ST. PAUL, Minn. — At a college information session held at Central High School earlier this year, students listened to Tory Park, career readiness coordinator, for advice on how to narrow down their list of places to attend. I listened. Apply.
The message was that students needed to balance two main elements. One is to make a good “fit,” which means considering details such as the institution’s size, distance from home, and whether there is a program that interests the student. and appropriate “fit.” It means whether the student has the academic ability required by the university.
But there was a third element at work in this room, at least in the minds of many students. Let’s call this the “doubt factor.” The thorny question is whether higher education is really necessary to get the kind of job you want after high school.
Lily Krieger, a fourth-year student here who is interested in fashion and business, said: I don’t think she necessarily needs to go to university. Maybe they do it for their parents. ”
Another student who attended the session, Jamal Williams, said he was ready to attend college if he could afford it and had already applied through a high school program that allowed him to take classes at a nearby two-year college in the afternoon. He said he is receiving credits. But he also regularly speaks online with young people who have found a way to make a living pursuing his main interests, music and coding, without a college degree.
“I have been studying cases done by people my age. [college]Then they get out of prison, use their degrees, and still struggle to make a living for themselves,” he says. “If that’s going to happen anyway, I don’t want to waste four years of time and effort on it.”
These students have grown up with a lot of messages telling them to go to college, and this public high school is proud of its track record of supporting those who want to go to college. But these students have also grown up hearing serious criticism of the university. College is too expensive, it’s probably not worth it, the teaching methods are outdated, the content covered is outdated, etc.
And students coming out of high school have more options than ever before, with more and more reports that employers are willing to hire them even if they don’t have a college degree, even at big companies like Google. ing. As a result, the choices students face are a little more complex.
As a result, students and their families have become more knowledgeable customers of higher education institutions. Ashley Welk, a school counselor at Central University, said that in previous generations, many students entered four-year residential colleges without really knowing what they wanted to major in or do with their careers. But she says that has changed.
“They want to plan before they go,” she says of most of the students she currently works with. “And what we’ve switched more and more of as counselors in the program and as educators is really getting into that career mindset.”
In recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, some options have become more popular as a result of this new knowledge, she says.
One is that more and more students are considering taking a gap year. “It’s expensive to go to school, so they want to take time off and see what they want to do,” she added. Some students also strategically move to the state where they want to attend college, working for a year to earn residency in order to qualify for in-state tuition at public institutions.
In addition, an increasing number of students are including two-year universities on their application list. About 30 percent of the school’s fourth-year students apply to two-year colleges “until they know if they can financially afford to attend a four-year college,” Welk said. Previously, that percentage was about 15 percent.
This trend appears to be occurring nationwide.a Gallup poll It found that American adults’ confidence in higher education has fallen from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent last year.
This is the second episode of a podcast series we’ve dubbed “Doubting College,” which explores “What Happened to Public Beliefs About College?” And how does that shape the choices young people make about what they do after high school?
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page.
The first episode of the series featured the Thiel Fellowship, a program started more than a decade ago by billionaire Peter Thiel that pays $100,000 a year to 20 young people who won’t go to college. We examined the role this program played in bringing highly skeptical critiques of universities into the mainstream of American discourse.
However, none of the students at Central High School had ever heard of the Thiel Fellowship, points out Mr. Park, the counselor who led the university information session. Data continues to show long-term benefits for universities.
“The people who are suggesting that students shouldn’t go to college are usually wealthy and white, meaning they have some sort of access to other things that will support them on their journey. It’s the people,” Park said. “Compared to students who weren’t eligible, having access to an education is really important for them to solidify their future and what they want their future to be.”
The story is different for students at private high schools, as they are still expected to attend a four-year university. At least that’s the case at Woodside Priory School, a Catholic high school near Silicon Valley. Nathan Mathabane, the school’s associate director of college counseling, said college readiness is core to the school’s mission. But even there, we occasionally hear questions about the rising costs of higher education.
“At the schools I visited, tuition and attendance costs are scheduled to be $88,000 a year next year, but the estimated earnings for graduates will be around $70,000 or $80,000 in entry-level jobs after graduation.” Get your degree. And it feels like a big delta,” he says. “Depending on how you look at education, it will take a long time for that degree to become valuable. That’s the challenge we face in higher education right now, and how that part plays out.” I’m interested in crabs.”