25. College Has Become the Entry Requirement to the Middle Class, Adrift

College Has Become the Entry Requirement to the Middle Class

More jobs require postsecondary education and training beyond high school now than ever before. At the same time, college degrees are more expensive and exclusive than they’ve ever been. The convergence of these trends has intensified inequality among those who are lucky enough to obtain a degree and those who aren’t.

While access to college has improved for women and people of color, and more people as a whole are attending college today than did in the ’70s, acceptance rates across the board have declined markedly and prices have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, lower-skilled jobs have been sent overseas and repetitive tasks left to computers. Increasingly, available jobs are complex and require a postsecondary education.

What to do? I’m an advocate of increasing enrollment drastically at America’s public universities by adopting hybrid models of instruction. But we also need more options for vocational training, such that non-college-bound youth can learn important trades that will allow them to create financial security.