A majority of Americans don’t think going into debt for a four-year college degree is worth it, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, released today. Only 22% of 5,200 survey respondents said that college is worth the cost if a student has to take on debt, while another 47% said a four-year degree is worth it only if the student doesn’t have to take out loans. That leaves 29% of respondents who say college isn’t worth its cost, regardless. Even a majority of college graduates themselves are skeptical of the value of a degree today—only a third say college is worth the cost if loans are required.
Maybe these findings shouldn’t be surprising. Total student debt in the U.S. has surpassed $1.6 trillion, with the average loan balance topping $29,000 for 2021-22 graduates. Published tuition prices have ticked up year after year, with some universities now charging more than $80,000 a year for tuition, fees, room and board (though at most private universities, very few, if any, students pay that price out of pocket).
While Americans have been souring on higher education, inflation-adjusted earnings for young adults (aged 25 to 34) without college degrees have risen over the past decade, after three decades of decline for men and stagnation for women, the Pew study shows. But the earnings of men are still not as high as they were in 1970 and the earnings gap with college graduates hasn’t closed. As for young women without college degrees, their earnings have been fairly stable since 1970, but are still far lower than for their male counterparts, or for better educated women.
In 2023, young men with a bachelor’s degree earned a median of $77,000, 71% more than the $45,000 median for men with only a high school diploma, while young women with a bachelor’s degree earned a median of $65,000, 81% more than the $36,000 median for women with only a high school diploma. (The salary figures are adjusted for inflation using 2022 dollars. It’s worth noting that current median salaries for young men with only high school diplomas are still lower than the median in 1970, which was $57,000.) The majority of the nation’s younger workers have not completed college. Of the 36 million workers in the U.S. aged 25 to 34, 19 million have completed only some college or less.
At the same time, after decades of degree-requirement inflation, employers have started to modify their job postings—a number of companies have removed degree requirements from their job listings, instead focusing on “skills-based hiring” strategies. (That said, a recent study found that most employers who have publicly embraced this strategy aren’t yet hiring more workers without college degrees for the reclassified jobs.)
All these trends likely contributed to what Pew found was a growing belief among the American public that a college degree isn’t as necessary to get a good job. Among all adults surveyed, 49% said a college degree was less important than 20 years ago when it comes to getting a well-paying job, while only 32% said it was more important. Republicans have soured more on the value of a degree—57% said it was less important and only 27% more important than two decades ago. But even Democrats are having doubts—43% said a degree was less important and 39% said it was more important.
Overall, only 25% of adults say that today it’s very or extremely important to have a four-year degree to get a well-paying job, while another 35% say it’s somewhat important, and 40% say it’s not too or not at all important.
Pew surveyed 5,203 U.S. adults between Nov. 23 and Dec. 3, 2023 as part of its American Trends Panel, an online survey that selects participants using a random sampling of addresses. The results are weighted to be representative of the entire adult population with respect to race, gender, ethnicity and partisan affiliation. The study also relied on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve.
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