Bachelor’s Degrees Aren’t Cool Anymore

“In a new research brief , The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Education found that only 44 percent of American high school students expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in 2022, down from 72 percent in 2002. The study also revealed a parental gap among high school students, with only 33 percent of first-generation students aspiring to a bachelor’s degree in 2022, compared to 60 percent two decades earlier. What are Americans, particularly those concerned about the state of higher education, to make of these findings? Are they just one of many societal indicators of an “empire in decline,” or are they more localized signs of a defect in the American system of higher education? To answer this question, one must first understand that this skepticism is not exactly borne out in the decisions of these young Americans. Data on immediate college enrollment rates of American high school completers—provided by the National Center for Education Statistics—demonstrates a fairly constant trend of high schoolers enrolling in college from 2002 to 2022. Though it is true that 3.2 percent fewer high school graduates immediately enrolled in college from 2002 to 2022, these numbers are rather deceptive. High schoolers are not systematically abandoning college as an option. --> More high school completers immediately enrolled in colleges before the pandemic in 2019 than in 2002, 66.2 percent to 65.2 percent, respectively. This indicates that high schoolers are not systematically abandoning college as an option. Rather, when read in conjunction with the Pell Institute’s findings, they seem to believe that higher education has less of a comparative advantage. This suggests that the Pell Institute’s findings are more reflective of a general pessimism towards college amongst the nation’s youth than the impending collapse of the American university marketplace. So why, if young people are still enrolling at consistently high rates, are they so skeptical? Pundits typically cite ideological bias, social disaffection, rising costs, credential inflation, and poor labor market returns. Each contributes something, but none has been quite as ignored as this: the internet has effectively dismantled the cultural bottlenecks that historically upheld the fiat value of a college education. Historically, the prestige of higher education relied on a form of geographic and information monopoly. In 2002, the narrative surrounding a teenager’s future was tightly managed by local gatekeepers—parents, high school guidance counselors, and FCC-regulated television networks that uniformly reinforced the traditional American Dream. If these gatekeepers insisted that a bachelor’s degree was the sole gateway to a middle-class life, a teenager had few tools to verify or challenge that claim. The cultural value of the degree was artificially protected by a lack of visible alternatives. Higher education has been forced to compete in an open attention economy. --> Today, those bottlenecks are gone. With teenagers spending an average of eight and a half hours a day consuming decentralized digital media, the local gatekeeper has been entirely bypassed. In this informational vacuum, higher education has been forced to compete in an open attention economy against hyper-charismatic, highly relatable creators who operate with zero institutional overhead. The result is a direct challenge to higher education’s fiat value. A fiat currency only holds worth because an institution mandates it, and the public collectively agrees to believe in it. For decades, the bachelor’s degree enjoyed this exact privilege. But the decentralized internet introduced alternative currencies of success. Where previous generations dreamed of being astronauts, today’s aspirational figures are different. --> The most popular streamers on the live streaming platforms Twitch and Kick—figures such as Adin Ross, IShowSpeed, Jynxzi, Kai Cenat, all of whom gross millions of views (and sometimes dollars) per month—center their content around gaming, gambling, cryptocurrency, and all sorts of “get rich quick” schemes that bypass traditional credential-based career routes. These are, for millions of young Americans, the most visible and compelling models of adult success available. This helps explain the aspirations of American teenagers. According to a 2021 poll, American boys ages 13-17 now most commonly list YouTuber and professional gamer as two of the top jobs they “want to be when they grow up.” Where previous generations dreamed of being astronauts, today’s aspirational figures are different. The streamer in his gaming chair was a teenager not long ago. He is accessible, relatable, visibly wealthy, and he got there without a diploma. The culture has effectively lowered the horizons of an entire generation by handing young people, without limitation, a window into a world that makes a college education look boring and slow by comparison. And if colleges were delivering an experience so transformative, so intellectually galvanizing, that it could compete with that window, perhaps the damage would be limited. But too many of them are not. Sherman Criner is a recent graduate of Duke University, where he majored in history and public policy. Originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, Criner will enroll in Stanford’s history PhD program upon graduation, with plans to study nineteenth-century American political history. The post Bachelor’s Degrees Aren’t Cool Anymore appeared first on The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal .

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