Most Americans don’t see the value in a four-year degree in higher education, according to a new poll.
An NBC News survey found 63 percent of people saying a bachelor’s degree is “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off,” while 33 percent of survey participants said 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.”
The results are much different compared to 2017, when NBC News found that 49 percent of U.S. adults said a degree was worth the cost and 47 percent said it wasn’t.
However, new sentiments have impacted college enrollment at four-year universities.
The student population at community colleges is steadily increasing as economic circumstances drive more students into vocational programs and others have begun taking college-level courses earlier with dual-enrollment programs in high school.
Community colleges are currently educating more than 12 million students across the country.
“It’s just remarkable to see attitudes on any issue shift this dramatically, and particularly on a central tenet of the American dream, which is a college degree. Americans used to view a college degree as aspirational — it provided an opportunity for a better life. And now that promise is really in doubt,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the NBC News poll.
“What is really surprising about it is that everybody has moved. It’s not just people who don’t have a college degree,” Horwitt added.
Horwitt worked alongside Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.
Their findings show that less than half of surveyed voters — 46 percent — with college degrees see those degrees as worth the cost, compared to 63 percent of college graduates in 2013.
“The cost overwhelms the value,” Jacob Kennedy, a 28-year-old server who obtained an associate degree, told NBC News.
“You go to school with all that student debt — the jobs you get out of college don’t pay that debt, so you have to go find something else that can pay that debt.”
Kennedy currently works as a bartender in Detroit. He said his experience returning to a service industry job after higher education is not uncommon.
He told NBC News, “the number of people who I’ve met working in the service industry who have four-year degrees and then within a year of graduating immediately quit their ‘grown-up jobs’ to go back to the jobs they had.”
Still, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently found undergraduate enrollment up increased for the third year in a row, with bumps across all sectors.
Community college enrollment increased 4 percent, while public four-year school enrollment rose by 1.9 percent and private nonprofit institutions had a 0.9 percent bump.
However, public confidence in higher education is still receding.
“This is a political problem. It’s also a real problem for higher education. Colleges and universities have lost that connection they’ve had with a large swath of the American people based on affordability,” Horwitt said. “They’re now seen as out of touch and not accessible to many Americans.”
The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from Oct. 24-28 through online surveys and telephone interviews sent via text. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5626884-americans-question-value-college-degree/
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