The statistics are staggering: More than 42% of existing college graduates are under-employed and unemployment among 20 to 24 year old young adults is higher this year than last year. The cost of college keeps rising at a faster pace than the inflation rate. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, one of the fundamental problems is that too many children are going to college in this country. At the present, 30% of the adult population has a college degree, however the Department of Labor notes that only 20% of the jobs in the United States actually require a college degree. The article goes on to say that 115,520 janitors in the United States have a bachelor’s degree or more, and they obviously do not need to have that degree to hold that type of job.
The average debt of student loans is presently $26,000.00, but many graduates, especially those with advanced degrees, have student loan debt that is over $100,000.00. As we have mentioned before in other blogs, student loans are almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy and most of the student loans have no statute of limitations, so the student loan creditor can collect basically forever. Perhaps more young people should look at other alternatives to attending a four-year college and obtaining a degree that will not be useful to them in the future, or not finishing at all. Perhaps another alternative may be attending a trade school and learning a skill such as nursing, carpentry, cooking, plumbing, construction, and so many other fields where there will actually be a job waiting as soon as the education requirements have been completed.
The various colleges in this country have done an excellent job of convincing just about everyone that they are not going to find any kind of fulfillment in life if they don’t attempt a four-year college degree. Maybe that should not be the case for everyone, and maybe more people should look at other alternatives.