You’re going to college was the refrain to many a conversation I had with my parents starting early in life. My children were told the same thing. There was (then) a large income disparity/index between having a degree and not, so the case for college was easy to make.

This spring (of 2021) in The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), an article by Gabriel Paquette reawakened me to the reality that the case (for college) is harder to make these days. My friends born and raised in Europe have been on the ‘college isn’t for everyone’ bandwagon for a long time and not shy to voice their view.

Borrowing from the CHE, a bare minimum majority of U.S. adults consider college “very important”. As recently as 2013 a supermajority (67% or higher) of adults were in the “very important” camp. The college income premium has been evaporating and is at the lowest INDEX level in my lifetime. College grads are in the workplace making (or trying to make) a living in jobs where a degree isn’t a prerequisite.

These trends, provided they continue, can’t bode well for colleges/universities barely hanging on. College Ed repricing down? Not exactly. Nat’l birth trends (down) coupled with a gradual drying up of international students, well these variables don’t help. Higher Ed solutions will no doubt be forthcoming. But bottom line, what generations of parents have preached to their children in America (finish 12th grade then attend college) may going forward be more child-dependent and less parent-dependent.

Choosing N in the No or Yes college attendance decision is okay people. My Europe-raised friends once had my partial attention on this topic, but now I confess they have my full attention.