Is college worth it? Young males are opting out
- Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 28
- 2 min read
As May 1 -- College Decision Day -- approaches, a growing number of young men are deciding that college is too costly and too chancy, reports Francesca Maglione on Bloomberg News.
Girls earn higher grades than boys in K-12, and are more likely to enroll in college and earn a degree. "Between 2011 and 2022, the number of Americans attending college dropped by 1.2 million, with men accounting for almost the entirety of that drop," writes Maglione.
In Ohio's Lake County, the high schools are working with community colleges to use empty classrooms for career-tech classes in welding, nursing and other fields. The county has hundreds of factories and fabrication labs.
Young males hear on social media that college isn't necessary. Even students who've done well in high school are opting out of college, says Liz Brainard, advisory director for the Lake Geauga Educational Assistance Foundation. They’re “bored,” she says.
Jayden Owens, 19, decided against college because he wanted to start earning immediately. He's working at an ambulance company and training to be a paramedic. He grew up without a father, and sees working and earning as masculine.
“You want to learn, you want to protect, you want to provide,” Owens says. “For males, they are going into these types of fields because it forces you to be masculine.”
The University of Montana has revived "logger sports" to draw male students, reports a Hechinger story on Missing Men. The Woodsman team competes as a forestry extracurricular. Only 42 percent of students are male.
Of course, young males with a bachelor's degree earn much more than those without a post-high school credential. But going to college doesn't pay for those who don't earn a degree, and many students do not. Even some four-year degrees don't raise earnings.
Writing in the Washington Post, Michelle Singletary has sensible advice for young people trying to figure out whether college is worth their time and money.
College debt has reached $1.62 trillion, she notes. The Trump administration is trying to collect the money.
There's a significant college wage premium for people who earn a bachelor's degree, reports the New York Fed, very little for those who drop out. Furthermore, the return on investment depends on the cost of tuition, time to graduate and the major. “As many as a quarter of college graduates appear to end up in relatively low-paying jobs, and for them, a college degree may not be worth it, at least in terms of the economic payoff,” the Fed's researchers warn.
Young people should consider starting at community college, then transferring to a state university, writes Singletary. "Drop this whole elitist attitude that a brand-name college defines people’s worth to all employers."
Odd that all of the males pictured were white while the biggest gender gap in college is between black females and black males. Also, job growth is with healthcare as much as manufacturing as shown by the inspiring paramedic but that percentage of nurses who are males is stuck at around 14%.
As indicated her by a professor at Princeton, even colleges aren't hiring their white, male victims. So why should a young man go to college. The half dozen or so who might get through to a good job, excepted. But the cost of not making the cut is lifelong student loan debt
The entire K-PhD credential industry has become a make-work program for industry employees.
A college credential is needed to get a corporate job. Corporations are going all DEI and reducing the men they hire and drastically the white men. That means a college credential is far less valuable to white men in the future. Now, real learning of a hard field could prove valuable but with the drag of college debt?
Now, men who study engineering but then choose not to pursue an engineering career do find value in their studies in their future life.