Nearly half of college graduates said they could have landed their current job without holding a degree, according to a new survey from USA Today Blueprint Loans.
While a college education is seen as a necessity to enter a wide range of careers, 46 percent of college grads said they could have gotten their job without forking over the money for a higher education. The report, based on responses from 2,000 American adults, found many are questioning the return of investment on their college education, especially as student loan debt continues to skyrocket.
More than 42 million Americans grapple with student loan debt, and the average college graduate has $29,400 to repay upon leaving school.
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While 37 percent of graduates felt they’d be in the same job without their degree, the majority still believed their education was worth it, according to the survey. Roughly 72 percent said their studies were worth the effort, but 33 percent said they wished they had taken a different educational path or forgone college entirely.
This was heightened among millennials and Gen Z, as 52 and 42 percent, respectively, said in the USA Today Blueprint report that they could have entered their career without a degree.
“While the majority of graduates still feel their degree was a worthwhile investment, many are now questioning whether it was worth the financial burden of a student loan,” Jamie Young, USA Today Blueprint Loans managing editor, said in a statement. “With nearly half of graduates believing they could have obtained their current job without a degree and millions saddled with debt, this study highlights the growing need to evaluate the true return on investment of higher education.”
Wide-scale debate over the value of higher education has swirled in recent years, partly due to surging debt levels but also because of the mismatch between what many graduates report learning in college and the skills their careers actually require.
Nearly four in 10 graduates said they didn’t use their degree in their daily work.
“It’s a reflection of the broken promises of higher education,” HR consultant Bryan Driscoll told Newsweek.
“For years, we’ve been sold the idea that a college degree or more is the key to financial stability and career success. Yet, the reality is that many employers are looking for specific skills and practical experience that’s not taught in any higher education system.”
Driscoll said colleges have become more of a business than a place of learning and routinely “pump” out graduates with debt and degrees that do not translate to real-world skills.
“It’s a system that prioritizes profit over people and it’s failing workers across the board,” he added. “Employers know this, which is why so many are shifting toward skills-based hiring, looking for hands-on experience over education. Sure, there’s still a ‘who do you know’ approach to all this and that is one thing that some colleges do well. But broadly speaking, fancy diplomas don’t mean what they used to.”
Driscoll expects this trend to only grow in the next few years, with companies more likely to invest in training to compensate for the gap.
“The traditional college route is not the only way to success and, for many, all it leads to is debt so crushing no honest person would be able to repay it,” he said.
Colleges will also have to navigate this trend and take a hard look at what and how they’re teaching undergraduates, said Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
“Finding yourself underemployed leads to disillusionment in the college system and the return-on-investment a degree provides,” Beene told Newsweek.
“However, it’s also important to note some sectors are seeing job cuts, especially in white collar, better starting salary positions. There certainly needs to be a reflection on the economic opportunities a college diploma can unlock, but some of these early career setbacks are also simply the result of bad timing in the labor market.”
While college graduates might be second-guessing how much their degrees actually matter, Kevin Thompson, finance expert and founder/CEO of 9i Capital Group, cautioned Americans from completely losing faith in the higher education system.
“College graduates, on average, still out-earn their non-degree counterparts by a significant margin,” Thompson told Newsweek. “The earnings gap can be as high as $27,000 annually, and over a typical 40-year career, this could amount to over $1 million in additional income.”
