HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Is This the End of College as We Know It?

Rachael Wittern earned straight As in high school, a partial scholarship to college and then a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She is now 33 years old, lives in Tampa, earns $94,000 a year as a psychologist and says her education wasn’t worth the cost. She carries $300,000 in student debt.

Dr. Wittern’s 37-year-old husband worked in a warehouse for several years before becoming an apprentice electrician. He expects to earn comparable money when he’s finished—minus the debt. When and if they have children, Dr. Wittern says her advice will be to follow her husband’s path and avoid a four-year degree. . . .

For more than a century, a four-year college degree was a blue-chip credential and a steppingstone to the American dream. For many millennials and now Gen Z, it has become an albatross around their necks.

Millennials are the most educated generation in the nation’s history, but they are broke compared with their predecessors. So why would they direct their children to take the same path?

“They probably won’t,” says John Thelin, a historian of higher education and professor at the University of Kentucky.

If only there had been some sort of warning.