In 1990 I was nearing the end of my college days. An older adult (in his late 30s), told me that I would never be taken seriously until I had gotten an MBA.
I was like: “Isn’t four years of college enough to work in the marketing or the accounting department?” But apparently not, according to the thinking of that era.
Back in my college days—about 35 years ago—young people were encouraged to get as much higher education as possible.
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Should we blame the Baby Boomers? Why not? My parents, neither of whom had a college degree, ended up doing well. My dad started his own business. My mom started a second business with my dad. They prospered, but they both had to take roundabout paths to success, without college degrees.
Both of my parents reported that their fellow Baby Boomers with college degrees had a much easier time of it. As a result, “thou shalt go to college” was drilled into my head from an early age.
I did go to college. I got a four-year degree in economics. It helped me land my first job.
In the decades after my graduation, however, the landscape started to change. The college degree lost the scarcity value it had had in my parents’ early adulthood, or even mine.
At the same time, colleges and universities began concocting more low-value and worthless degree programs, in everything from communications and visual arts to various ethnic and gender-related fields. (Who in their right mind would pay for a degree in “queer studies”?)
The tide shifted dramatically about a decade ago, in the wake of the 2007-9 financial crisis. I was then meeting a lot of Millennials with liberal arts degrees who were working at restaurant jobs while paying back their student loans. (Not that there’s anything wrong with working at a restaurant, mind you. But you don’t need a college degree to do that. You shouldn’t get a college degree to do that.)
For a while the situation turned around. New college grads experienced a mini-boom in employment from 2021-4, as businesses were hoarding staff, and paying a lot of young grads unusually high starting salaries. In 2023, my friend told me that his daughter landed a corporate position at a salary of $90K, with a very ordinary 4-year degree from the University of Cincinnati, and no practical experience.
That was in 2023. Now, as you’ve likely heard, the job market for new college grads has imploded. The overall unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, which is not that high. But the unemployment rate for recent college grads stands at 5.8 percent, with an even higher rate for young people overall.
Should they all become plumbers and HVAC technicians? Some people seem to think so. “Learn to code” was the cliché of a few years ago, leveled at anyone with a hifalutin degree who couldn’t find a job. Now “learn a trade” has become stock advice for college graduates who majored in anything but nursing, or a similar healthcare-related field. Even computer science and business school grads are having a tough time right now. It isn’t only the kids who majored in queer studies.
I get it. And yes, most major population centers could use some more HVAC technicians.
But at the end of the day, it makes no more sense for everyone to become a blue-collar tradesperson, than it does for everyone to get an MBA. Sooner or later, the law of supply and demand will kick in. There can be too many HVAC techs, if the field becomes too popular. (There can be too many nurses, too.)
What is true is this: our decades-long fascination with the 4-year college degree has finally hit the undeniable saturation point. This really happened around 2010, but many students—and their parents—were in denial. In 2025, denial is no longer possible, even for students and parents who dream of a sheepskin from a particular university.
College enrollment is declining, and has been declining for more than a decade. At some point, the law of supply and demand will shift the other way. Young people with college degrees will become comparatively rare again. Demand for graduates in most mainstream college majors should recover.
In the meantime, the value of a college degree (for anything other than a degree in a healthcare field) will be less than it was when I graduated in the early 1990s.
In recent years, I have met many intelligent young people who are skipping college altogether. This would have been unthinkable in my youthful days. But young people today certainly have their reasons.
-ET