Mike Rowe Talks About Student Loan Debt and the Lack of Young People in the Workforce
“How did college get so expensive? Nothing has gotten more expensive in the last 40 years than a 4-year degree. Not real estate, not healthcare, not energy, nothing.”
This is an interesting clip from the Theo Von podcast that’s been making the rounds on Twitter/X.
BizPacReview has some details:
Many Americans have been duped into believing that a college degree is a necessity, and Mike Rowe is doing the simple math to prove it.
“We’ve got $1.7 trillion in student debt on the books and we’ve got 7.6 million open jobs right now—most of which don’t require a 4-year degree,” Rowe said in a clip making the rounds on X.
“And we’ve got 6.8 million able-bodied men who are not only out of the workforce, they’re not looking.
“We took shop class out of high school, we robbed kids of the opportunity to see what that kind of work even looks like.
“Meanwhile, we told a whole generation of kids they were f**king screwed if they didn’t get a 4-year degree.
Rowe was also asking the question that too few ever ask…
“How did college get so expensive? Nothing has gotten more expensive in the last 40 years than a 4-year degree. Not real estate, not healthcare, not energy, nothing.
“We keep telling kids they’re screwed if they don’t go in this direction. We free up endless money to loan them,” Rowe continued.
Watch below:
Mike Rowe: “We’ve got $1.7 trillion in student debt on the books and we’ve got 7.6 million open jobs right now—most of which don’t require a 4-year degree.”
“And we’ve got 6.8 million able-bodied men who are not only out of the workforce, they’re not looking.”
“We took shop… pic.twitter.com/33eVay6muE
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) April 24, 2025
Featured image via YouTube.
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Same reason that healthcare costs ballooned. No incentive to keep expenses under control and every incentive to keep arbitrarily raising prices. The rich can still pay and the government picks up the tab for those who no longer can. The cycle then repeats.
Prices will drop only when government money gets out of healthcare and education and those institutions need to run themselves like normal tax-paying businesses.
Ethical concerns about eg. unpaid emergency care could be addressed by making such cost-of-ethics expenses fully tax-deductible.
Yes and the survivability of colleges became not about who could get the lowest tuition but who could get the most students (and they aren’t necessarily the same).
It became about who could be the best at convincing the government to give more money to the college to build more stuff to attract more students to get more tuition and that became a vicious cycle.
Every time the government came up short, the schools raised tuition to keep up with their neighbors in the arms race.
They living with parents, part time job, investing what little earnings they have in bitcoin. Don’t care that illegal aliens taking their jobs and housing.
The fact that they’re investing at all gives me some hope.
We had so many generations living off debt with zero savings.
Though crypto is more a vehicle for speculation than sober long-term investment.
True. To be fair though that’s the same ‘plan’ as the vast majority of those who have 401K/IRA. They auto deposit $ each month into ‘the market’ on the same rationale …’it’ goes up. That ‘it’ could just as easily be the S&P 500 which was driven by the explosion in the MAG 7 the last.few years or Bitcoin. Neither of these groups is making investments they are speculating. Though the folks who are allocating a portion to Bitcoin just those allocate a portion to Gold are probably doing so b/c they are better informed about risk management. See the whining from mainstream folks about the ‘market’ going down …it is as if they feel entitled to the market only going up. That’s just speculation.
Put shop back in the high schools, home ec too. Have both boys and girls take both, not one for each. Send the foreign labor back home. We must learn to do it ourselves.
I was required to take shop and home ec in middle school and I was aways in a professional path. Didn’t mind it and it didn’t hurt me.
A high school graduate should be able to
1. Read well in English.
2. Write passably in English.
3. Read and speak a little bit in some foreign language, preferably Spanish which is easy and useful.
4. Be able to do some simple tasks with their hands and tools (shop).
5. Be able to cook a few things for themselves (home ec.)
6. Be able to complete a simple US tax return including a Schedule A. Also simple budgeting. Be able to handle the financial stuff for simple houshold situations without wanting professional handholding. Build a foundation of not being afraid of the IRS but seeing them just as implementers of a known system of rules.
They’ll learn some basic science and technology in shop and cooking class, and some science lessons could be rolled in there. Chemistry for cooking — heat and reactions, physics for wrenches — force and torque.
and that’s ALL. I literally don’t care about Social Studies and History. (See how easily I get rid of the wokest of the the education establishment, including the endless parade of principals who came up as social studies teachers.) These things, and art and whatever else, are nice electives, but not to the exclusion of the six numbered points.
Oops I left out arithmetic, but it’s encompassed in point 6. That is really the level of arithmetic needed, no more and no less. It’s far more than a lot of HS grads have, and they should be trained better. At the same time we don’t need to push everyone through algebra and beyond. It would be great if we could, but the school that can do that with a wide population hasn’t been invented yet, so I don’t require the taxpayers to keep hoping and paying, and students to keep getting frustrated.
You left out civics. They should understand how our system works.
I disagree about history but whatever.
At the end of the day they should be able to at least pass the citizenship test aliens take to become US citizens.
About 10 years ago I was interviewing for a new secretary for one of my departments and each of our top three candidates had a Bachelor’s degree — two in Criminal Justice and one in Psychology. Their degrees weren’t getting them jobs in their fields.
The whole “go to college, follow your passion, get a degree, any degree” formula ain’t working.
The lies are working for the hucksters selling the dream at these colleges. We need far more STEM graduates and far less political science grads.
I;m not as worried about polisci as I am about victim studies. Those studies do far more damage and produce someone completely unable to perform any meaningful job in society