The college crisis

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

Is having a four-year degree still relevant and necessary in today’s world?

For years, a four-year college degree has been viewed as a ticket to a rewarding, successful life. But today’s students and parents are increasingly skeptical. In 2023, a poll commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found confidence in higher education at a historic low. One of the biggest declines was among people aged 18 to 34.  

Several factors explain this:  

• Americans increasingly believe a four-year degree is overpriced and out of reach. A majority now don’t regard college as worth the cost.
• Politicization and unrest on college campuses have generated growing distrust.
• As four-year graduates face increasing unemployment and under-employment, interest is surging in alternatives, such as skilled trades and short-term industry credentials.  

Yet college continues to pay off and open doors for many young people. And our nation needs doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and informed citizens.  

How should students and parents approach post-secondary education decisions in this rapidly evolving environment?  

One point is clear. In the words of Jenna Robinson of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal: “Approach this question with a clean slate — no preconceptions.” 

Four-year college degrees  

The number one reason most students go to college is to get a better paying job. How does a four-year degree correlate with enhanced career and financial success? A good place to begin an investigation is the 2024 report “Does College Pay Off?  

A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis” by The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP).  

The report measured Return on Investment (ROI) — the amount a student can expect to gain financially from pursuing a degree — for 53,000 degrees and certificate programs at thousands of colleges nationwide. It defines ROI as how much college increases lifetime earnings, minus the costs of college and the earnings lost during enrollment.  

About 70 percent of undergraduate programs pay off in higher lifetime earnings (without further education), while about a quarter (23 percent) are likely to leave students worse off financially, according to FREOPP’s analysis. In 2025, the top four bachelor’s degrees in terms of ROI were technical in nature: engineering, computer science, economics, and nursing.  

But it’s important to note that sub-baccalaureate programs in the technical trades — such as HVAC, precision metal working, and vehicle maintenance and repair — are more lucrative than the median bachelor’s degree. This is also true for two-year degrees in nursing and other health professions.  

The same program of study can lead to widely differing financial outcomes, depending on the college. For example, business majors have a positive, middle-range ROI, on average. But 13 percent of business programs — generally at institutions with higher drop-out rates — have a negative ROI. More than half of master’s degrees never pay off financially.  

The biggest risk factors for negative ROI are dropping out and failure to complete a degree in four years. (FREOPP data for each school and program factor in these risks.) Half of college loan defaulters dropped out of college, and nationally, nearly 40 percent of students don’t finish in six years.  

In some cases, lower prospective earnings reflect market forces: Too many majors chasing too few jobs, as in fine arts versus nursing. But often, there’s a serious disconnect between what colleges teach and what the work world requires.  

“Students make high-stakes decisions based on incomplete — often self-serving — information,” writes James Andrews in “Selling Dreams, Not Reality.” Many colleges aren’t transparent about where certain majors are likely to lead, though these data are available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and tools such as College Scorecard. “When a program survives on enrollment rather than outcomes, the incentive is clear: sell the degree, not the result,” explains Andrews. 

Andrews cites the psychology major at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) — the institution’s most popular major and the nation’s fifth most popular. CSUMB markets psychology as a “launchpad into a broad spectrum of professional fields,” implying that grads will be prepared for counseling and social service careers. In reality, the major provides little clinical training and most students remain unaware that such jobs usually require education or licensure beyond a BA, explains Andrews.  

Given the rapid rise of AI, students can no longer count on computer engineering and other technical degrees to ensure high financial pay-off or employability. A 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of New York study of graduates’ employment in the first five years found that fields such as engineering and computers still pay best, but majors in nutrition, art history, and philosophy all outperform some STEM-based counterparts, including engineering, economics, and finance, on employment prospects.  

What about reports that employers and government entities are increasingly prioritizing skills-based hiring over four-year degrees? There is little evidence that this is happening yet, according to Forbes. In fact, “degree credentialing” is increasing because of the current soft labor market. 

The importance of soft skills  

Beyond financial ROI, as students and parents weigh higher education options, they should consider what skills and abilities employers say they value most in new hires.  

The answer: Today, employers place a premium on skills that machines don’t have. These are “soft skills” — both interpersonal (how people work and interact with others) and intellectual (well-developed reading, writing, and reasoning abilities).  

Deloitte forecasts that soft skills-intensive occupations will grow at 2.5 times the rate of other occupations and make up two-thirds of all jobs by 2030. In survey after survey, human resource managers reiterate that new grads overwhelmingly lack these skills. Nearly 90 percent identify a soft-skills deficit as the top reason new hires fail. 

Developing soft skills  

Most high school grads now arrive at college with inadequate reading, reasoning, and communications skills, thanks to their immersion in digital media and K-12 schools’ declining academic rigor. In 2024, a much-discussed article in The Atlantic — “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” — exposed the scale of the problem.  

Many STEM students are being “taught that high levels of verbal fluency will have no effect on their careers,” lamented college consultant Liza Libes at Minding the Campus, a subsidiary of the National Association of Scholars. Yet sophisticated communications and reasoning abilities are vital in today’s increasingly AI-shaped work environment.  

“AI excels at scale, speed and data,” explains Haider Ali, CTO of WebFoundr and a Forbes Councils member. But human workers are essential when judgment, creativity, negotiation, or oversight is required, he observes. Putting AI at the center of business enables human beings to become generalists — pivoting across tasks, solving problems, and handling ambiguous situations.  

Colleges usually rely on scattershot “general education” or “distribution” requirements to bolster students’ reading and reasoning abilities. But this is insufficient. “The fine-tuned problem-solving, analytical, writing and speaking skills” that employers want are “often mastered in a classic four-year liberal arts program,” as the Society for Human Resource Management has pointed out. 

According to a 2024 report from the James G. Martin Center in North Carolina, research on the science of learning demonstrates that the ability to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize new information and combine it in new ways is, to a good extent, a function of broad, interconnected background knowledge, or “cultural literacy.”  

Academic disciplines such as philosophy, history, and English literature — when well-taught — are designed to develop the higher-order cognitive abilities that foster evidence-based reasoning. These abilities grow as students analyze and debate conflicting ideas, interpret ambiguity, and build verbal fluency.  

That’s why COO Robert Goldstein of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, told Fortune in 2024 that his company is seeking new grads with a strong humanities background. A top Goldman Sachs executive predicts that the rise of AI will bring about the “revenge of the liberal arts.” In 2025, tech giant Palantir announced a fellows’ program in which high school grads skip college, work at the company, and begin their career with a month-long course on Western Civilization.  

Interpersonal skills  

Besides having poorly developed reading and reasoning skills, today’s young people often lack the ability to speak persuasively to bosses and colleagues, to demonstrate work habits such as time management and initiative, and to work effectively in teams through collaboration and conflict resolution.  

Some colleges now offer classes intended to rectify these deficits. But common sense makes clear that the best place to acquire civility and a strong work ethic is in the home. 

The same goes for teamwork and leadership skills. Young people used to hone these skills through hierarchical social activities such as sports and clubs, from which they are increasingly disengaged. Parents can encourage such activities, along with part-time and summer jobs, work-study programs, and internships, which employers often view as a signal of real-world experience.  

What about cost?  

The daunting cost of a four-year degree remains the biggest concern for prospective students. The average bachelor’s degree holder takes on nearly $30,000 in debt and requires 20 years to pay off.  

Families should, however, know that the gap between the sticker price and what students actually pay has widened in recent years. In 2020-21, 82 percent of undergrads at public four-year institutions and 87 percent at private institutions received financial aid. In 2024-25, the average tuition discount for freshmen at private schools was 56 percent, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers.  

Families can lower costs through Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program (PSEO), which enables high school students to take college courses at public expense, and military scholarships through ROTC and the National Guard.  

Minnesotans should also know that our state’s public higher education systems (including technical colleges) rank second in the nation on ROI for graduates’ median lifetime earnings, according to FREOPP. Neighboring Iowa ranks third, and South Dakota — which has adopted financial incentives to attract Minnesota students — ranks first.  

Alternatives to four-year degrees  

The lesson for students is to have a career game plan and understand the importance of their choices. “Many students start their college career aimlessly, with no real idea for their lives post-degree,” says the Martin Center’s Jenna Robinson, “but students cause their own success.”  

Robinson advises young people to start with a question: “What do you want to do with your life?” If you didn’t like high school, she notes, you probably won’t like a four-year college. Students can take a gap year to form a plan and get a job. (In Southwest Minnesota in 2024, for example, 16 percent of high school sophomores surveyed planned to get a job right out of school, up from four percent in 2017.) “You can learn a skilled trade, join the military and acquire a skill you can build on, or stack credentials,” advises Robinson. “You can always go to college.” 

Nationally, demand is strong for skilled trades, acquired at community and technical colleges or through apprenticeships. Overall, young people with vocational credentials are employed at a higher rate than young college grads, and earnings in many occupations are higher than the median for a four-year degree.  

A good example: Registered nurses (RNs) with an associate degree from a Minnesota college earn more than $71,700 within two years of graduation, while students with a four-year bachelor’s degree in Parks, Recreation & Leisure studies earn under $32,540, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). Electricians, welders, and industrial machinery mechanics are among those who earn above median statewide wages ($26.22), as do two-year radiological technologists and diagnostic medical sonographers.  

Another option is to “stack credentials” — to accumulate shorter-term degrees, certifications, or micro-credentials that build toward higher-level degrees or career advancement in fields from automotive technology to nursing.  

Finally, as student interest in four-year colleges has waned, “industry credentials” have soared in popularity. These promise rapid, affordable skills acquisition — completed in weeks or months — in fields ranging from data science and marketing to project management. But caution is in order. Only 12 percent of the 1.1 million micro-credentials offered lead to significant wage gains, and only 18 percent are in demand by employers, according to “Holding New Credentials Accountable for Outcomes,” a study by the American Enterprise Institute and Burning Glass.  

DEED offers excellent data tools to help families sort through their higher ed alternatives. Its regional analysts advise high school students on education and career choices, and its expositions feature simulated, hands-on career activities. The department’s short, informative guide entitled, “How do I know what job is right for me?” is a great place for young people to start their search.  

DEED’s user-friendly “Career Pathways Tool” includes a worksheet that helps students explore potential careers and provides information on wages and market demand for each. Other data tools include a “College Major to Career Connector,” which describes all the lines of work to which a specific major can lead, and a “Graduate Earnings and Cost Calculator.” A DEED publication entitled, “Stackable Credentials: Myths and Reality” helps students evaluate when investing in short-term, cumulative credentials would benefit them.  

Young people who use DEED’s tools can discover little-known majors such as Ridgewater College’s state-of-the-art, two-year “Nondestructive Testing Technology” program, which trains students to detect defects in metals. Its graduates are in high demand in the aerospace, defense, energy, and advanced manufacturing industries. 

On the other hand, students who aspire to a BA but hope to save money by first pursuing a two-year “general studies” degree at a community college will learn they must actually transfer and earn a four-year degree to experience a return on their investment of time and money.  

How to choose the right college  

How can students who pursue a four-year degree navigate modern academia’s intellectual and moral malaise? They can turn to guides such as City Journal’s “2025 College Rankings”; The Heritage Foundation’s state-by-state “Choose College with Confidence” guide; the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s “College Free Speech Rankings,” and the Martin Center’s list of Great Books programs, “Preserving the Canon.”  

In addition, there’s a growing number of autonomous, public university programs devoted to American civics and intellectual freedom, such as Arizona State University’s outstanding School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.  

Catholic students can consult The Cardinal Newman Society’s list of recommended colleges. The Center for Academic Faithfulness & Flourishing has a guide to Christian colleges. Resources for Jewish students include the Tikvah Academic Fellowship and the Hillel guide.  

The future may be uncertain, but for enterprising young people who plan with care, it is bright.