College Debt: What No One Told Us

Americans are spending $100K on college — but are we really getting our money’s worth?

Transcript

00:00Is college actually worth trying anymore or is it just an insanely expensive tradition we never

00:05stopped to question? Back in 1980, the story actually worked. You get a degree, you get a job,

00:10you climb the ladder, you retire happy. But today, look at this, wages have barely moved in 40 years

00:15while tuition has exploded over 180 percent, which might be why we're drowning in two trillion

00:22dollars of student debt. But here's the thing, almost 40 percent of grads work jobs that don't

00:28even require a degree. So you give up four years and six figures just to end up in the same place

00:33as someone who skipped it entirely. That's why recent studies like this Gallup poll show a sharp

00:39decline in public confidence in the value of college degrees, which found only about 36 percent

00:45of Americans have any confidence in higher education being something worth it from there.

00:50This is down from 57 percent a decade ago. And oh, by the way, this isn't even showing the number of

00:56people who are choosing college as their last path. So the question, is college safe anymore?

01:03I don't know. Here's what nobody tells you. The trades, apprenticeships and the so-called boring

01:06businesses, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, car washes, jobs people overlook, but they can put you at 60 to

01:1370K a year straight out of high school with zero debt or almost no debt. By the time an MBA is still

01:19positioning resumes for people, you could already own the business they're applying to. So is college

01:25worth it? I think my answer is no. And that's what the math says too.