The Article
Students Are Still Going to College, Just Differently
The idea that young people have simply stopped believing in higher education is too simple.
Students are still enrolling.
Postsecondary enrollment reached 18.6 million students in spring 2026, approximately 192,000 more than the year before. Undergraduate enrollment increased by 1.3 percent.
But where students are enrolling tells a more interesting story.
During fall 2025, community college enrollment grew approximately 3 percent, faster than the 1.4 percent increase at public four-year institutions.
Private four-year institutions moved in the opposite direction. Undergraduate enrollment declined at both nonprofit and for-profit private colleges.
That does not necessarily mean students value education less.
It may mean they are becoming more deliberate about how they obtain it.
For decades, the standard sequence was straightforward: graduate from high school, attend a four-year university, earn a degree, and enter the workforce.
That sequence still works for millions of people.
It is simply no longer the only path being taken seriously.
The Cost Is Now Part of the Decision
Education has always required an investment of time.
Increasingly, students are evaluating it as an investment of capital as well.
That changes the questions being asked before enrollment.
How much will this degree cost?
How much debt will be required?
What does the profession pay?
How quickly can the investment reasonably be recovered?
And perhaps most importantly: does the credential actually create access to an opportunity that would otherwise be unavailable?
These questions do not reduce education to money.
Education has value beyond a paycheck. It develops communication, reasoning, discipline, exposure to ideas, and often the relationships that shape a person's professional life.
But those benefits do not eliminate financial reality.
When the price of education becomes significant enough, students naturally begin comparing its expected return with alternative uses of their time and money.
The institution is no longer competing only with another university.
It may also be competing with community college, certification, apprenticeship, employment, entrepreneurship, or a shorter technical program.
Shorter Paths Are Becoming More Serious
One of the clearest changes in education is the growing legitimacy of shorter credentials.
Community colleges, technical programs, certificates, and apprenticeships increasingly occupy space that once belonged almost exclusively to traditional degrees.
Federal policy is beginning to reflect that change.
Beginning in July 2026, eligible students can use Workforce Pell Grants for qualifying short-term educational programs connected to high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand occupations.
That is a meaningful structural shift.
Federal financial aid was historically designed primarily around longer college programs. Expanding Pell eligibility to certain workforce programs recognizes that valuable education does not always require four years.
- technical certifications can provide direct occupational skills
- community colleges can reduce the cost of the first years of a bachelor's degree
- apprenticeships combine education with practical experience
- short-term programs can allow workers to retrain without leaving the workforce for several years
- stackable credentials can allow education to happen gradually instead of all at once
None of these approaches makes the bachelor's degree obsolete.
They simply force it to compete.
And competition creates pressure for every educational pathway to explain what value it actually delivers.
A Degree Still Matters, But It Has to Prove It
The conversation around college can easily move too far in either direction.
One argument says everyone needs a degree.
Another says degrees no longer matter.
Neither reflects the entire market.
Degrees continue to matter in professions where advanced knowledge, licensing, institutional credibility, or specialized training are required.
Medicine, engineering, accounting, law, scientific research, and many areas of finance still depend heavily on formal education.
The more important change is that the credential itself is becoming less capable of answering every question an employer has.
A 2026 Lumina Foundation and Gallup study revealed an important disconnect: 93 percent of college students surveyed said their institution was teaching them job-relevant skills, while only about half of employers agreed.
That gap matters.
The future of education may therefore depend less on choosing between academic learning and practical training and more on combining them.
A student who understands theory but cannot apply it is incomplete.
A worker who understands only today's process but lacks the foundations to adapt when that process changes faces a different limitation.
Strong education creates both.
Knowledge provides the foundation. Skills provide the application. Experience provides judgment.
The institution that can deliver all three at a price students can reasonably justify will remain extraordinarily valuable.
Education is not losing its importance.
It is being asked to demonstrate it.
Related Quote
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
— Nelson Mandela
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