Is the Higher Ed Bubble Finally Bursting?

Is the Higher Ed Bubble Finally Bursting?

Jason Bedrick and Adam Kissel of the Heritage Foundation seem to think so. They might be on to something here.

They write at Newsweek:

The College Bubble Is Bursting. Good Riddance

A college degree used to be a reliable passport to a better-paying career. To employers it signaled a level of knowledge and intellectual skills not shared by someone without a degree. That’s why students and parents have been willing to pay increasingly higher tuition, taking out student loans and second mortgages before the graduates earn a dime.

But what if employers lose trust in a college degree?

A recent study finds that employers now believe colleges are not providing value. According to the Freedom Economy Index, a joint project of job-recruiting service RedBalloon and PublicSquare, an overwhelming 91 percent of the 70,000 small businesses they surveyed said colleges are not “graduating students with relevant skills that today’s business community needs.” Two-thirds strongly disagreed with the notion that colleges are teaching relevant skills.

Indeed, many employers now see a college degree as a negative rather than a positive.

When the survey asked employers if they were “more or less likely to consider a job-seeker with a 4-year degree from a major university or college,” employers were four times more likely to answer in the negative (41 percent) than in the affirmative (10 percent), while an additional 42 percent said it made no difference. Amazingly, almost 20 times as many employers were said they were “strongly” less likely to hire the applicant with a college degree than “strongly” more likely.

Why? One respondent complained that college graduates “typically have an incompatible ideology with my business culture.” College students indoctrinated in “intersectionality” and “critical gender studies” who are trained to spot “microaggressions” in every mundane interaction do not, it seems, make for sought-after employees.

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