demand.24

“There's a huge disconnect between higher ed and employers,” says Courtney Brown, vice president of strategic impact at the Lumina Foundation. “Higher ed thinks they're delivering; employers say they're not getting what they want…. They're speaking past each other oftentimes, and as a result, students are getting left behind, because they're getting a credential, and then employers are saying you don't have what we need.”

Professor Bruce Van Dyke, left, works with Xilena Alexander at a biotech lab at Quincy College in Quincy, Mass., in July. The two-year community college has restructured its curriculum to focus on tech-based classes to appeal to students seeking job training. (Getty Images/The Boston Globe/David L. Ryan)

Employers and higher education officials should form a better partnership, Brown says, and schools should provide better career counseling for students to help them choose which degrees to pursue. “I don't know if higher ed is focused enough on the career,” she says. “They focus a lot on the love of learning and whatnot — but really, people are spending the money and the time to get a job at the end of the day.”

To better match graduates with available jobs, experts say, colleges and universities should offer a more job-focused curriculum for bachelor's degree seekers, so students can obtain the skills employers need. And many campuses are setting up special STEM education centers to help improve teaching and retention of STEM students, especially minority students, who drop out of such courses at higher rates than their white peers.25

Public opinion surveys reveal a partisan split in attitudes about the role of a college education: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 58 percent of self-identified Republicans believed colleges should first teach specific skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace compared with 43 percent of Democrats. Democrats were more likely to say the chief purpose of college was to help an individual grow personally and intellectually, with 42 percent picking this option, compared to 28 percent of Republicans.26

Only 3 percent of all respondents said higher education's chief purpose should be to promote an engaged citizenry, and only 11 percent thought it should be to help students with their personal and intellectual growth, according to a recent survey of 2,000 American adults by New America, a left-leaning public policy think tank in Washington. The majority chose options related to career preparation.27

However, employers often give conflicting signals, with many saying they prize “soft” skills, such as critical thinking and verbal communication, taught in a liberal arts curriculum. For example, 80 percent of business executives and hiring managers surveyed recently by the Association of American Colleges and Universities said they believed all students should have a broad liberal arts foundation. Practical experience also was important, though, with respondents valuing candidates who have had internships or apprenticeships.28

Robert Newman, director of the National Humanities Center near Raleigh, N.C. — a private organization that studies and promotes the humanities — says a singular focus on STEM does not provide the skills for communication, critical thinking, creative thinking and problem-solving “that many employers, even in technological fields, indicate they are looking for.” (See Short Feature.)

Over the long term, Newman says, while students in tech fields such as engineering may have higher salaries than humanities graduates at first, that gap narrows over time, and humanities degree-holders often eventually make similar salaries. That's because, in part, humanities graduates' foundational skills allow them to adapt to changing job demands, he says, while technical skills can expire with each new technological shift.

Research bears this out. For example, a study by Harvard University public policy professor David J. Deming and Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kadeem Noray found that “the initially high economic return” experienced by STEM degree-holders is cut in half in the first 10 years of working life. The researchers noted that “STEM jobs change especially quickly over time,” rendering skills obsolete.29

“STEM is overrated,” says Caitlin Zaloom, an economic anthropologist at New York University and the author of Indebted, a book about middle-class struggles to afford undergraduate education. “We need to be looking at college to train students to continuously cultivate their talents and skills” so they can be ready for the jobs of the future, she says, as well as to prepare them for civic life in a democratic society.

Deming advocates a balanced approach. “All education is a trade-off between providing a kind of foundational set of skills that are broadly applicable in a wide range of jobs and providing something very specific that a specific employer needs today,” he says. “And a good education would do a little of both.”

Should vocational alternatives to college get more funding?

Many well-paying trade jobs are going unfilled, and shortages are expected to worsen in coming years. For instance, about 70 percent of construction companies nationwide are struggling to find workers, while 2.4 million manufacturing jobs are projected to be unfilled between 2018 and 2028. Employers also say they cannot find enough workers for “middle-skills” jobs, such as cybersecurity specialist and medical lab technologist.30

None of those jobs requires a bachelor's degree, although many require training through an apprenticeship, two-year degree, trade school or skills “boot camp.” (See Short Feature.) Government programs exist, or have been proposed, to help pay for such training. The Trump administration is seeking $1.3 billion for vocational education programs in fiscal 2019 — up by $12.6 million from fiscal 2018 — plus $60 million to expand apprenticeships.31

Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, introduced the Jumpstart Our Businesses by Supporting Students (Jobs) Act, in 2017 and again this March. It would provide each trainee a subsidy of about $3,000 through the federal Pell Grant program for short-term job training at community colleges or other accredited institutions.32

Lineman Todd Moore, left, with Hooper Corp., supervises apprentice Mike Limas as he fixes a power pole damaged in heavy snow in Lakewood, Colo., in March 2016. Apprenticeship programs offer practical, on-the-job training without the high costs of a college degree. (Getty Images/The Denver Post/Joe Amon)

The bill prohibits grants to for-profit companies, following complaints from consumer groups that doing so could result in taxpayers subsidizing low-quality programs. Some legislators, such as Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., oppose laws that exclude for-profit companies. But an aide to Portman said eliminating for-profit providers reduces the cost of the bill by about $423 million over 10 years.33

Others question using Pell Grants for short-term, certificate programs that may not lead to good jobs. “Study after study shows that many such programs are, in fact, failing,” wrote Kevin Carey, director of education policy at New America, citing research showing that some certificate programs provide no more benefit than a high school degree.34

Kermit Kaleba, managing director of policy at the National Skills Coalition, a public policy research and advocacy organization in Washington, disagrees. For instance, he said, older working adults who did not attend traditional college could benefit from improving their skills. “We are leaving out a lot of lower-skill, low-wage workers for whom moving from $10 an hour to $15 an hour makes a real life difference.”35

The Senate Education Committee is expected to consider the measure as part of a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act later this year.36

Another program, the five-year pilot VET TEC program established by the 2017 Forever GI Bill, kicked off this spring, with $15 million a year in funding for veterans to get tech training from noncollege providers such as for-profit online sites. To discourage potential fraud, the program pays providers 25 percent at enrollment, 25 percent at completion and the balance upon employment.37

Shernaz Daver, former chief marketing officer at Udacity, an unaccredited, for-profit online training provider, said in 2017 that the program was much-needed and would help both veterans and the economy. “There are 450,000 vets in the U.S. today who are unemployed, and half a million tech jobs, if not more, to be filled,” she said.38

An earlier five-year, $75 million pilot program created by the Obama administration also aimed to provide federal funds to unaccredited providers. But the Educational Quality Through Innovative Partnerships, or Equip, program, did not come together as hoped, said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University. Bethany Little, an education consultant, said it was difficult for quality assurance organizations to develop evaluation frameworks.39

One successful Equip program, a collaboration between Northeastern University in Boston and General Electric, offers an accelerated, three-year bachelor of science degree in advanced manufacturing systems that gives credit for hands-on learning.40

Some programs, including apprenticeships, begin as early as high school. For example, Alabama announced a new apprenticeship program this year that aims to create 10,000 high school apprenticeships by the end of 2025. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 26 states have offices of apprenticeship that encourage middle school teachers to introduce youths to the idea of apprenticeships.41

But some sociologists worry that such programs could lead to “tracking,” or assigning students to a specific vocational path, essentially creating a two-tiered educational system. The primary objective of youth vocational programs is “to segregate poor and minority students into occupational training programs in order to preserve the academic curriculum for middle- and upper-middle-class students,” said Jeannie Oakes, professor emeritus in educational equity at UCLA.42

Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy for the National College Access Network, a nonprofit organization that supports underrepresented students, has similar worries. “I'm very nervous about the idea of low-income students getting sent to middle-skills jobs and high-income students getting sent to a four-year college to find themselves,” she said.43

However, Juan Salgado, chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago — a group of community colleges that places students in white-collar apprenticeships in finance — said apprenticeship programs do not have to limit students. “They can take these degrees they're earning and go off to four-year universities,” Salgado said.44

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Too often, students go to four-year schools because it is expected of them, but without any career goals and without considering vocational education, said Patricia Hsieh, president of the Hartnell Community College District in Salinas, Calif. “It is considered a second choice, second-class,” she said. “We really need to change how people see vocational and technical education.”45

Brown of the Lumina Foundation agrees. “We have to dispel the myth that getting a certification or a technical credential is somehow bad. It leads to good jobs, lifelong jobs, well-paying jobs,” she says. “For some reason, we think that the smart, able people should get college degrees and other people go into this other track — and that's ridiculous.”

Should colleges and universities repay a portion of defaulted student loans?

Currently, higher education institutions only suffer repercussions when students default on their federal loans if 30 percent or more of their former students default for three consecutive years or if their default rate hits 40 percent in a single year. Both situations could cause an institution to lose its federal funding, but this penalty is rarely assessed.46

Some Democratic and Republican legislators have proposed incentives designed to give colleges and universities a financial stake in a student's success, arguing that institutions then would be more motivated to ensure students graduate, perhaps earlier than they do now, and obtain good-paying jobs. These incentives — called “risk-sharing” or “skin in the game” measures — differ in details, but have similar objectives: to limit defaults, improve student outcomes and ultimately bring down costs.

“If colleges and universities have this incentive, it may not only help students make wiser decisions about borrowing, it could help reduce the cost of college — thereby reducing debt,” Sen. Alexander said at a hearing in 2015, adding that it also might prod colleges to encourage students “to complete their education more quickly.”47

Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island expressed similar views in April. “We think it's time for universities to step up and take some responsibility when it comes to student loan defaults,” he said. While universities provide “tremendous benefit to students, our economy and our culture,” Reed said, they often “charge staggering amounts for tuition which leads to heavy student debt.”48

On the other hand, critics worry that risk-sharing could backfire, causing colleges to cut back on admissions for students seen as risky bets: low-income students and those aiming to major in potentially less lucrative degrees such as fine arts. College admissions offices “would cream-skip” and pick the “most-prepared” candidates, while rejecting those perceived as least prepared, challenging the goals of universal or near-universal education, says Harvard's Deming.

“What's going to happen — and this is what's intended — is that colleges are going to say that some students are too big of a risk and not admit them,” Deming says. “And so as a society, we have to ask ourselves, are we OK with a local community college that in its charter claims to be open access turning a student away because they're worried that student is going to end up as a financial drain? Because that would happen under risk-sharing.”

At a U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting in March, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., told Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that risk-sharing proposals could harm minority students. DeVos said her department is concerned about any possible negative effects on low-income and minority students.49

Despite these concerns, legislators of both parties have introduced risk-sharing proposals, and the Trump administration has called for risk-sharing in its education budget proposal, though without specifics.50

Reed introduced the Protect Student Borrowers Act in April, along with several Democratic co-sponsors, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. The measure would charge schools with default rates of 15 percent or higher penalties ranging from 5 to 20 percent of the loan's cost. To prevent schools from denying admission to students seen as likely to default, the bill would allow the secretary of Education to waive or reduce payments for institutions serving low-income and minority students, such as community colleges, historically black institutions and Hispanic-serving institutions.51

In July, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri filed a competing risk-sharing proposal, the Skin in the Game Act. It would make colleges and universities responsible for half the cost of every defaulted loan, and schools could not raise tuition to cover the penalties.52

Alexander, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, may include some form of risk-sharing in a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, possibly by the end of the year.53 “We think it is still on the table,” says Lindsay Ahlman, associate director of research and knowledge management for The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit educational research and policy organization with offices in Oakland, Calif., and Washington. However, she says it is “unclear how important it is in terms of priority.”

Kate Padgett Walsh, an associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University, said if implemented correctly, risk-sharing could motivate institutions to work harder to raise graduation rates. She also recommended that risk-sharing programs avoid — as the Reed bill does — unfairly penalizing community colleges and historically black colleges and universities, which tend to have lower completion rates. And she warned that risk-sharing could even result in tuition hikes, as colleges try to recoup costs (something Hawley's bill prohibits).54

A student advocacy group, the Young Invincibles, has suggested that the government use revenues from risk-sharing to provide tuition relief. “Students already face the most risk in higher education, so a real ‘risk-sharing’ program should provide students a portion of the benefit created to mitigate that risk,” the group wrote in a 2018 white paper.55

Similarly, Adam Looney and Tara Watson, economists at the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank, suggested giving risk-sharing revenues to colleges and universities that do a good job serving low-income students, to be used to “promote access to high quality institutions for those who cannot afford to attend on their own.”56

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Background

College for the Elites

Conflicts over the purpose of higher education — to provide practical skills or educate in the liberal arts — and struggles over access have existed almost since the first college opened in America.

Early education in the American colonies was reserved for wealthy white males, with only about 1 percent of 18- to 21-year-olds attending college. Few families could afford tuition or to have able-bodied men leave their farms or businesses.57

The nation's first college was Harvard, established in 1636 as New College. Other future Ivy League institutions followed, including Yale in 1701, Princeton in 1746 and Dartmouth in 1769. They modeled themselves on English colleges, training clergy and scholars in theology and the classics.58

Not all agreed with this approach. In 1749, Benjamin Franklin helped found the Publik Academy of Philadelphia (later called the University of Pennsylvania), which taught skills needed to make a living as well as an appreciation for the arts.59

At that time, elementary and high school systems had not yet been established, so the students at early colleges often were boys as young as 14 or 15, who would first take preparatory courses with a tutor or local schoolmaster before moving on to college-level work. Often students attended for a year or two and then left without getting a degree.60

The American Revolution (1775-83) disrupted college life as students left to take up arms and some campuses were damaged in the fighting or served as barracks or hospitals; others lost funding from England after the colonies declared independence. But the newly independent nation included a call for public education, declaring in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that schools and education “shall forever be encouraged” because knowledge was “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.”61

Early American colleges taught a “broad liberal arts perspective — that one needed to have an understanding of the classics and of a broad-based humanistic education — so that one could be a philanthropic, generous, broad-minded and thoughtful leader,” says the National Humanities Center's Newman. “The idea was to educate the elite, particularly young men, so they could take leadership positions in government and industry.”

A college building boom began in the 19th century, with the number of U.S. institutions rising from 25 in 1800 to 241 by 1860. And some colleges began encouraging diversity. The first black students were admitted at a predominantly white university — Ohio's Oberlin College (then known as Oberlin Collegiate Institute) — in 1835. Two years later, in 1837, Oberlin was the first to admit women, though they were segregated in a “ladies course.”62

In the mid- to late 19th century, educators began adopting the more scientifically based German research university model, increasing the number of disciplines and majors and adding sciences and social sciences, says Newman. After the Morrill Land Grant Act became law in 1862, states began building so-called land-grant colleges on land provided by the federal government. The colleges were to teach “agriculture and the mechanical arts,” hence A&M in the names of some of these colleges.63

In 1890, a second Morrill Act opened state college doors to African Americans, and appropriated federal funds to support colleges. While the act forbade racial discrimination in admissions, it allowed racially separate institutions if the funds were divided in a “just” manner, leading to the establishment of 17 historically black colleges and universities.64

Though higher education was thriving, with 560 colleges by 1870, many craftsmen remained unconvinced of its value. They had been trained through apprenticeships and distrusted academics and scientists. College degrees were seen as a status symbol, rather than sign of practical knowledge. Most people did not complete a bachelor's degree, which was not required to get most jobs, and some earned two-year “license of instruction” certificates to teach school.65

Distance learning also began in the 19th century, with so-called correspondence schools connecting students and instructors by mail. The first such school opened in Boston in 1873. One of the largest was the for-profit International Correspondence Schools in Pennsylvania, which trained immigrant coal miners. By 1895 it enrolled 72,000 new students.66

The number of disciplines, fields and majors began increasing in the late 19th century. “We had the entrance of not just the sciences and not just the humanities, but also the social sciences and then professional degrees in law and business and medicine and engineering,” says Newman.

Early 20th Century

In the early 20th century, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. workers had graduated from high school. About 5 percent of males ages 18 to 21 attended college (256,000 students), up from 1 percent in 1800 (1,237 students).67

The nation's economy, however, was shifting from an agrarian to an industrial model, forcing universities to change in order to meet new employer needs. By 1914, more Americans worked in manufacturing and related jobs than in farming — 14 million vs. 12 million, according to census data.68

After a commission appointed by President Woodrow Wilson found in 1914 that less than 1 percent of employees were prepared for industrial jobs, the federal government got more involved in funding education and job training. In 1917, Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act, providing federal funds for high school vocational education. From 1920 to 1945, high schools expanded, resulting in a rise in college enrollment. However, white males were four times likelier than black men to attend college. Women represented 40 percent of college students, although their educations were largely limited to female-dominated professions, such as teaching.69

During the Great Depression, the government provided more funds for higher education: $93 million between 1935 and 1943 to send 620,000 students to college. To increase the pool of skilled workers, Congress passed the National Apprenticeship Act in 1937, authorizing the Department of Labor to oversee apprenticeships and ensure workers' health, safety and welfare.70

As World War II was winding down, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, the so-called GI Bill of Rights, which, among other things, paid stipends for tuition and other college costs for veterans attending college or trade school. By 1949, college enrollment had reached 2.7 million — nearly double the level in 1939.71

World War II veterans take notes with other college students during a University of Iowa lecture in the spring of 1947. College enrollment nearly doubled from 1939 to 1949 after Congress passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, the so-called GI Bill of Rights, in 1944, providing, among other things, stipends for tuition and other college costs for veterans attending college or trade school. (Getty Images/The LIFE Picture Collection/Margaret Bourke-White)

In 1947 the President's Commission on Higher Education, known as the Truman Commission after Democratic President Harry S. Truman, called for establishing a network of public community colleges that would charge little to no tuition. And the Korean War (1950-53) created a new pool of vets using GI Bill benefits to attend community colleges, swelling their ranks even further.72

Broadening Access

The push for greater college enrollment, especially in the sciences, got a boost in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite, triggering a Cold War-era space race. The federal government in 1961 began giving colleges about $600 million a year for scientific research.73

By the 1960s, high school attendance was near universal and college attendance was growing rapidly. The number of college students more than doubled between 1960 and 1970, from 3.6 million to 7.9 million. The Vietnam War also ramped up during this period, with the first soldiers sent there in 1965. The draft allowed young men attending college to get a deferment from military service, which researchers say is likely why college enrollment spiked during the war.74

Also in the 1960s, the administration of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to expand access to education, but banks were reluctant to lend to poor and minority students. So the Higher Education Act of 1965 established a system that provided student loans backed by the federal government, but administered by banks. In 1972, amendments to the law established the Pell Grant program, which provides grants to low-income students to help pay for college.75

The loan options changed student borrowing. In the 1975-76 school year, 75 percent of college students received grants and 21 percent received loans. Within 10 years that ratio had flipped, with 29 percent receiving grants and 66 percent taking out loans in the 1984-85 academic year.76

The number of community colleges and technical institutes also grew, with the student population of those schools increasing from 82,000 to 1.3 million between 1950 and 1980.77

Meanwhile, Title IX of the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1972 outlawed discrimination by educational institutions on the basis of gender, opening more college doors to women, and affirmative action policies resulted in more students of color attending college. By 1975, just over 11 million Americans were attending college full-time, up from 2.4 million in 1959, and a college degree increasingly was viewed as the ticket to the middle class.78

However, government-backed loan programs operated with little oversight, so colleges had little incentive to keep tuition costs down. Most students who wanted loans got them. Colleges raised rates and some lowered admissions standards, bringing in more students and revenue. Little thought was given to student debt loads, or how students who dropped out or couldn't find jobs could afford to pay.79

Soaring Costs and Debt

States have been cutting funds for colleges and universities since the 1990s due to economic downturns, especially during the 2007-09 recession. “States have to balance their budgets every year … and higher ed is usually the largest discretionary item on their budgets,” says Harvard's Deming. “So … when times are tough, the higher ed budget gets cut.”

In 1988, states paid 76 percent of the funding for full-time public college students; in 2007, during the recession, the state share fell to less than 40 percent. Since then, states have gradually been paying more, but still are not at pre-recession levels in most states. State funding for two- and four-year universities in 2018 was down more than $7 billion from 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute in Washington. To make up for the loss in state funding, colleges have raised tuitions, on average by 36 percent since 2008, although seven states have raised them by 60 percent or more.80

Low-income families can apply for Pell Grants to cover tuition and some costs, but those grants only cover about 29 percent of the cost of a public undergraduate education today, compared to 92 percent in 1965.81 All of these factors have contributed to a rise in the percentage of students borrowing to pay for college — now about 65 percent, with the overwhelming majority from federal loans.82

In 2009, Democratic President Barack Obama instituted several policies aimed at achieving his goal of having America lead the world in its number of college graduates by 2020. After the recession, banks struggled to provide student loans, so in 2010 Obama shifted federal student lending from banks to a direct lending program created in 1993 during the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton.83

Meanwhile, the for-profit education industry was growing again. The industry had been beset by scandals and complaints in the 1980s, with allegations that some companies inflated promises of future jobs and used hard-sell sales tactics, leaving low-income, vulnerable students burdened with debt and useless credentials. Republican President George H.W. Bush had signed accountability and oversight measures governing the industry into law, and more than 1,200 for-profits eventually closed. After Congress relaxed some of those regulations in 1998, and with Republican President George W. Bush favoring less oversight, the industry grew rapidly — including in online courses. For-profits expanded from 5 percent of the online education market in 2000 to nearly 70 percent in 2010.84

However, problems re-emerged. In 2014, the Obama administration issued a key regulation that penalized for-profit colleges for their graduates' poor job outcomes. The “gainful employment” rule stripped federal student aid eligibility from institutions whose graduates could not find good jobs. The administration also enforced a “borrower defense” rule, which rebated student loan payments if the student's school went bankrupt. Another Obama action in 2016 shuttered an accrediting agency — the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) — that approved many for-profit schools that later were accused of fraudulent practices and closed.85

In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the federal government would rake in about $114 billion over 10 years from Obama's direct loan program. A year later, it said the program would provide only $8.7 billion over that period. By this May, the office had revised its projections, saying the program will cost taxpayers $31 billion over the next decade.86

The government is collecting less on outstanding loans, the CBO said, in part because more borrowers than anticipated are enrolling in income-driven repayment plans. Such plans, created by Congress in 2012, allow borrowers to pay a percentage of their discretionary income for a period of years, after which the remainder of the loan is forgiven.87

And some loans are not being collected at all. About 5.2 million federal borrowers are in default, while another 6.1 million have postponed their payments, according to Nerdwallet, a personal finance company that offers financial advice to online users. As with income-based repayment, interest continues to pile up when a loan is paused, and the loans balloon. Due in part to the high number of students deferring repayment, the average household with student debt in 2018 owed $47,671, much of it in the form of direct loans held by the federal government.88

The greatest number of loan defaults are among students who have attended or earned degrees from for-profit institutions, which make up 10 percent of students but 50 percent of defaults, according to Brookings.89

However, the Trump administration brought a new, deregulatory emphasis to the for-profit sector. Education Secretary DeVos announced in June that the gainful employment rule would formally end in July 2020, though the department had already stopped enforcing it. DeVos argued that it unfairly targeted for-profits. Instead, the Education Department says it will hold schools accountable by providing information to consumers about graduation rates and average salaries earned by graduates. This information is available through a website, College Scorecard, started by the Obama administration but expanded under Trump to include information based on degrees.90

Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education (Getty Images/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Amy Beth Bennett)

The Department of Education estimates that rescinding the gainful employment rule means that for-profits will receive about $5.3 billion in federal funds, such as Pell Grants, over the next decade, which they otherwise would have been ineligible to receive.91

An amended version of the borrower defense rule, with the automatic student loan forgiveness removed, goes into effect July 1, 2020. DeVos also gave ACICS, the accrediting agency, a temporary reprieve, though in July opened an investigation into its financial health.92

In addition, the department has largely phased out an investigative team created during the Obama administration that examined abuses by the for-profit industry. The team's staff has been reduced from about a dozen to three, and its focus has shifted to less aggressive tasks, such as evaluating loan forgiveness requests. The new head of the team, Julian Schmoke, is a former dean at DeVry, a for-profit university investigated under Obama. Other for-profit executives also have found new jobs in the Education Department.93

Bob Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, said the Trump administration's moves give a “not-so-implicit stamp of approval on predatory colleges, while simultaneously stripping what few protections students have to protect themselves against abuse.” But Sen. Alexander said eliminating the gainful employment regulation will “end a clumsy rule that consumed 945 pages to define two words in the higher education law and targeted just one segment of our 6,000 colleges and universities.” Instead, he added, Congress can now “create a more effective measure of accountability for student debt and quality of institutions.”94

While many of the large for-profit chains — such as ITT Tech, Corinthian and Argosy — have closed their doors, others have converted to nonprofit status, partnered with nonprofit universities or are still active, serving tens of thousands of students.95

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Current Situation

Boosting Affordability

The dramatic rise in college costs, especially in the past two decades, has institutions of higher learning and the government trying a variety of measures to provide relief to students.

Colleges have cut costs by replacing faculty with lower-paid adjuncts, consolidating campuses and teaming up with other institutions to share resources. A growing number also have lowered tuition rates, with about 18 mostly small, private schools reducing rates in 2018 and Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., dropping its price by 25 percent for the 2019-20 academic year.96

Some experts suggest boosting federal spending. Ahlman, of The Institute for College Access & Success, says, “The most important way to increase [college] affordability is to increase funding for Pell Grants.” Some analysts say more federal spending on student aid only puts upward pressure on prices, but studies have been inconclusive.97

Democrats in Congress proposed the College Affordability Act in mid-October, which would increase Pell Grants, among other measures aimed at making college more accessible. If approved, the legislation is estimated to cost $400 billion over the next 10 years.98

Some states are getting rid of tuition altogether. New York led the way in 2017 by providing free tuition for two- and four-year state schools to families making less than $125,000.99 About 10 other states enacted or are proposing similar programs, including:

• New Mexico announced a plan in September to provide free tuition and fees for recent high school graduates at four-year or two-year public colleges, regardless of income, funded through a combination of state lottery winnings and federal grants. The plan also would pay for community college tuition and fees for returning adult learners. The Democratic-majority Legislature plans to vote on the proposal next year.100

• California enacted legislation providing free tuition for two years of community college to first-time, full-time resident students in August.

• In Texas, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will begin providing free tuition for students with household incomes under $75,000 — more than half its 21,459 undergraduates — in the 2020-21 academic year. A similar program will start in 2020 at the University of Texas at Austin for families earning up to $65,000 a year.101

The idea of free tuition or debt-free college has become a key issue in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, with many Democratic candidates calling for a range of proposals to ease college costs. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has announced a plan to make two- and four-year public colleges tuition-free and to wipe out $1.6 trillion in student debt, funded by a tax on Wall Street, for a combined cost of $2.2 trillion over 10 years. His rivals, Sens. Warren, Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, are co-sponsoring the Debt-Free College Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, which would establish a federal-state match to help pay for college expenses as well as tuition.102

Other Democratic candidates have more limited proposals. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — who says he owes more than $130,000 in student loans — would expand Pell Grants for low-income students and provide free tuition to lower- and middle-income families. Former Vice President Joseph Biden backs free community college.103

Harvard's Deming supports free college for all students, even those with the means to pay their own tuition. “I'm not excited about the idea of paying for rich kids to go to college,” but the alternative — programs that require colleges to document students' ability to pay — tend to be prohibitively complicated, he says. He likens free college to free public high school. “We think on balance, if you want something to be universally available, the easiest way to do that is to universally provide it,” he says. He also argues that providing free tuition “is not as expensive as you might think,” especially when you factor in the taxes that graduates are likely to pay over their lifetimes.104

Ryan Craig, a co-founder of University Ventures, an educational investment firm, opposes tuition-free college. “It does nothing to address student outcomes,” he argues. “You're subsidizing schools to keep doing what they've been doing and not incentivizing them to better align their programs with employer needs. There's no performance-based funding whatsoever, so we think it's absolutely the wrong way to do it.”

Kay Coles James, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, also said in a commentary that free college for all would be “a suffocating financial burden on every taxpayer, but especially on middle- and lower-income citizens…. ‘Free’ college tuition would only make things worse, creating an inflationary spiral: As more taxpayer dollars were funneled to schools with even less discretion than exists today, schools would keep raising costs.”105

Administrative Actions

In June, more than 150,000 former students of failed for-profit colleges sued the Department of Education for failing to refund their student loans under the Obama-era borrower defense rule.

“The law is clear: Students who experienced fraud should not be required to pay back federal loans that should never have been made by the department in the first place,” said Toby Merrill, director of Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending, which filed the suit on the students' behalf.106

In September, the department announced it would discharge $95 million in loans owed by about 7,000 students who said they were defrauded by the defunct ITT Tech. The action followed complaints from Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, and other legislators, who demanded that the department, which had not made any borrower defense payments since June 2018, take action.107

Steve Balloch, left, helps fellow teacher Jaime McDonald load her car at Everest College in Industry, Calif. Everest, part of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain, closed in 2015 after allegations of falsifying graduation records and job placement rates. (Getty Images/Los Angeles Times/Al Seib)

The department also has continued to collect loan payments — including by garnishing wages or tax refunds — from about 1,800 former students of the bankrupt Corinthian Colleges and sent “payment due” notices to about 15,000 borrowers, despite a May 2018 court order to stop collecting payments from the students. In an October hearing, Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco said she was “deeply disturbed” by the department's lack of compliance with her earlier injunction and with “the sheer scale of violations.” Kim said she is considering fines or contempt charges against the department.108

The department's new rules for borrower defense went into effect in September. Critics charge they are weaker than the previous rules and make it more difficult for defrauded students to get debt relief. The department says the rules are fair and estimate they will save taxpayers $11 billion over the next decade.109

In other administrative action, the Department of Labor in July, acting on recommendations from a workforce advisory board headed by the president's daughter Ivanka Trump, proposed a new type of apprenticeship designed to cut red tape and make it easier for businesses to start apprenticeship programs, especially in sectors that had never used them before.

The Labor Department has authorized more than $180 million in grants for the new programs, called Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs). The grants would be awarded to 23 community colleges and state colleges and universities in 18 states and matched by participating companies. Initially limited to the health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing industries, the apprenticeships are expected to train 85,000 people in those fields.110

But unlike the Labor Department's existing apprenticeship program, IRAPs would not be regulated by the department, but by certified industry groups, unions, educational institutions or trade associations. And the IRAPs would have fewer restrictions on such things as how many hours an apprentice might work.111

The workplace advisory board “recognized that the process of becoming a registered apprenticeship program was so difficult and time-consuming that new industries could never go to scale as registered apprenticeships,” says Sheree Speakman, CEO of the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, a nonprofit that monitors computer coding boot camps. The IRAPs program — which would co-exist with the current apprenticeship program and not replace it — “is revolutionary and it's exciting,” she says. “Ivanka deserves a mountain of credit.”

However, critics such as Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Senate Education and Labor Committee, say the lack of government oversight amounts to “a giveaway to private corporations and for-profit colleges without any guarantee that apprentices are getting quality training opportunities, are being paid fairly for the work they do or are working in safe conditions.”112

In addition, labor unions — especially those representing construction workers, which are not eligible for IRAPs — decry what they perceive as an attempt to undermine standards protecting their industry, calling the approach “like the fox guarding the henhouse,” according to a United Steelworkers blog post.113 About 175,000 comments flooded the government's comments section for the proposal.

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Outlook

A ‘Watershed Moment’

If current trends continue, more colleges will close due to declining enrollment, costs will continue to rise and student debt likely will hit $2 trillion by 2021 and $3 trillion by the end of the next decade.114

“I think we are at a watershed moment,” says New York University's Zaloom, who has written about student debt and its impact on the middle class. States and national politicians are recognizing the depths of the problem and starting to enact solutions, such as tuition-free college, she says.

“We still have a long way to go to make these policies work,” she says, “but I think we've turned a corner.”

Harvard's Deming agrees that free-college initiatives likely will continue. But the federal government will need to fund these efforts, with states handling the administration of the programs, because state budgets are too uncertain for states to do this alone, he says. Programs that provide federal matching grants to states that want free college “is the future of educational expansion,” Deming says. “That is a trend I would watch.”

As technology continues to change, so will the skills employees need, says the Upjohn Institute's Hershbein. “What's becoming increasingly important is for people to have lifelong learning,” he says. “There's a greater need for everyone to be able to update and keep relevant their skill set and have continuing education for that. Right now, our system is not set up for that at all.”

Brown, at the Lumina Foundation, agrees, predicting more of a “back-and-forth between the workforce and education” in the future. College no longer will be “a one-stop shop,” she says. Instead, bachelor's degree-holders — to keep their degrees current and valuable — will likely have to return periodically for additional training, perhaps adding certificates or certifications.

That could provide a new market for colleges to replace declining enrollments, says Brown. “When they think about their business model and how they want to continue to stay open, they are going to focus a lot more on adults and these other types of credentials,” she says.

More alternatives to bachelor's degrees also are likely to be developed, such as massive open online courses, digital badges and boot camps, Brown says.

New degrees likely will be offered, says Newman at the National Humanities Center. “The kinds of majors that we currently have are going to continue to morph,” he says. “Those changes are often in the direction of multidisciplinary perspectives,” which can marry soft-skills degrees with more hard science or technical training.

Matt Giani, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Office of Strategy and Policy, remains optimistic about higher education's future. “Higher education institutions have been some of the longest lasting through history, outlasting governments in some cases. There's something persistent about the value of higher education.”

Of course, as inevitable changes occur, universities and colleges need to continue to provide students skills that “are valuable to them both personally in society,” he says. “But I still think the bachelor's degree is going to be the surest way to ensure a middle-class lifestyle moving forward.”

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Pro/Con

Is a four-year college degree worth the cost?

Pro Matt Giani Director of Research and Data Science, Office of Strategy and Policy, and Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Texas, Austin. Written for CQ Researcher, October 2019 Alternative education pathways, such as career and technical education, industry-based certifications, apprenticeships and innovative approaches to postsecondary education such as “boot camps” are growing in popularity. These alternatives are viable mechanisms to upward mobility for many students and workers. But recognizing the value of these pathways should not cause us to forget an important point: A bachelor's degree is still the surest ticket to the middle class and beyond. From 1980 to 2017, the share of U.S. adults with bachelor's degrees or higher doubled, from 17.0 percent to 34.2 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Despite this significant increase and concerns about the possible overproduction of bachelor's degrees, the wage premium of bachelor's degrees also grew during this time frame. In 1982, males with a bachelor's degree earned on average 25 percent more than those with a high school diploma, and females earned 41 percent more, according to analyses by the Urban Institute. By 2012, males with a bachelor's degree earned 70 percent more than those with a high school diploma, and females were earning 82 percent more. This suggests the increase in the production of bachelor's degrees has not kept pace with the increase in demand for such graduates. Some question the value of a bachelor's degree, given the growing costs of college and mounting student debt, which now exceeds credit card debt in the United States. Federal, state and institutional policy must continue to address the high costs of college, particularly for low-income and middle-class students. However, average student loan debt among bachelor's degree recipients who have borrowed money is roughly $30,000. Additionally, students with smaller loan debt who do not complete a bachelor's degree are more likely to default. While $30,000 is not trivial, this is still a sound investment, given that over their lifetimes bachelor degree-holders will earn roughly $1,000,000 more than their peers with a high school diploma or less. While in some instances associate's degrees, certificates and certifications can provide greater boosts in short-term earnings than certain bachelor's degrees, a university education provides several additional social, psychological, health and educational benefits, including the ability to obtain a graduate education. Alternative educational pathways should continue to be developed and strengthened. But that should not come at the expense of increasing access to and completion of a university education, particularly for students of color, low-income students and first-generation students.

Con Ryan Craig , Corinne Spears Author, College Disrupted and A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College, and Managing Director, University Ventures; and. Associate, University Ventures. Written for CQ Researcher, October 2019 Amid a student loan crisis and a tight labor market, many are skeptical of the return-on-investment (ROI) on a college-degree. Breaking down that equation produces outcomes and cost. Outcomes: For decades, employers relied on four-year degrees to indicate a job applicant's qualifications, but they were “macro” signals that did not address specific skills. With the rise of big data and “micro” signals such as digital credentials, ePortfolios and competency-based assessments, hiring managers now have tools to identify discrete skills and capabilities. So employers now place more weight on an applicant's technical and interpersonal skills than on whether the candidate has a degree or where it was earned. In a new study, 74 percent of information technology managers say technical skills are more important for the first job than all other skills combined. That is a major reason why 45 percent of new college graduates are not getting good first jobs and are underemployed. Moreover, two-thirds of underemployed grads find themselves underemployed five years later, and half are still underemployed 10 years later. Meanwhile, degrees awarded in many fast-growing fields are not keeping up with demand. There were more than 3.7 million new tech job postings in 2018, while only 70,000 students graduated with a computer science degree. As a result, employers increasingly are removing degree requirements and even hiding an applicant's educational background from hiring managers. While a four-year degree used to guarantee a good first job and a pathway to a viable career, there are other viable paths now. Cost: Student loans now account for the second-largest form of debt in the United States, behind only home mortgages. Tuition has doubled (adjusted for inflation) in the last 25 years, while annual wages grew only about 25 percent — one-eighth the rate of tuition growth. In addition, spending four years in a classroom carries an opportunity cost (unearned salaries), and low-income individuals who most need the socioeconomic mobility college is supposed to provide are least likely to complete a degree. College can be a really great thing. But a four-year degree is definitely not worth the cost for everyone, and — with college cost continuing to rise as employment outcomes stagnate — probably not for the majority who undertake a degree program. While college is a great pathway for many, it is certainly not the answer for all.

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Short Features

Supporters Say ‘Boot Camps’ Offer Quick Path to Good Jobs

Herman Kayy, a software engineer in Santa Monica, Calif., makes between $100,000 and $140,000 a year — a position he landed without a bachelor's degree. Instead, the 26-year-old learned computer coding at a three-month, $10,000 “boot camp” in 2018, which led within months to his current job.

Kayy did have some college under his belt when he enrolled: three years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he studied biology and then business before dropping out to “find out what I love and want to do.” After spending time in architecture and real estate, he took a $5 online course in computer app development — and discovered his passion.

“I got instantly hooked and just loved every second of it and knew this is what I want,” he says. In March 2018, he enrolled at the DevMountain boot camp in Salt Lake City and lined up a contract software development job before even graduating. By that August he had a full-time software engineer job.

Coding boot camps are intensive, full-time training programs offered by either for-profit or nonprofit companies that can be taken in person or online. In-person camps last about 15 weeks, on average, and cost $13,584, while online camps take about 24 weeks and cost $12,900, according to Course Report, an organization that provides research and information about the industry.1

The field is experiencing strong growth, with on-site boot camps expected to graduate 17,524 developers in 2019, up from 13,407 in 2018. Online camps were growing even more rapidly, up from 2,022 graduates last year to 5,519 projected for this year.2

The industry, which started in 2012, provides about 150 comprehensive career preparation programs, says Sheree Speakman, CEO of Council on Integrity in Results Reporting. The nonprofit membership and standards organization aims to provide accountability and credibility to the boot camp industry, which has been criticized in the past for overpromising job outcomes for students taking their short-term, unaccredited training programs.3

For instance, the attorney general of New York in October 2017 fined the Flatiron School, a coding academy with 10 U.S. locations and campuses in London and Australia, $375,000 for touting job placement rates as high as 98.5 percent on its website, while burying details that some “jobs” were as freelancers, contract employees or apprentices.4

“Coding boot camps have been in this wild-west territory of new schools,” said Robert Shireman, a former Department of Education official and now a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank. They're founded by “entrepreneurs who are excited about providing training [but] do not have a lot of experience in how to provide accurate information to people,” he added.5

Surveys of graduates of about 100 boot camps by Course Report found that 79 percent reported finding jobs within six months in jobs related to what they had studied, with an average starting salary of $64,528.6 Salaries on the East and West Coasts are often higher, Speakman points out, but the average reflects lower salaries in the Midwest.

The majority of boot camp enrollees — 56 percent — have four-year degrees and 15 percent have advanced degrees, though not necessarily in computer science. However, a bachelor's — or any other degree — is not required for admission. About 6 percent of students start with only a high school diploma.7

Coding boot camps are not just about coding but also teach soft skills, says Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report. “In most boot camps, you'll learn about collaboration and team-building skills and communication,” which she says will help graduates work effectively with others in their future workplaces.

Some coding boot camps focus on groups that are underrepresented in the technology field. For example, the Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack Academy in New York City and Chicago is a 17-week software engineering course for women (with four weeks online and 13 in person) that charges tuition only after graduates get a job. The Turing School of Software & Design in Denver is a nonprofit boot camp that focuses on enrolling women and minorities.8 Other camps offer scholarships to underrepresented groups.9

The online learning company edX tapes a biology lecture by Professor Eric Lander at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Online course providers such as edX offer low-cost or free classes as an alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar learning. (Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor/Melanie Stetson Freeman)

Now the boot camp model is expanding into other fields, according to Eggleston, such as cybersecurity, client management and other vocational training. Speakman agrees. “For every program that opens in coding, I think we're going to see new programs in sales, management preparation and commercial driver's licenses,” she says.

Boot camps are not the only alternative to bachelor's degrees. Online course providers such as Udemy, edX and Coursera offer classes — often free or at low cost — for students seeking to learn or update skills. Often these are in the form of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Certificate schools, both for-profit and nonprofit, offer skills training and provide “microcredentials” — such as digital badges — that employers are increasingly willing to accept as proof of competency.10

However, a joint investigation of certificate schools by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit education news website, and NBC News in July found that “shortfalls in oversight enable companies with questionable track records to continue to recruit vulnerable students and profit off taxpayer money.”11 Premier Schools, a leading for-profit provider of certificate programs at nine East Coast schools, agreed to shutter its Massachusetts operations in 2020, after it was charged with misleading students over job placement and graduation rates. As part of a settlement announced in July with the state's attorney general, the company will pay $1.6 million in student debt relief.12

Community colleges also offer vocational and career training. IBM, for example, has been offering Next Gen IT courses at community colleges as part of what it calls a “New Collar” career path.13 Most colleges and universities offer online certificates and short programs as well.

Apprenticeships, too, have been growing in popularity in recent years, and expanding into fields such as health care, consulting and insurance.14

Students are finding out that there is “more than one way to the middle class other than a four-year degree,” said Eric M. Seleznow, a senior adviser at Jobs for the Future, a workforce-development organization in Boston.15

— Lorna Collier

[1] Liz Eggleston, “2019 Coding Bootcamp Market Size Study,” Course Report, Aug. 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyrvm6pl.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Rebecca Koenig, “Coding Bootcamps Offer Opportunity, But Not Always Transparency,” US News & World Report, May 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyextzat.

[4] Jillian Berman, “Coding bootcamp's $375,000 settlement highlights challenges for new industry,” MarketWatch, Oct. 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yxrpky8k.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Liz Eggleston, “2018 Coding Bootcamp Alumni Outcomes & Demographics Report,” Course Report, Dec. 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5q74tff.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Goldie Blumenstyk, “As Coding Bootcamps Grow, One Tries a Nonprofit Model,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 2, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y2v96777.

[9] Liz Eggleston, “Coding Bootcamp Scholarships,” Course Report, March 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2n7upa4.

[10] Sarah Butrymowicz and Meredith Kolodner, “‘They just saw me as a dollar sign’: How some certificate schools profit from vulnerable students,” The Hechinger Report, July 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2bty7a9.

[11] Paul Fain, “The Degree Rules, for Now,” Inside Higher Ed, Dec. 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yy22wmdt.

[12] Butrymowicz and Kolodner, op. cit.

[13] Rhea Kelly, “IBM Community College Partnerships Support Next-Gen IT Training,” Campus Technology, June 7, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y6bf97z3.

[14] Steven Johnson, “There's a New Pipeline to White-Collar Jobs. It Starts With Apprenticeships,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4cy34a3.

[15] Ibid.

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Humanities Degrees Are Losing Their Appeal

Administrators at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point triggered a fierce backlash when they announced in 2018 that the university planned to cut 13 undergraduate majors due to low enrollment, including such humanities stalwarts as English, philosophy and history.

After complaints from students, faculty and alumni, the university backed down, saying it would eliminate only six majors — including history, French, German and art — which would be replaced by “growth programs” in fields such as aquaculture and environmental engineering.16

But the protests continued. “Universities are supposed to be preparing people to participate in a democracy, besides participate in the workforce, although that's certainly important,” said Ed Miller, a political science professor at the university.17 Finally, this past April, the university abandoned the plan, at least for the time being.

However, the reason for the cuts — a persistent lack of student interest in humanities majors and an increased interest in the sciences — is not unique to Wisconsin Stevens Point. As the number of students receiving bachelor's degrees rose steadily between 1970 and 2016, the number of humanities majors dropped from 36 percent of all degrees to 23 percent, according to researchers at Strada Education Network, which promotes education that prepares students for better jobs, and Emsi, a labor market analytics firm. Meanwhile, the number of majors in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields grew from 64 percent to 77 percent.18

“The humanities are struggling,” Michael T. Neitzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University, wrote in a recent Forbes editorial. “Whether these declines reflect student concerns about employability, a lack of clear purpose or direction for these majors or the malaise that has gripped the humanities for years is not clear, but the student flight from these fields is unmistakable.”19

In a survey last spring asking 248,000 college graduates whether they regretted the major they had chosen, 12.2 percent said yes. Of those, humanities was the most regretted field of study, at 21 percent, while only 4.3 percent of computer science majors and 7.8 percent of engineering students regretted those choices.20

Part of that regret may be salary related. When Robert Newman travels the country promoting the humanities, he says he is often dogged with comparisons to supposedly more lucrative hard sciences or business-related fields. Newman, the director of the nonprofit National Humanities Center, which promotes the humanities, acknowledges that “entry level salaries and the ability to get entry-level jobs is usually better in the STEM fields.” Studies show humanities majors typically earn about $10,000 to $30,000 per year less upon graduation than those who majored in engineering and the sciences.21

However, Newman says, “if one looks at mid- or late career salaries, there is very little distinction” between what humanities graduates and STEM graduates make.

In addition, according to a survey by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, humanities graduates report being just as satisfied with their careers later in life as STEM grads, with most saying they are “deeply interested” in their jobs and are in positions of authority.22

That finding does not surprise Newman, who says humanities grads have broad, adaptable skills such as creative thinking, which employers value, rather than knowledge of technical skills — such as mastery of a specific computer language — that can become obsolete. And indeed, hiring managers and resource professionals say they are having difficulty finding applicants with the most sought-after skills: the ability to listen, communicate and think critically.23

Robert Newman, Director, National Humanities Center (Courtesy National Humanities Center)

Sometimes humanities students don't realize they have learned these so-called soft skills, and therefore fail to list them on job applications, educators say. To remedy this, some colleges and universities are awarding students “digital badges” — a validated credential that students can post on resumes or employment sites, which links to information about the skills they've learned.24

Education Design Lab, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, has designed badges showing that a student has mastered eight “21st-century skills,” such as communication and problem-solving — abilities often called soft skills.25 About 800 institutions, including many colleges and universities, receive badges from the organization as part of a toolkit it developed a year ago.

“I don't like to use the phrase ‘soft skills’ because that makes them sound less important,” said Kathleen deLaski, founder and president of Education Design Lab. “In fact, they are the most important skills cited by employers” today.26

And to continue teaching students such skills, Neitzel recommends that universities retain humanities programs. “We don't need more engineers who know nothing about the Civil War, police officers who believe Churchill was a fictional character or nurses who have never been moved by a great novel,” he wrote.27

— Lorna Collier

[16] Colleen Flaherty, “Cuts Reversed at Stevens Point,” Inside Higher Ed, April 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxwhkkko; Valerie Strauss, “After backlash over plan to cut 13 humanities majors, U-Wisconsin campus drawing up second proposal,” The Washington Post, March 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yyc2exau.

[17] Adam Harris, “The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century,” The Atlantic, Dec. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2z3n4r4.

[18] Sydney Johnson, “As Tech Companies Hire More Liberal Arts Majors, More Students Are Choosing STEM Degrees,” EdSurge, Nov. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8tlw5cg.

[19] Michael T. Nietzel, “Whither the Humanities: The Ten-Year Trend in College Majors,” Forbes, Jan. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5c7686p.

[20] “Biggest College Regrets,” PayScale, June 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2f6opk9.

[21] Scott Carlson, “Over Time, Humanities Grads Close the Pay Gap with Professional Peers,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc3xc79g.

[22] Scott Jaschik, “Shocker: Humanities Grads Gainfully Employed and Happy,” Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7nn6s7p.

[23] Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, “Survey: Employers Want ‘Soft Skills’ From Graduates,” Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 17, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5twtfnw.

[24] Elisabeth Rees-Johnstone, “How Everyone Benefits from Badging: A Guide to Mainstreaming Digital Credentials,” The Evolllution, May 18, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5yko676.

[25] Shailaja Neelakantan, “With badges, colleges take a hard look at teaching soft skills,” Education Dive, July 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5ebvysv.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Nietzel, op. cit.

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Bibliography

Books

Caplan, Bryan , The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money , Princeton University Press, 2018. An economics professor at George Mason University argues that most students do not benefit from four-year degree programs.

Craig, Ryan , A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College , BenBella Books, 2018. A higher education investor and author critiques higher education while exploring alternatives to the bachelor's degree.

Grawe, Nathan D. , Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education , Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. An economist and professor of social sciences at Carleton College in Minnesota analyzes upcoming demographic shifts and discusses what these might mean for higher education.

Zaloom, Caitlin , Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost , Princeton University Press, 2019. A New York University professor of social and cultural analysis examines positive middle-class attitudes toward the bachelor's degree.

Articles

Abel, Jaison R., and Richard Deitz , “Despite Rising Costs, College Is Still a Good Investment,” Liberty Street Economics blog, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, June 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3s8wmby. Federal Reserve Bank economists estimate a bachelor's degree produces an average rate of return of 14 percent.

Akers, Beth , “Should College Come With a Money-Back Guarantee?” Manhattan Institute, July 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2ydc5x4. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, finds that about 120 undergraduate campuses offer loan-repayment guarantees, but many students who could benefit from them do not know they exist.

Deming, David J. , “The Economics of Free College,” Economics for Inclusive Prosperity, June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6m83cuk. A Harvard professor of public policy lays out the case for free college, arguing that the long-term benefits will outweigh the short-term costs of expanding access.

Hess, Frederick M., and J. Grant Addison , “Busting the College-Industrial Complex,” National Affairs, Fall 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyu7p9sy. The director of education policy (Hess) at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the deputy editor for the Washington Examiner (Addison) argue that employers should not be allowed to use college degrees as barriers to entry for jobs that do not require degree-level skills.

Marcus, Jon , “Can For-Profit Colleges Rebound?” EducationNext, Winter 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2wbyn8o. The for-profit college industry is celebrating deregulation under the Trump administration but is struggling with declining enrollment, according to the higher education editor at The Hechinger Report, a foundation-supported news organization.

Mitchell, Josh , “The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y42fwwkw. An economics reporter places the student debt crisis in historical context and explores remedies for fixing the problem.

Ruppel Shell, Ellen , “College May Not Be Worth It Anymore,” The New York Times, May 16, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8lwqypz. A Boston University journalism professor looks at inequalities in bachelor's degree outcomes.

Worthen, Molly , “The Anti-College Is on the Rise,” The New York Times, June 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yybkhzx6. An assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discusses new types of colleges that attempt to help students “find their callings.”

Reports and Studies

Gallagher, Sean R. , “Educational Credentials Come of Age: A Survey on the Use and Value of Educational Credentials in Hiring,” Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, Northeastern University, December 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5zt8k5g. A survey finds that a majority of human resource leaders either have or are actively exploring de-emphasizing degrees in favor of skills-based or competency-based hiring, as demand for higher skills grows.

Giani, Matt S., Paul Attewell and David Walling , “The Value of an Incomplete Degree: Heterogeneity in the Labor Market Benefits of College Non-Completion,” Journal of Higher Education, Aug. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6ae5qw8. Researchers at the University of Texas and City University of New York find that even one semester of college attendance carries economic benefits.

Ma, Jennifer, Matea Pender and Meredith Welch , “Education Pays 2016: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society,” College Board, https://tinyurl.com/y4qu6z98. Researchers examine the economic and nonfinancial benefits of a college degree.

Parker, Kim , “The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32aza95. An analysis by a Washington research organization finds that public perceptions of higher education increasingly split along partisan lines.

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The Next Step

For-Profit Schools

“For-Profit Schools Target the Black Community. Here's How You Can Avoid the Scam,” BET, Sept. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4gwdxgk. For-profit schools often target people of color with their advertising, but their graduates end up with more debt and fewer job prospects on average than those who attend other institutions.

Rosza, Matthew , “Judge threatens Betsy DeVos with jail for not adhering to court order on student loan debts,” Salon, Oct. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6a4jgqk. A California judge threatened Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos with jail time if her department continued to ignore applications for loan forgiveness from former students of a for-profit college that went bankrupt after facing investigations and lawsuits charging the college with fraud.

Whistle, Wesley , “Why For-Profit Colleges Are Nervous About A President Elizabeth Warren,” Forbes, Oct. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yygckvwl. Stock prices of for-profit colleges are sliding as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who wants to end federal funding of for-profit schools, rises in Democratic presidential polling.

Rising College Costs

Carrns, Ann , “Two-Thirds of College Students Take On Debt, but Amount Is Rising More Slowly,” The New York Times, Sept. 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y53eexyw. The average burden for an indebted college graduate is nearly $30,000, but that is rising more slowly than in the past, in part because state and local funding for public colleges is increasing.

Marcus, Jon , “Colleges provide misleading information about their costs,” The Hechinger Report, Sept. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5zjm23x. Some colleges are omitting information and providing old data about tuition to the federal higher education consumer website called College Scorecard.

Nova, Annie , “Tuition discounting grows at private colleges and universities,” CNBC, May 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6x2h5bx. Private colleges increasingly are discounting tuition by offering more needs-based grants to prospective students.

Underemployment

Bregu, Klajdi , “Students Increasingly Are Pursuing Degrees with Better Job Prospects, Data Show,” Foundation for Economic Education, June 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5jkbvkr. An economist provides evidence that one of the main causes of graduates' underemployment — working in a job that does not require a college degree — is a surplus of students choosing degrees with limited job prospects. However, students may be beginning to turn away from these degrees.

Leifer, Kalani , “Overlooking underemployment,” Salon, May 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3dgcwaf. Most college graduates who are underemployed shortly after graduation remain underemployed for five more years, according to a 2018 study.

Nunn, Ryan, Jana Parsons and Jay Shambaugh , “Race and underemployment in the US labor market,” Brookings Institution, Aug. 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4mum5pd. Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to be underemployed than white workers.

Vocational Alternatives

Connin, Kaitlin , “More and more students encouraged to choose trade school instead of college,” WSBT, https://tinyurl.com/yyofgb2x. An Indiana high school is urging more students to consider vocational training instead of a bachelor's degree by providing them with technical experience in various fields.

Tedeschi, Bruno , “Monmouth County Vocational students learn about advanced manufacturing in unique location,” ROI-NJ, Oct. 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yydho635. A partnership between a New Jersey electronics company and a community college has led to the creation of a unique workshop for high school and postsecondary students to gain manufacturing skills.

Trickey, Erick , “How Vocational Education Got a 21st Century Reboot,” Politico, Sept. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxdzshh8. After a decades-long slump, vocational education is growing in popularity again, with high school technology courses helping students prepare for good-paying technical jobs.

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Contacts

College Scorecard
U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20202
202-401-2000
collegescorecard.ed.gov
Online tool provided by the U.S. Department of Education that allows consumers to research information about colleges and degree programs.

Credential Engine
1730 Rhode Island Ave., N.W., Suite 212, Washington, DC 20036
credentialengine.org
Organization that supports a cloud-based library listing information about all types of educational credentials, including nontraditional alternatives.

Institute for College Access & Success
1212 Broadway, Suite 1100, Oakland, CA 94612
510-318-7900
ticas.org
Research and advocacy organization promoting affordability, accountability and equity in higher education.

National College Access Network
1001 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036
202-347-4848
collegeaccess.org
Nonprofit focusing on closing equity gaps in postsecondary education.

National Student Clearinghouse
2300 Dulles Station Blvd., Suite 220, Herndon, VA 20171
703-742-4200
studentclearinghouse.org
Organization that provides educational reporting, data exchange, degree and enrollment verification along with research services.

New America
740 15th St., N.W., Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005
202-986-2700
newamerica.org
Nonpartisan think tank that focuses on public policy issues, including education.

Postsecondary Value Commission
900 Fifth Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109
206-709-3100
postsecondaryvalue.org
Commission set up by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine the value of a college degree and provide information to the public.

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Footnotes

[1] Briana Boyington and Emma Kerr, “20 Years of Tuition Growth at National Universities,” US News, Sept. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ybhsen8a; Teddy Nykiel, “2019 Student Loan Debt Statistics,” Nerdwallet, Sept. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y7nvp76x; Mark Kantrowitz, “Average Student Loan Debt at Graduation,” Savingforcollege.com, July 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3ofvb4d; and “Pomp and Circumstances: New Study Finds Most College Graduates Who Start Out Underemployed, Stay There,” Burning Glass Technologies, May 23, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yxgtmwu4.

[2] Ashley Gross and Jon Marcus, “High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University,” NPR, April 25, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybas5kyo; Zachary Michael Jack, “Gen-Ed Revision Could Be Ged-Ed Reduction,” Inside Higher Ed, April 5, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y3jfletx.

[3] “CPS Historical Time Series Tables,” Table A-1, U.S. Census Bureau, https://tinyurl.com/y5caocdd; Hillary Hoffower, “College is more expensive than it's ever been and the 5 reasons why suggest it's only going to get worse,” Business Insider, June 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6wza5jy. (Note: private four-year school tuition increased more slowly during that period, from $15,200 to $34,700.)

[4] Andy Kiersz and Allana Akhtar, “College grads still earn more than workers with no university degree. This map shows the states with the widest salary gaps,” Business Insider, July 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3u5tt7u; Ellen Ruppel Shell, “College May Not Be Worth It Anymore,” The New York Times, May 16, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8lwqypz.

[5] Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, “Despite Rising Costs, College Is Still a Good Investment,” Liberty Street Economics (New York Federal Reserve blog), June 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3s8wmby.

[6] Ibid.; Abigail Hess, “Graduating in 4 years or less helps keep college costs down — but just 41% of students do,” CNBC, June 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6cslo64.

[7] Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, “Staying in College Longer Than Four years Costs More Than You Might Think,” Liberty Street Economics (New York Federal Reserve blog), Sept. 3, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y5y29raf.

[8] Anthony P. Carnevale, Ban Cheah and Andrew R. Hanson, “The Economic Value of College Majors” (overview), Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/ljap9vr; Jillian Berman, “Women and black college graduates are paid less right out of the gate,” MarketWatch, Aug. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yy3bv9lp.

[9] Shell, op. cit.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Josh Mitchell, “The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y42fwwkw.

[12] David Deming, “In the Salary Race, Engineers Sprint but English Majors Endure,” The New York Times, Sept. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5fzqsfq; Ryan Nelson, “What's the Difference Between a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and a Bachelor of Science (BS)?” GradLime, Aug. 10, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y5b5kwvt.

[13] “Humanities vs. Sciences: Who Earns More?” Emolument, https://tinyurl.com/y2kus33f; Philip Trostel, “It's Not Just The Money: The Benefits of College Education to Individuals and Society,” Lumina Foundation, Oct. 14, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y2sat8tr.

[14] Sean R. Gallagher, “Educational Credentials Come of Age,” Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, Northeastern University, December 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5zt8k5g; Jingcong Zhao, “Employers are downgrading their hiring criteria in this tight labor market,” Payscale, Jan. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y8ksfold.

[15] Ben Weiner, “Why the U.S. has a STEM shortage and how we fix it (Part 1),” Recruiting Daily, Nov. 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybxaaaa8.

[16] Scott Jaschik, “Lecture Instruction: Alive and Not So Well,” Inside Higher Ed, April 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2y9og98.

[17] Nate Swanner, “No STEM Degree Necessary to Land Great Jobs at Tech Giants,” Dice Insights, Aug. 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5dwy3tz; “Counting U.S. Postsecondary and Secondary Credentials,” Credential Engine, September 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y38n35sv.

[18] Alex Chediak, “What's Happening With Apprenticeships? Good things,” The Stream, June 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3e2jmw9.

[19] Doug Lederman, “Online Education Ascends,” Inside Higher Ed, Nov. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y95ydthh; “Today's College Students,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, https://tinyurl.com/y5fg6wah; Jill Barshay, “College students predicted to fall by more than 15% after the year 2025,” The Hechinger Report, Sept. 10, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7y23ske; and Linsay Knerl, “What Employers Really Think About Your Online Degree,” Northeastern University, Feb. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6t62v4n.

[20] Paul Fain, “College Enrollment Declines Continue,” Inside Higher Ed, May 30, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y37k2b86.

[21] Yeganeh Torbati, “Fewer foreign students coming to United States for second year in row: survey,” Reuters, Nov. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6dsmz6k.

[22] Richard Pallardy, “Are Lavish Facilities Responsible for Tuition Inflation?” Saving For College, May 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4mmod5b.

[23] Melissa Korn, “Some 43% of College Grads Are Underemployed in First Job,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y96hnthm.

[24] Kaye McGarry, “The Skills Gap: Employers Expect More Than What College Grads Offer,” The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, April 3, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yy268om6; “The Skills Gap 2019,” Society for Human Resource Management, Feb. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y499laa6; and Natasha Singer, “The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class,” The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yatnb77a.

[25] Deborah L. Carlisle and Gabriela C. Weaver, “STEM education centers: catalyzing the improvement of undergraduate STEM education,” International Journal of STEM Education, Nov. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yyef7bj2; Morgan Smith, “The science divide: Why do Latino and black students leave STEM majors at higher rates?” The Washington Post, May 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y63gomaw.

[26] Kim Parker, “The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32aza95.

[27] Michael T. Nietzel, “Three Changes To Higher Education That Both Republicans and Democrats Endorse,” Forbes, Sept. 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4zneehb.

[28] Lynn Pasquerella, “Yes, Employers Do Value Liberal Arts Degrees,” Harvard Business Review, Sept. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4bpecx3.

[29] David J. Deming and Kadeem L. Noray, “STEM Careers and the Changing Skill Requirements of Work,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 25065, revised June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y699xq6p.

[30] “2018 skills gap in manufacturing study,” Deloitte, https://tinyurl.com/yxtfzv5f; Ashley Gross and Jon Marcus, “High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University,” NPR, April 25, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybas5kyo; and David Cantor, “The ‘Middle Skills’ Gap: Half of America's Jobs Require More Than High School Diplomas but Less Than 4-Year Degrees. So Why Are They Under So Many Students' Radars?,” The74million.org, Dec. 10, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6qmmcdx.

[31] Moriah Balingit and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Trump seeks to slash $8.5 billion from Education Department budget,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxjve863.

[32] Katie Brown, “Update: JOBS Act momentum continues with House introduction,” National Skills Coalition, June 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y52d9ej7; Kerri Anne Renzulli, “The JOBS Act would offer some workers more than $3,000 to learn new skills: here's how it works,” CNBC, updated March 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxq8cr9j.

[33] Andrew Kreighbaum, “Could For-Profit Question Impede Short-Term Pell?” Inside Higher Ed, Aug. 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4wgqt4m.

[34] Kevin Carey, “A Well-Meaning Job Training Bill That May Hurt More Than Help,” The New York Times, March 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyf3ttny.

[35] Andrew Kreighbaum, “Brewing Battle Over Pell Grants,” Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6cg2knm.

[36] Kreighbaum, “Could For-Profit Question Impede Short-Term Pell?” op. cit.

[37] Lindsay McKenzie, “Military Victory for Alternative Providers,” Inside Higher Ed, Aug. 24, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y6447y87.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Lindsay McKenzie, “A Federal Experiment Flounders,” Inside Higher Ed, April 18, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2ypxgh8.

[40] Ibid.; “Bachelor of Science in Advanced Manufacturing Systems,” Northeastern University, https://tinyurl.com/y4gaso3x.

[41] Will Robinson-Smith, “Skilled to Work: Alabama legislation aims to grow apprenticeship program,” WAAY 31, June 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y52xyevg; “High School and Middle School Educators,” U.S. Department of Labor, https://tinyurl.com/y5uxtr46.

[42] Jeffrey Aaron Snyder, “We Don't Need No Education?” Boston Review, May 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6ysytfl.

[43] Paul Fain, “Support Grows for Major Shift in Pell,” Inside Higher Ed, July 10, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yy7a5f8n.

[44] Steven Johnson, “There's a New Pipeline to White-Collar Jobs. It Starts With Apprenticeships,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4cy34a3.

[45] Meg St-Esprit, “The Stigma of Choosing Trade School Over College,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yydcpa9b; Paul Fain, “Spotlight on Vocational Training,” Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/lduev2g.

[46] Andrew Kreighbaum, “Student Loan Default Rate Continues to Decline,” Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6zyz38f.

[47] “Alexander: If Colleges Share in the Risk of Student Loan Defaults, They Can Help Reduce Overborrowing — and the Cost of College,” news release, Office of Sen. Lamar Alexander, May 20, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/yy4ufjwx.

[48] “Senators Strive to Protect Student Borrowers & Hold Colleges & Universities Accountable for Student Debt,” news release, Office of Sen. Jack Reed, April 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3v32h58.

[49] Megan Walter, “DeVos Answers Come Up Short to Democrats at House Hearing,” The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, March 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6n6w6az.

[50] Michelle Hackman, “White House Might Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Loans,” The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6ganlfm.

[51] “S.968 — Protect Student Borrowers Act of 2019,” Congress.gov, introduced April 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5erq3yp; “Senators Strive to Protect Student Borrowers & Hold Colleges & Universities Accountable for Student Debt,” op. cit.

[52] “S.2124 — Skin in the Game Act,” Congress.gov, introduced July 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4637gfz.

[53] Terry Nguyen, “Here's What Trump's 2020 Budget Proposal Means for Higher Ed,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2uoyd6p; Andrew Kreighbaum, “Trump Seeks Billions in Cuts,” Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6q4bk6s.

[54] Kate Padgett Walsh, “Student loans and ‘risk-sharing’ — the problem with penalizing colleges when graduates can't pay,” Slate (republished from The Conversation), March 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y64ccut8.

[55] “Maximizing Student Success: A Student-Driven Platform for Higher Education Accountability,” Young Invincibles, June 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yyed8clw.

[56] Adam Looney and Tara Watson, “A risk-sharing proposal to hold higher-ed institutions accountable to their students,” Brookings Institution, Feb. 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6yvqtnh.

[57] “History of College Education,” ProCon.org, last updated Aug. 11, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y6k9jpe8.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Benjamin Franklin, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania [sic], 1747,” National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox, https://tinyurl.com/y5y6od9b.

[60] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[61] Ibid.; “Northwest Ordinance; July 13, 1787,” The Avalon Project at Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Law Library, Art. 3, https://tinyurl.com/y6o686e5.

[62] “History of College Education,” op. cit.; Dwayne Mack, “Oberlin College, 1835,” Black Past, Oct. 25, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/y2jar2tc; and Carol Lasser, “Beyond Coeducation: Oberlin College and Women's History,” https://tinyurl.com/y5pa25j3.

[63] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[64] “Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities: A Profile,” National Academies Press, 1995, Chapter 1, https://tinyurl.com/y93otz9j.

[65] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[66] “The Evolution of Distance Learning,” Florida National University, Aug. 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y66ol6oe.

[67] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[68] Neville B. Smith, “A Tribute to the Visionaries, Prime Movers and Pioneers of Vocational Education, 1892 to 1917,” Journal of Vocational and Technical Education, vol. 16, no. 1, fall 1999, https://tinyurl.com/87kmrpt.

[69] Ibid.; “Smith-Hughes Act of 1917,” Prentice Hall Documents Library, https://tinyurl.com/y3c5qlsm; and “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[70] John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A history of American colleges and universities, 1636-1968 (1968), p. 307; “National Youth Administration,” Roosevelt Institute, Aug. 30, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/yysrnpfe; and “Youth with Disabilities Entering the Workplace through Apprenticeship: Understanding Apprenticeship Basics,” U.S. Department of Labor, undated, http://tinyurl.com/h2a2n6v.

[71] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[72] Ibid.; Sean Trainor, “How Community Colleges Changed the Whole Idea of Education in America,” Time, Oct. 20, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y4us3fvm.

[73] “Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, updated Oct. 10, 2007, https://tinyurl.com/lpjbk69; Ben Wildavsky, The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (2010).

[74] “History of College Education,” op. cit.; “College Enrollment Linked to Vietnam War,” The Associated Press, The New York Times, Sept. 2, 1984, https://tinyurl.com/yxov6e3n, “The Vietnam War,” The History Place, https://tinyurl.com/gmqh5; and “The Military Draft During the Vietnam War,” “Michigan in the World” history project, University of Michigan, https://tinyurl.com/lsd4ud2.

[75] Mitchell, op. cit.

[76] “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[77] Jennifer Robertson, “The Community College Student's Social Construction of Global Learning in the Florida College System,” Table 3, “Number of Community Colleges in the United States, 1901 to 2015,” Semantic Scholar, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3l5524t; “History of College Education,” op. cit.

[78] “Total fall enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by attendance status, sex of student, and control of institution: Selected years, 1947 through 2023,” Digest of Education Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, https://tinyurl.com/mg4z9f8.

[79] Mitchell, op. cit.

[80] Aims C. McGuinness Jr., “The States and Higher Education,” in Michael N. Bastedo, Philip G. Altbach and Patricia J. Gumport, eds., American Higher Education in the 21st Century: Social, Political and Economic Challenges, 4th ed. (2016), p. 261; William Zumeta, “The Great Recession: Implications for Higher Education,” Almanac of Higher Education 2010, The National Education Association, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/y3h69mvd, p. 37; and Michael Mitchell et al., “Unkept Promises; State Cuts to Education Threaten Access and Equity,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Oct. 4, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y77h4rk9.

[81] Evan Gerstmann, “Trump's Proposed Cut To Pell Grant Funds Is ‘Lunacy,’” Forbes, May 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3bbhs5q.

[82] “A Look at the Shocking Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2019,” Student Loan Hero, updated Feb. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/znapz7m; Nykiel, op. cit.

[83] Alan Greenblatt, “For Community Colleges, A Hard Lesson In Politics,” NPR, March 29, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/ydagxpde; Sue Kirchhoff, “Student Loan Program May Break the Bank,” CNN and Congressional Quarterly, Feb. 7, 1998, https://tinyurl.com/y6zvnqhc.

[84] Stephanie R. Cellini, Rajeev Darolia and Lesley J. Turner, “Where Do Students Go When For-Profit Colleges Lose Federal Aid?” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 22967, December 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y9h8awlq; David Whitman, “The GOP Reversal on For-Profit Colleges in the George W. Bush Era,” The Century Foundation, June 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7qd2tug; and Ryan Craig, “A Brief History (And Future) Of Online Degrees,” Forbes, June 23, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y4cnverm.

[85] “Almost all student loan fraud claims involve for-profit colleges, study finds,” The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 9, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yx8wlr85.

[86] Emily Wilkins, “Student-Loan Outlook Is Reversed, Showing $31 Billion U.S. Cost,” Bloomberg Government, May 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5nnqxae.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Nykiel, op. cit.; ibid.

[89] Howard R. Gold, “Who's at fault for student-loan defaults?” Chicago Booth Review, May 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3h8v7jg.

[90] Erica L. Green, “DeVos Repeals Obama-Era Rule Cracking Down on For-Profit Colleges,” The New York Times, June 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6pwzlor; Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Trump administration formally rescinds rule governing career training programs,” The Washington Post, June 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4o86vl7.

[91] Andrew Kreighbaum, “For-Profits Keep Access to Billions in Aid,” Inside Higher Ed, Aug. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yya6zyu3.

[92] Joelle Fredman, “ED to Forgive Debt, Refund Students from Closed Schools for Erroneous Loan Collections,” National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Sept. 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2l4k8kq; Michael Stratford, “Education Department opens new review of ACICS,” Politico, July 31, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y25cngbw.

[93] Danielle Ivory, Erica L. Green and Steve Eder, “Education Department Unwinds Unit Investigating Fraud at For-Profits,” The New York Times, May 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yakruxko; Michael Stratford, “Trump and DeVos fuel a for-profit college comeback,” Politico, Aug. 31, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y28w6c8y.

[94] Kreighbaum, “For-Profits Keep Access to Billions in Aid,” op. cit.

[95] Jon Marcus, “Can For-Profit Colleges Rebound?” EducationNext, Winter 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2wbyn8o.

[96] Dan E. Way, “With Colleges Shifting to Adjuncts, Teaching Quality May Suffer,” The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, June 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2o9v9ec; Karen Herzog, “UW campus mergers: 5 things you need to know about the system's transformation,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8haxw8w; Timothy Pratt, “How smaller colleges and universities team up for survival,” PBS (The Hechinger Report), Oct. 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y45schu5; Mark Kantrowitz, “Surge in Number of Colleges Cutting Tuition,” Saving For College, Aug. 8, 2019, and Annie Nova, “Colleges are slashing their tuition. Don't expect to feel relief,” CNBC, Aug. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5eycvce.

[97] Jordan Weissmann, “Is Financial Aid Really Making College More Expensive?” The Atlantic, Feb. 16, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/y2wpq5sf.

[98] Erica L. Green, “House Democrats Unveil Plan to Make College More Affordable,” The New York Times, Oct. 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5tu8f86.

[99] Kelli B. Grant, “If you can't get New York's free tuition, here are 10 more states with cheap college costs,” CNBC, May 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yxsx8ule.

[100] Chandelis Duster, “New Mexico governor announces free college tuition plan for residents,” CNN, Sept. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y38bgroc; Simon Romero and Dana Goldstein, “New Mexico Announces Plan for Free College for State Residents,” The New York Times, Sept. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2xmep5y.

[101] Kendall Trammell, “California joins a handful of other states that provide community college tuition-free,” CNN, Aug. 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y25jmr5l; Stacy Fernández, “University of Texas Rio Grande Valley to provide free tuition for students with household incomes under $75,000,” The Texas Tribune, Sept. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3mduo72.

[102] Zachary B. Wolf, “Student debt and tuition: Warren v. Sanders v. everyone else,” CNN, June 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3k634yk; Duster, op. cit.; Andrew Kreighbaum, “Senator Pushes ‘Debt-Free’ as Solution for College Costs,” Inside Higher Ed, March 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyq8m8r9; and Tara Golshan, “Bernie Sanders's free college proposal just got a whole lot bigger,” Vox, June 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2gznkll.

[103] Wolf, op. cit.; Golshan, ibid.

[104] David J. Deming, “The Economics of Free College,” Econfip (Economics for Inclusive Prosperity), June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6m83cuk.

[105] Kay Coles James, “The High Cost of ‘Free’ College Tuition,” The Heritage Foundation, July 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y22qz9xc.

[106] Annie Nova, “Student loan borrowers who say they were defrauded sue Betsy DeVos for failing to cancel their debt,” CNBC, June 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3v344zq.

[107] “The Latest Reports on Betsy DeVos Scamming For-Profit College Students,” Project on Predatory Student Lending, WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, Sept. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yytoox6h; Nova, “Student loan borrowers who say they were defrauded sue Betsy DeVos for failing to cancel their debt,” op. cit.

[108] Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Federal judge slams DeVos and Education Department for violating order and weighs sanctions,” The Washington Post, Oct. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y326aq4z; Chris Quintana, “No, Betsy DeVos is not going to jail,” USA Today, Oct. 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y38vbj8l.

[109] Andrew Kreighbaum, “Raising the Bar for Loan Forgiveness,” Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yycqy7bb.

[110] “U.S. Department of Labor Makes Major Announcements on Apprenticeship Expansion,” news release, U.S. Dept. of Labor, June 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5wub797. (Note: This press release lists all 23 schools and participating companies to be funded.)

[111] Roy Maurer, “DOL Proposes Major Expansion of Apprenticeships,” Society for Human Resources, July 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6c9v6od.

[112] Ibid.

[113] Mark Gruenberg, “Construction Unions Protest Trump Admin's New Apprenticeship Rules,” United Steelworkers Press Associates Union News blog, Aug. 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6xt99wg.

[114] Lauren Camera, “The Higher Education Apocalypse,” US News, March 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3wc4a44; Scott Jaschik, “Are Prospective Students About to Disappear?” Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 8, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yy3w9mgm; and Daniel M. Johnson, “What Will it Take to Solve the Student Loan Crisis?” Harvard Business Review, Sept. 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxmxek85.

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About the Author

Lorna Collier has written about education and technology for the Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, AARP Bulletin, KQED Mindshift, GetEducated.com and many others. She has written on school safety for CQ Researcher.

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