The value of college is something people used to pretty much agree on. In 2013, just over a decade ago, the number of young people who thought a college degree was very important was 74 percent, according to a gallup poll. By 2019, that figure had fallen to just 41 percent.
So what is going on here?
Of course there are many factors, but in this same period there have been a growing number of messages in popular culture giving very skeptical views about college. The idea that “college is a scam” has become a kind of memes on social media platforms like Youtube.
How are these critiques shaping popular perceptions of higher education? Are they changing who goes to college or who wants to go?
To help us delve deeper into these questions, we invited three experts with rich perspectives for this week's episode of the EdSurge Podcast:
- Shalin Jyotishi, senior advisor for education, labor and the future of work at New America. He recently served as the first Civil Society Fellow in artificial intelligence and Machine Learning at the World Economic Forum, where he led research on ai, job quality, and job growth.
- Ben Wildavsky, author of the new book, “The Professional Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections.” He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.
- And Roy Spence, president and co-founder of global advertising agency GSD&M. His company is the one that came up with the famous 1980s anti-litter campaign, “Don't Mess With Texas,” so he has experience influencing public narratives. Spence is also the founder of the nonprofit organization. make it movementwhose goal is to encourage young people to pursue college or other high-quality educational options after high school.
A key reason attacks on the value of college have resonated with so many people, the panelists noted, is that many parents of traditional college-age students had failed in their own attempts to access higher education.
“The Achilles heel of what I think is overall a very successful higher education system is that we have very, very bad completion rates,” Wildavsky said. “And I think that contributes to the fact that there are a lot of people who haven't had a good experience. “Forty million Americans have some college and no degree, and that ends up with the worst of both worlds, which is debt and no degree… a lot of people haven't had a good experience.”
One conclusion was that when young people hear the message that they need to go to college, they may not understand the many shapes and sizes of colleges available to them.
“I definitely think that when we talk about 'college as a scam' and that narrative, we need to disaggregate what we mean by college,” said New America's Jyotishi. “Many people think that going to college means getting a degree. In many cases it doesn't have to be that way. Community colleges (and increasingly many universities) offer non-degree credentials, microcredentials, certificate programs, or preparation courses for industry certifications. And universities offer apprenticeship programs.
“So there's kind of a false choice at play where people think they have to choose between liberal arts or career preparation. And at many universities you can have both. And I think the more we can incorporate that into the narrative, the more useful it would be.”
The danger, these experts say, is that some people who would benefit from college will be dissuaded from seriously considering higher education.
And getting the word out may end up involving not only a new message about the value of a university, but also the use of different messengers. For example, Jyotishi sees unions as an untapped way to help inform members about various college offerings that could help them move up the ranks or change careers.
This is the third episode in a podcast series we call Doubting College, where we explore: What happened to public belief in college? And how does that influence the decisions that young people make about their future?
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Cloudy, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page.
