Take it from a criminal justice major who ended up going into student loan debt because I felt like I just downright “needed” to get it from a university. NOTE, I’m not saying don’t go to college, I’m saying unless you are majoring in one of the fields I named, you’d be better off enrolling at a JUCO or Community College. Now if you have a scholarship then that’s a different story. I was originally in a community college but ended up transferring because that school only offered associate degrees (my other excuse for leaving lol). College as a whole is way too fucking expensive to begin with but I feel as though it would be more worth it if you were in the majors I mentioned. I do realize that there are many graduates who have majored in other fields and feel content and that’s great.
It’s a catch-22.
Go and get debt for a degree you’ll never actually use or don’t and people who did get jobs that don’t need a diploma over you because they have it.
The solution was expanding public education again. Used to be normal to stop going around sixth grade because you could get a career with just that, only white collar required a HS diploma. Then everything required HS and white collar needed Bachelor’s degree.
Some places do t require a degree, but still use it as deciding factor.
We need to just do at least 2 years of community along with Highschool, if not full on bachelor’s. Lots of other countries do it, hell, the school I went to in Hawaii was full of Nordic students because part of their free college included a semester abroad to learn about other cultures.
Really made sociology awkward tho when we kept talking about how shit America was and all our problems when the majority of the class came from countries who sorted it out long ago.