I blame the “adults in the room”— the parents. Navigating from that stage where you received your high school diploma, through post-secondary education, and into that first decent paying job is really tricky today. An eighteen year old shouldn’t be expected to have to figure their way through that maze on their own.

Tuition in the US has increased 200% in the last twenty years. Wages are largely stagnant. Not many families can afford the luxury of sending little Johnny or Joanie to college to “find themselves.” Education for the sake of education is, except for the elite, a thing of the past.

There is a pretty good chance in this economy that matriculating at a four year college and majoring in one of those degrees with limited job prospects is just going to result in you wasting your time and your parents wasting their money. (A good rule of thumb for finding a degree with limited job prospects is to look for a bachelor’s that is an ‘ology, or that has the word “studies” in the title.)

For many families post-secondary education for their children is their second biggest expense. However parents don’t recognize the need to become educated consumers.

They just blindly follow the old, four step “One Way to Win” philosophy:

1. Graduate from high school.
2. Enroll in a four-year college.
3. Graduate with ANY degree.
4. Become gainfully employed.

In their defense, for decades, they have been the target of societal, familial, educational, and political propaganda hammering this credo home. This doctrine has become part of America’s DNA. Parents absolutely don’t want to hear that sending little Johnny to a four-year college—at ANY price—may not be a good idea.

A half century ago, when only seven percent of high school graduates went to college, “One Way to Win” worked.

I could be the poster boy. In the-good-old-days I graduated with a “nothing” degree and a modest GPA. A couple weeks before receiving my diploma, on a whim, I answered a newspaper ad and ended up with a job with computer giant, IBM, and a thirty-five year career in IT. (At age twenty-one I had never even seen a computer.)

Unfortunately the world has changed and college in America doesn’t work that way anymore. The job market began to undergo a restructuring at the turn of the century. The Great Recession of 2008 was the tipping point:

• There is a HUGE supply (graduates) and demand (good jobs) problem. Forty percent of high school graduates rush off like lemmings to four-year colleges every year. In the past decade only 6% of the jobs created were traditional full time jobs. Is it any wonder the US economy has set a new record? Twenty-five percent of minimum wage jobs are now held by college grads? College has become a competition for a few good jobs.
• There is a skills misalignment problem. The skills obtained earning four-year degree increasingly don’t match the skills required in the workforce.
• There is an ROI issue. With the cost of tuition up 200% in the past twenty years and stagnant wages, some degrees just don’t make any financial sense anymore.
• There is a national student loan problem. Everyone wants to blame the government. Nobody remembers poor old Pogo. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Parents don’t give adequate consideration to the affordability of post-secondary education choices. This often results in financially inexperienced teenagers taking on an excessive amount of student loans.
• There is a quality issue. The quality of the four-year degree has deteriorated over the last fifty years, and the employers know it. The growing consensus on the part of employers is that college grads are arriving unprepared.

Given all the problems with the four-year college education is it any wonder that half of all graduates end up under employed, unemployed, and highly discouraged and disappointed—not to mention indebted?

There are plenty of resources available to educate parents on making better post-secondary education decisions for their offspring. You should encourage your parents to tap into one or two of them—before you start filling out an application for student loans.

Notes:

I get a lot of “pushback” when I share this data and my conclusions. A common response is, “I graduated with a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving, but now I’m CEO of Widgets International making $5,123,987 annually.” Almost invariably the person responding graduated pre-Great Recession. The world has changed.

I’ve seen families invest more time and energy in picking out the used car for “little Joanie” to drive to South Podunk U than they put into figuring out whether or not going to South Podunk U and majoring in psychology was a wise idea.