It's college graduation season. The tuition price debate continues to rage | Mike Kelly

Last year, as the coronavirus pandemic finally began to fade, the folks who run New Jersey’s state government quietly changed a key standard for hiring new state workers.

New Jersey no longer required applicants for some state jobs to have a college degree.

This was no small thing. Nearly 68,000 people work for the state of New Jersey, with jobs ranging from the governor to the laborers who fill potholes. It stands to reason that not everyone needs four years at Rutgers to qualify for every state job — not even the governor. But no matter. Some key state jobs required a college degree. And the fact that New Jersey had changed its rules never emerged as a major news story — though, perhaps it should have.

Simply put, America’s long love affair with college is on the rocks — and not just in New Jersey. What happened in New Jersey’s state hiring requirements was just a piece of a much larger story. Call it the great college reassessment.

Here, in New Jersey, the decision to downgrade the need for workers with college degrees was hardly an isolated event. Other states, ranging from Pennsylvania to Utah, also stopped demanding in recent years that many state jobs be filled with college graduates. Meanwhile, such giants of the U.S. economy as Google, Apple, IBM and General Mothers, also noticeably changed their hiring rules to say that a college degree was no longer a prime factor for a wide range of positions.

It's easy to explain such changes as just governments and businesses trying to pinch pennies. But that misses a major social trend that has also evolved in recent years.

As America completes yet another college graduation season with all the understandable pomp and adulation for graduates, perhaps it’s also time to take stock at what is taking place not only on campuses but in the hearts and minds of people. Here, I'm not just talking about the protests over the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This is far deeper.

Changing attitudes about higher education value

More Americans, ranging from those who run governments and industries, to parents trying to figure out how to pay bills are asking whether college is a necessary piece of the American dream. Put another way, an increasing number of Americans don’t think college is worth the price.

In plain language, what this means is that the path towards the American Dream in years to come — and the presumption of success that has long been part of that dream — may not necessarily include a four-year stop on a college campus.

This reassessment comes as college enrollments are dropping and as tuitions are skyrocketing. Again, no small factor. And it also comes on the heels of some startling findings — especially for America’s youngest generation.

In 2013, for example, the Gallup survey found that 74% of adults, 18-to-29, said that having a college degree was considered very important.

That kind of support in 2013 for college shouldn’t surprise anyone. For nearly half-a-century, starting with the prime-time years of the Baby Boomer generation, America’s twenty-somethings believed that college was the logical step to a good life. It was almost considered a rite of passage.

But after 2013, the belief in the value of college clearly declined.

Some social scientists blame the aftermath of Great Recession of 2008 and the general souring of faith in the U.S. economy. Some blame a growing lack of trust in government or industry to put a stop to the erosion of high salaried manufacturing jobs that became the foundation of America's middle class. Some just blame the rising levels of political bitterness, fueled by a variety of culture war issues and a general sense that America had lost its edge.

Whatever the reason, one trend became clear: By last year, Gallup found that only 41% of 18-to-29 year olds felt that college was important.

This lessening of support for college comes amid a startling drop in enrollments — and, by extension, the revenues from tuition to actually run colleges. Since 2011, colleges report that there are three million fewer students on their campuses. Since 2020 alone, at least 56 public or non-profit colleges have closed or merged. When you add in the closing of for-profit colleges, the number of campuses that shut their gates or merged is nearly 100.

And that may be just the start of a worsening trend. By next year, America will have its lowest number of high school graduates in many decades, the result of birth rates that fell in the aftermath of the Great Recession. College administrators have been watching the 2025 high school class for years, fearing that they will have fewer and fewer students — customers? — to market their colleges to.

Adding to the shrinking population of potential college students is the fact that faith in the value of college is also dropping.

Five years ago, a joint report and survey, titled “Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work,”by Gallup and the Carnegie Corporation, found that nearly half of parents — 46% — said they would prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school. What’s startling in that finding is that the parents still felt that way even when told to ignore the potential financial crunch of college. In other words, even when money was not a factor, parents said they doubted whether college would improve their children's lives.

Equally startling is that only a slim majority — 54% of parents — were willing to say that they still supported the notion that going to college after high school was an important step for their kids’ development.

“We do see in the United States that parents are becoming slightly less likely to say a college degree is very important,” the report noted in what surely is now an understatement.

The economics of colleges are hard to understand — and perhaps contributing to the decline in numbers of students.

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Are changes needed?

For example, in most businesses, when customers begin to turn their backs on a particular product — say, a particular car model — the managers who run those businesses often make substantial changes. They might change the product they are selling. Most notably perhaps, they might lower prices.

Colleges seem to operate in an alternative economic universe.

Education experts say many colleges have been slow — even blind — to offer new courses that correspond with the rapidly changing technology in the business world. At the same time, experts say that colleges have not required students to engage in the kind of critical thinking that many businesses now require.

During the four-decade stretch, from 1980 to 2020, college prices — tuitions — rose by 180%. Many elite private colleges now tell prospective applicants that the total cost per year is upwards of $80,000. One institution, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, recently announced that its tuition and fees would be $98,000 per year.

Any year now, it will not unreasonable to expect that the annual price tag for even mid-range private universities will exceed $100,000 a year.

Many college administrators push back on this educational version of sticker shock, claiming that most students don't really pay the "full ride" and instead qualify for some form of financial aid or scholarship program. But even if a student is charged just one-quarter of the annual price of college — say, around $25,000-a-year — that still means that the cost of a four-year degree can still reach six-figures. For middle class families, that kind of financial burden is the equivalent of having to buy another home with a long-term mortgage.

College was never meant to be this kind of challenge. But that’s what it has become. At the same time, college graduates can still count on earning as much as 25% more over the course of a career than someone who opted not to attend college.

But at what cost?

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the financial pressures on students had become so great that for every five students who enroll in a four-year college, only two would graduate and find a job that matched their field of study. Nearly 40% of new students would never graduate at all. And some 20% would be chronically underemployed.

Such is the crisis.

You don’t need to major in economics to understand the dilemma here. Yes, college is interesting. And good students actually become better students.

But after years of excess, colleges are facing the equivalent of diminished returns for students.

So congratulations to all the new graduates. Smile while you can.

The big bad world is waiting with a reality check.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: College graduations 2024: Is tuition too high? Debate rages