The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.
Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream.
Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade.
Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”
The trades seem to be doing just fine from what I can see
That’s just a small subset of non college grads. If you’re going to compare people who are aiming for a specific profession in a specific industry, you should look at the career outcomes of the college path, too, with specific majors that are feeders into specific careers.
Maybe you can argue that plumbers are doing “just fine” with the median wage at around $60k per year (across the entire career trajectory from the age of 20 to 60), or that welders make a median $50k, but those numbers don’t come anywhere close to accountants ($81k), financial specialists ($82k), financial analysts ($102k), electrical engineers ($112k).
And you could argue that I’m cherry picking professions, and I am, but simply by saying “trades” is also cherry picking a profession.