College isn’t for everyone

Recent trends show a decrease in young people heading off to college. There are a variety of reasons for this, some short-term and others structural. The government’s fumbling of the rollout of a new federal aid form is certainly consequential for enrollment numbers for the current school year. The economic struggles of recent years, including inflation and rising debt, have also added constraints for those graduating from high school. But larger, structural forces are at play as well, including a looming demographic cliff and campus political and social environments increasingly in conflict with the mainstream experience and values of American life.

Cultural attitudes toward college are also shifting as the rewards and purposes of higher education are reshaped in the crucible of economic dynamics and worldview clashes. If a college education is simply a matter of increasing future earning power, then many are taking a straightforward look at the calculus and deciding that maybe they don’t need to take calculus … or critical studies. As information technology—including artificial intelligence, big data, and the “app-ification” of everything—transforms white-collar jobs, traditional blue-collar careers remain relatively unaffected and in demand. Trades, whether in the form of trade schools, technical training during high school, or apprenticeships are more attractive for a variety of reasons.

Economically, trades tend to pay better sooner and with less intensive investment in terms of tuition or training costs. These jobs are also in demand as the labor force remains relatively sluggish and disengaged. For those willing to show up to work and work hard, there is much money to be made as a plumber, electrician, builder, or other form of skilled trade and even relatively unskilled labor.

As the costs of higher education skyrocket and the payoff seems more dubious, going directly into the workforce naturally seems more and more attractive. The price of college continues to outpace even robust inflation more generally, and at some point, the automatic assumption that higher education is worth that price becomes questionable. And as people start to really count the cost and ask critical questions, the conclusions they come to are more often less favorable to heading off to campus.

The experience they encounter on campus seems to have changed dramatically over the past decade, as well. Why bother paying to be lectured about systemic “white guilt” and harangues about intersectionality when you can start working right away and get paid a lot to do it? Why head off to a school to live in a tiny dorm and take the risk that the classes you are paying dearly for might be canceled because of some misdirected campus protest? And what happens if that protest turns violent? All of these reasons, and many more, including the perceived—and often real—hostility to viewpoint diversity on college campuses make them increasingly unattractive and downright unenjoyable places to be.

College has a lot going against it these days when compared to taking up a trade, at least for a significant section of the workforce. And even though the coming days will continue to be very painful as colleges and universities grope for a sustainable way forward, some opportunities for real reform can be realized.

Many schools will close, and many others will continue in a death spiral race to the bottom, cutting liberal arts programs, going more and more online, and embracing professional school models. But as institutions of higher learning encounter such travails, they are provided with an obvious occasion to recenter themselves on what higher education is truly supposed to be about. This is even more true for Christian colleges and universities, as the temptation to mimic trends at secular schools becomes more obviously a road to perdition.

It runs against the ingrained democratic instincts of Americans—especially in the form of the ideology that anyone can achieve anything if they just work hard enough—but college isn’t the right choice for everyone. And the attempt to make college into something that everyone should experience has done a disservice both to the schools and the students. In general, schools should be smaller, more focused on their mission, and more selective. That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any large schools or that massive research institutions don’t have a legitimate place in the ecosystem of higher education. But it does mean that there should be greater institutional diversity even as there should probably be fewer schools—or at least fewer schools that are trying to imitate larger, secular models.

The Christian historian and philosopher Russell Kirk saw the deleterious effects of the democratization of higher education more than a half-century ago. Modeling colleges and universities on the assembly line of mass industry could only deform the minds of the students and corrupt the institutions themselves. As high school graduates increasingly decide to forgo college and enter the workforce, higher education must embrace radical and structural reform, focusing first of all on the transcendent truths about the human beings who work and study there. In the meantime, we’ll all be better off as more people do the hard and honorable work of making our lights work, our home temperatures comfortable, and our toilets flush.