Losing Faith in the Value of College

This WSJ essay I read today confirms what I have experienced in the last 13 years teaching in an adjunct capacity, in 12 years as a hiring manager, learned as a parent saving and paying for my dependents' college tuition, and witnessed having gone back to school to earn an advanced college degree in 2021.

Major takeaways from this essay:

• Colleges/universities have not adapted their curricula to changing demand
• College-for-all is untenable when all-not-ready-for-college
• 75% of instruction is performed by non-tenure or adjunct faculty
• Quality control lacks when degrees become transactional: Pay and Receive
• A disillusionment spiral grows when college expectations don't play out
• Our K-12 system defers college prep to the colleges themselves

In an article published in the WSJ today "Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees," the authors describe the importance of immediately landing a job in your field, particularly a college internship, to establish experience and industry awareness.

After graduation, the amount of time employed outside the field of your college degree, particularly in non-degree or unrelated roles, will quickly erode the original value of worker's earned degree. Much like what would happen to the perception of a promising college football player's skills after taking 3 years off from football and hoping to enter the NFL.

College is not the best path, and is certainly not the only path to succeed after high school. Regardless, many have spent valuable time and large sums their money, or somebody's money, taking college courses and earning degrees aimed at uncertain goals.

I am a supporter of experiencing a rigorous education, hands-on-learning, maintaining standards, remedial instructions, and doing our best to equip young people with the ability to succeed as adults, college or not.

I am also realistic about the costly and time-consuming preparation, outcome expectations, and getting value for money spent.

At some point these two concepts diverged and we thought we could have success without a strategy, same outcomes with less effort, success without matching skills and needs, and unfairly misaligning aptitudes with expectations.

Some humble advice to those thinking about college, preparation during and after high school, to parents thinking about paying or going in debt for college:

• With regard to timing. If you have doubts about what you want in life, don't assume college is the default path to where you might go. Spend some time in the workforce. You are much more mature at 25 than at 18 and this will help with your decision. Employers may just assume a prospective employee's age based on their college graduation year, so there is no need to explain a gap.
• In my experience, a typical 25+ year-old student is more engaged than the typical 19 year-old student. This might have to do with perspective and an evaluation of the cost/benefit of a college degree, but the difference in eagerness to learn and understand is marked.
• A college degree is not always the first and best education you need to experience. Work experience and certifications like Lean Six Sigma and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) to name a few will stand out as much as a degree from fill-in-the-blank state university.
• Experience and demonstrable skills stand out in job applications and interviews just as much as a fill-in-the-blank degree