The College Backlash Is a Mirage As Enrollment Keeps Going Up

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/college-degree-value-enrollment/685384/

    Posted by jonfla

    4 Comments

    1. Paywalled šŸ™

      From what I could read it drew on Bachelor’s conferrals increasing to argue that enrollment is increasing which makes no sense at all.

      Small colleges are designed to get you your degree ASAP and if youre a poor who commutes or does it online it’s generally entirely paid for by the US DOE. No shit people are gonna do it when it’s ā€œfreeā€

    2. Bill_Nihilist on

      >A large body of research finds that college graduates whose standardized-test scores placed them on the margin of acceptance to a public university in their state outearn their counterparts who attend community college or enter the workforce after high school. ā€œAcross the entire parental-income distribution, we think the benefit very substantially outweighs the cost,ā€ Zach Bleemer, a Princeton University economics professor, told me. ā€œCollege is very clearly worth it for almost everyone who is currently going to college and for people who are on the margin of going to college.ā€

      > So why do people insist, against the evidence, that college isn’t worth the cost? … Donald Trump has waged war against elite universities. His vice president, J. D. Vance, has argued that ā€œprofessors are the enemy.ā€ The result of such provocations has been to negatively polarize the Republican base against the idea of higher education. Across surveys, Republicans report cratering confidence in the value of a degree.

    3. Bill_Nihilist on

      > the cost of attending a public four-year college has fallen by more than 20 percent since 2015, even before adjusting for inflation.

      > Even after accounting for student-debt payments, the average college graduate nets about $8,000 more a year than someone with only a high-school diploma.

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