There has been a significant decrease in the percentage of white males who have attended college in the U.S. It went from 49 percent in 2011 to 40 percent in 2022. (source here) The overall college enrollment rate of 18 to 24 year olds was 38 percent in 2021. It was 41 percent in 2010. 38 percent of whites between the ages of 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2021. (source here) In 2023, men made up 42 percent of all 18- to 24-year-old college students, down from 47 percent in 2011. (source here) related thread: Why fewer Americans are going to college (in Education section) The reduction in college students is largely being led by men, with 1 million fewer young men in college and just 0.2 million fewer young women, in 2023 compared to 2011. (source here) American men are opting out of the workforce at unforeseen rates. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found only 89 percent of working age men have a job or are actively looking for work. In 1950, that number was at 97 percent. In the early 1950s around 96 percent of working age American men between the ages of 25 and 54 were working in full or part-time jobs. Now it has gone down to 86 percent. And as fewer men financially support themselves, there are long-reaching economic and societal implications, experts say. "The U.S. has a major issue of prime-age men giving up and permanently exiting the labor force," Robin Brooks, a senior fellow policy research firm the Brookings Institution and the former chief economist at IIF, wrote. "What's striking about this is that it doesn't get talked about at all, not in the mainstream media and not by economists, even though this obviously feeds political radicalization." The 2008 Great Recession saw male employment decline from 88 to just 80.6 percent, and the rate has never been able to get higher than 86.7 percent since then. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 it temporarily fell to 78 percent. Women now outnumber men in college attendance, in a ratio of roughly 60 to 40 percent. Rising Number of Men Don't Want to Work, Suzanne Blake, Newsweek, May 6, 2024 Part of this may be due to a growingly larger amount of jobs in the economy being the types of jobs that women traditionally did, as the economy has transformed more into the service sector. The main exception to that would be tech and computer programming, but the entire tech industry in the U.S. employs 5.2 million workers, which accounts for only 3 percent of the total jobs.
"According to the latest report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center ... The report, released today, found that undergraduate enrollment grew 1.2 percent in fall 2023 compared to the prior year, adding roughly 176,000 students to college enrollment rolls nationally. Enrollment at [community colleges] increased 2.6 percent, a gain of about 118,000 students. Four-year institutions had an increase of less than 0.6 percent in comparison." source: Enrollments Rise After Pandemic-Related Declines Undergraduate enrollment is up again, according to new data, Sara Weissman, January 24, 2024
Blue Collar Jobs traditionally taken and sought after by men can result in excellent income. All the men on my husband's side of the family--multiple nephews and my step son--make 6 figures working as specialized mechanics, industrial painters and industrial sales. NONE went to college. Even my brother in law who never finished high school, has worked for years with a local trucking company and does exceptionally well. Heat and air, plumbing and positions in the oil industry are examples of jobs that one can apprentice and have a life long career, especially if those skills can transfer to other industries. It would be nice to see the stats on blue collar workers with high income jobs. Those positions are most definitely out there. I'm still shocked by how much my step son makes--and all he did was learn from one job and take those skills to gain another higher pay position and so on so forth. Now employers come after him.... Ambition and hard work can pay off without the school loan.
A millennial who went to college in his 30s when his career stalled says his Bachelor's degree is 'worthless' and that he's been looking for a job for 3 years In 2015, at age 34, Dan Colflesh decided to quit his job in the customer service industry and pursue a college degree. "I worked my way up in a few companies, but I always hit a roadblock in promotions because I didn't have a college education." By 2021, he earned an associate degree in physics from a community college in Massachusetts and a Bachelor's in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But the additional education hasn't helped him much in the job market and saddled him with student loans. "No one will hire me," he said. "My Bachelor's degree is pretty much worthless." Colflesh said he's been looking for work over the last few years and applied to more than 100 jobs. But he said there have been stretches where he's felt "defeated," during which he paused his search for a few months at a time. While the US male unemployment rate is low when compared to past decades, Colflesh is among the men who have struggled to find work -- or have stopped looking altogether. In 1950, about 97% of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job or were actively looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of January, that figure had fallen to about 89%. In recent decades, it's become more difficult to land a high-paying job without a college degree. "Once you could have a Bachelor's degree in just about anything and get some kind of good-paying job," he said. "Now you have to have an insane amount of experience." He said this made it challenging to land a job with his political science degree, but that he didn't want to take out more student debt to pursue graduate school. So he decided to plow ahead on his job hunt, expanding his search and tweaking his application strategies. He tried tailoring his resumes and cover letters for each employer and applied to some jobs that didn't require a degree, but he said he still had little luck. He said that growing up in the Appalachian region of the US, an area that has struggled economically in recent decades, has been an additional obstacle. Colflesh said that he, his fiance, and his daughter live with his future mother-in-law in Massachusetts and that the two women have been paying the bills. A millennial who went to college in his 30s when his career stalled says his Bachelor's degree is 'worthless' and that he's been looking for a job for 3 years, Jacob Zinkula, Business Insider, May 4, 2024 I think one of the things this demonstrates is that college degrees are really mostly only more valuable in bigger city areas that have more wealth. I looked up this man's "LinkedIn" profile and it lists his location as Holyoke, Massachusetts. Holyoke is a suburb of Springfield, Massachusetts, and is not far from Amherst, where the article says he went to university. Springfield is more in the western side of the state. It would be a one and a half hour drive to Boston, or Albany in the opposite direction, or a one hour and 15 minute drive to New Haven Connecticut. Better job opportunities do exist in those cities, but still those jobs are not so easy to get for outsiders without connections. None of these three closest big cities are extremely wealthy, and this whole surrounding area has been in a little bit of economic decline.
Or possibly more people are going to skilled trades..... You know, the sort of trades that require you to be educated in.
or more minorities are going to college and the numbers of whites is the same... the percent could still be lower
Long story very short: my school hating boy went into HVAC. I took him to get a new cell phone and he had to answer questions about his annual income and employment and he told the person behind the counter. Other clerks over-heard and they all looked at him with bewilderment as if saying, "you can do that!?!?" I don't doubt they were all liberal arts college grads that were under employed. I've been writing for some time, we need to de-institutionalize our education/job prep paradigm. Example: where I am from, to be a licensed medical doctor, you must pay for and pass State exams without cheating. A pre-requisite to taking these exams is that you are institutionalized in schools for about 20 years. I would suggest if you have to pay for an exam (so that if you really shouldn't be even trying as you'll flunk, you are wasting no one's time but your own) and pass it without cheating, it is no one's GD business how you prepped for it. Leave school at the age of reason (13) get a job at a hospital or being an assistant to a GP, record lab exercises performed, get work experience, take online exam prep for cheap $ and if you can pass an exam after that? You're a doctor. We'd improve our quality of life, get young people earning rather than costing money and starting their lives well before they're 30 years old.
That would not be a bad thing. But.....many 'skilled trades' require college education, like computer programming or electrical engineering.
No to my knowledge. There are a ton of online cert programs, both directly for a vendor or more vendor agnostic. I write above we need to deinstitutionalize education and career prep. There's been an information revolution and the 1st nation to really take advantage of it wins. I wanna win. EDIT: This might be an example: https://www.classcentral.com/subject/electrical-engineering
From your link: "Learn Electrical Engineering, earn certificates with free online courses from Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia University and other top universities around the world."
Here's another that offers certs and degrees. https://alison.com/tag/electrical-engineering My point is that you don't need a degree: a cert can work. And you don't have to be a university or college to have a cert program. But good catch, my bad if that was only an aggregator for college courses.
Those courses say they are about electrical engineering, but they are really courses for people who desire to be electricians, not electrical engineers. There is a difference, but having said that, being an electrician is a fine profession, and as you progress and become a master electrician you can make a lot of money, and have a slew of electricians contracting though your LLC. There ARE many fine professions which do not require university degrees. Becoming an electrician usually begins with apprenticeship period where you work and get paid as an electrician assistant, and as you gain experience and take more certifications you'll become a journeyman electrician and then master electrician.
In sorta the opposite vein, my school hating boy was challenged by his best bud to get his Associates in HVAC and did so on the company dime. I neither encouraged him or paid a dime into it: he did it all on his own working full time and letting his company pay his way through. Interesting that there are degrees for trades out there too if you want them.
Sure. Where I live (South Florida) boat mechanics are in VERY high demand. So high, that its almost impossible to find one when you need one, and when you finally get one, they'll charge an arm and a leg for their work.
The college enrollment rate for Hispanic 18 to 24 year olds increased slightly from 32 percent in 2010, to 33 percent in 2021. But for Blacks, it decreased, from 38 to 37 percent. (source here)
Of course, "college enrollment" rates do not necessarily translate into getting a 4-year degree. "These disparities contribute to the fact that Pacific Islanders are also less likely to attend and graduate from college. In 2019, only 22 percent of Pacific Islanders ages 25 to 29 had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 71 percent of Asian Americans and a national average of 39 percent." source: Education Policies Need To Address the Unique Needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities - Center for American Progress , January 26, 2022
Then there are very large trade schools that offer tons of courses like the one in Tampa that I went to for welding called Erwin tech. They taught probably 30 different trades
