As college students across the country prepare for their final exams, many assume they’re entering a job market eager to receive them. But the latest data tell a harsher truth: Americans with bachelor’s degrees now make up a record 25% of the unemployed, up from under 10% three decades ago. And for those ages 20 to 24 — the very students heading toward commencement — unemployment has climbed to 9.2%, a year-over-year spike not seen outside recessions.
For many parents, these statistics land like a betrayal. They followed the script they were handed, and they urged their children to do the same: work hard, pad the résumé, secure admission, earn the degree. They were assured the payoff would be waiting on the other side. Instead, the very credential that students were promised would open doors for them is now failing even to keep those doors from closing in their faces.
The promise of the bachelor’s degree is faltering, and the public knows it. A new Overton Insights poll shows only 14% of voters believe a four-year degree is always worth its nearly $150,000 average price tag. Degrees once signaled potential. Now, to many employers, they signal little to nothing at all.
For generations, college served as society’s default credential, a shorthand for competence, diligence, and upward mobility. But when everyone is told to get a degree, when the government underwrites trillions in loans to guarantee they can, and when universities respond by inflating tuition far faster than wages or value — all while inflating grades and decreasing educational attainment — the signal loses clarity. A credential propped up by limitless lending isn’t a marker of merit; it’s a product with a distorted price. More inputs do not create more value. They dilute it.
Employers have noticed. A survey of 1,000 hiring managers released this spring found that 25% of employers will eliminate bachelor’s degree requirements for some roles this year. Seven in 10 now rank relevant experience above degrees in hiring decisions. And among the companies that have already dropped degree requirements, 84% say the change made hiring more effective.
Young adults see it too. A recent study from Tallo found 62% aren’t working in the career they intended to pursue. One in four now openly regret going to college at all.
And even when the pipeline “works,” it works poorly. One study showed that the majority of recent graduates are underemployed a year after finishing school, working jobs that don’t require the degree they spent four years (and often tens of thousands of borrowed dollars) to obtain.
Perhaps parents still cling to the college degree as an ideal societal benchmark because it once served as a map. But the terrain has shifted beyond recognition. The knowledge economy now rewards capability, not ceremony. Practical skill, not parchment. A portfolio, not a transcript.
Increasingly, young adults who bypass the degree are finding more traction than those who collect one. Efforts such as the mikeroweWORKS Foundation promote the trades, a response to high demand. Ford’s CEO, for example, indicated that his company has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with six-figure salaries that it is trying to fill. For those not interested in manual labor, programs such as Praxis offer knowledge workers a bootcamp experience to develop practical skills useful to employers while guaranteeing participants a job upon graduation.
Simply put, parents who still assume that “college equals security” are operating on a lagging indicator from another era. The labor market has moved on. The uncomfortable truth is this: Insisting that your children follow the old script does not protect them. It exposes them. It directs them into the very bottleneck where millions of other hopeful graduates now wait, degrees in hand, wondering why no one is acknowledging them.
The degree is no longer the differentiator. It is the default, and defaults do not confer advantage. Parents must stop treating higher education as a moral duty or a rite of passage. It is a purchase, and like any purchase, it deserves scrutiny. Its value must be proven, not presumed. If the numbers tell us anything, it’s that the era of automatic returns is over.
TRUMP VS. THE DEMOCRATS ON THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
The world has changed. The question is whether parents will allow their children to change with it — or whether they’ll push them, lovingly and mistakenly, into a system that promises opportunity while delivering diminishing odds.
The degree once opened doors. Today, it risks locking the next generation out.
Connor Boyack is president of Libertas Network and author of 53 books, including Skip College: Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree.
