College Degrees Losing Favor in U.S.
In a recent Issues & Insights I&I/TIPP poll, 59% of American adults said they no longer believe a college education is worth the cost to students and their families. Just 24% of survey respondents said higher education “is worth the cost,” and 16% “weren’t sure.” By comparison, in 2013, 70% of U.S. adults considered college worth the cost.
I&I/TIPP’s results further showed that the major racial groupings all agree “a college education doesn’t give enough value to make it worthwhile.” Among whites, 61% said a degree is not worthwhile, with 22% disagreeing. Among blacks and Hispanics, 55% said a 4-year degree does not provide enough value, while 30% said it does.
A majority of parents — the most crucial group of all for the future of higher education — are no longer sold on the value of a college diploma, with 56% of respondents saying a 4-year college is not worth the cost, while 39% remain in favor.
Among the various demographic groups, I&I found a mix of opinions, although no group favored a 4-year college or university over other education alternatives. Adults with “some college” were the most critical, with 70% saying a 4-year degree is not worth the cost. Overall, 6 respondents in 10, or 59%, agreed that a 4-year college education “isn’t worth the cost.”
When I&I/TIPP asked the question, “If given the choice today, would you encourage a high school graduate to pursue a four-year college degree, a skilled trade or vocational path, or enter the workforce directly,” the responses were similarly negative towards a college career. A mere 22% chose a 4-year college degree, while 55% opted for “a skilled trade or vocational path,” 9% favored “enter the workforce directly,” and 14% “weren’t sure.”
To put it another way, wrote I&I, “64% chose the non-college option versus 22% who chose the four-year college option, a ratio of more than 2-to-1.”
Why is this so? Reasons vary from the inability of college graduates to find career jobs to the lowering of educational standards. An article by columnist Victor Joecks on Creators.com noted that “polls from Gallup, Pew and NBC News” resulted in similar findings to those of I&I/TIPP during the last year. These poll results reflect an entirely different view of higher education than has been the accepted norm for decades.
Parents and students long believed, with mostly good reason, that a college education was the single best path to career success and financial stability. Joecks quoted a 2021 Georgetown University report that showed “full-time workers with a high school diploma earn a median of $1.6 million over their lifetimes.” But graduates with a bachelor’s degree could expect to earn a median income of “$2.8 million” during their careers, “75% more than if they had only a high school diploma.”
Why the drop in confidence over a span of just a few years? Joecks blames “the destruction of educational standards” as a major cause, and he is not alone. In 2024, the Fordham Institute created a report on “grading policies that risk lowering academic standards in the name of equity.” The report showed that grade inflation was not exaggerated, but that it had, over time, become “supercharged” in the “grading for equity era.” The bottom line, wrote Fordham, is that “some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer.”
Joecks pointed out that, for decades, “the educational establishment has lowered the bar. Elementary schools send students who can’t read to the next grade. High school students graduate without being able to do freshman-level work. Politicians eliminated high school proficiency exams that would make this failure obvious. Colleges lowered standards and went woke....”
He further observed that, while lowering standards caused the quality of higher education to suffer, “it didn’t stop college tuition from skyrocketing.” Lower standards attracted more and more students, and government student aid made attendance possible, which in turn fueled “exorbitant price hikes.” As Joecks wrote: “If you subsidize mediocre to poor education, you’ll get more of it.”
More recently, some universities have tried to reverse the trend of equity grading and dumbed-down standards, but many experts and observers agree it will take a lot of effort to reverse the trend. It is unclear whether schools will rise to the occasion and institute real reforms.
While there are still a number of good colleges with high standards and solid curricula — Joecks named his alma mater, Hillsdale College, as one — most have taken the path of wokeness to the detriment of their academic quality.
If enough parents act on the opinions expressed in the recent polls and send their kids to trade schools, vocational schools, and junior colleges, the 4-year institutions will be forced to take notice or close, as at least several have done in 2025-26 due to financial challenges and dwindling enrollment.
As Joecks observed: “Without standards, college degrees aren’t worth much. Americans have started to notice.”
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