quote:
The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees — such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters — flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since the BLS started tracking this data in the 1990s.

Considering the investment college is, this is saying a lot.

quote:
This shift coincides with a broad reassessment of what the best career paths are in today’s labor market, which economists have called one of the most vexing in generations — especially for entry-level applicants. The soaring costs of a four-year degree, combined with an uncertain outlook amid the rise of AI, are prompting young people to consider alternative routes to economic prosperity. Community colleges and blue-collar employers are trying to harness the rising interest in skilled trades, amping up recruiting efforts aimed at young people.

4 year colleges are definitely in crises.

quote:

During the 1980s, Strohl said, as manufacturing struggled and technology took off, guidance counselors began to funnel students, especially high-performing ones, toward pursuing four-year degrees.
...
“Overdoing college for all has done a disservice to many,” Strohl said. “What we didn’t do was set up viable alternative pathways for students to succeed, to the detriment of the economy and the detriment of those students.”

Not every jobs needs college degrees, not every degree is useful.
Once colleges started selling paper they became more and more willing to grant degrees to people of lower and lower intelligence in fields further and further removed from usefulness.

The office clerks of yesteryear are the masters degree holding menial task holding employees at risk of obsolescence.

Now that CEOs see AI as taking over menial office clerk duties, how long will it be before local, state and federal government leaders realize that their clerks have PhDs in uselessness and can be replaced with far less educated staff at far lower cost.

This post was edited on 2/8/26 at 6:04 pm