Phelan M. Ebenhack/The Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
By Anna Rahmanan
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Juan Rosales Jr. went back to college in his 30s because he was tired of working dead-end jobs. He is now a full-time student at Long Beach City College, works part-time and expects to graduate in May with an associate degree in film, television and multimedia.
Rosales still isn't sure college was the right idea.
“Honestly, nothing has convinced me that getting a degree is going to get me something financially or professionally better,” he told Newsweek. “I’m not fully convinced and still open to the idea that I just may have wasted my time and money.”
Read More on Analysis
Rosales is nevertheless doing what Americans have been instructed to do for generations: invest in yourself, get the credentials, improve your prospects. He, however, describes the ordeal in considerably less reassuring terms: “I’m just taking a leap of faith, hoping that something is going to be there at the bottom.”
There may be no better description of the American college proposition in 2026.
For generations, college offered a remarkably durable bargain: spend four years and considerable money there and emerge better educated, more employable, with connections and prepared for adult life. The bargain hasn't disappeared, but nearly every component is now under strain, starting with the ever-growing bill.
The College Board estimates that the average annual student budget in 2025-26—including tuition, housing and food, books and other expenses—is $30,990 for an in-state student at a public four-year institution and $65,470 at a private nonprofit college. The latter works out to more than $260,000 over four years at today's price.
Financial aid means many families pay substantially less, but the sticker price of tuition alone has risen dramatically over three decades: adjusted for inflation, average public four-year tuition and fees increased from $5,940 in 1995-96 to $11,950 today; at private nonprofit colleges, from $25,820 to $45,000.
Tuition isn't the only financial aspect of going to college that prospective students consider. An 18-year-old who enrolls also gives up four years when someone else can earn money, gain experience, and perhaps start saving.
So does the bet pay?
In aggregate, yes. Among full-time workers 25 and older in 2025, Americans whose highest credential was a high school diploma earned a median $966 per week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Associate degree holders made $1,135. Bachelor's degree holders made $1,578. They also experienced considerably lower unemployment: 2.8 percent for bachelor's holders against 4.3 percent for high school graduates.
But averages accumulated across millions of adults aren't quite the question confronting a family with an acceptance letter on the kitchen table. They don't subtract the particular tuition bill in front of that family, the interest on its loans or the wages their 18-year-old could earn instead. Nor do they tell them whether this college for this student studying this subject at this price will pay.
...
Allison Shrivastava, an economist with college-matching platform Niche, argues that families should not compare today's graduates with those who entered hotter labor markets decades ago. The relevant comparison is still today's college graduate versus today's high school graduate.
“The real squeeze is on what graduates have to spend elsewhere,” she told Newsweek. “The cost of living is significantly higher than it was for earlier generations, which takes a bigger bite out of that premium, especially in the early years.”
Those early years are becoming particularly uncomfortable. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York puts unemployment among recent college graduates at about 5.6 percent in the second quarter of 2026, with underemployment—the share working in jobs that typically don't require a college degree—at 42 percent.
Even employers increasingly seem to want evidence of something beyond the diploma. Randy Tarnowski, an economist and director of research at career platform Handshake, says one message repeatedly emerges from conversations with employers: graduates need to “‘show, don't tell,’ demonstrating how they apply what they’ve learned.”
It raises a follow-up question: if college were merely an expensive employment program, the debate over its value could end here, in a spreadsheet. But what if the things that made college worth attending were never entirely economic in the first place?
College was always supposed to be four years during which an adolescent became an adult through intellectual exploration, independence, community, friendships, professors, arguments and exposure to people and ideas one might never voluntarily encounter otherwise.
Related Story
How the Data Center Dividend Can Make Shiny Happy People
Shannon DeLeon, whose son is a junior at Boise State University studying business, still believes deeply in that proposition.
“The experience of attending university connects you to culture, to people you'd never otherwise meet, with professors, students, companies and industries you wouldn't otherwise have access to,” she told Newsweek. “It's as much about the experience as it is about the textbook.”
That defense of college, though, makes its current cultural troubles hard to ignore.
American campuses have spent the past several years consumed by problems that reach well beyond the classroom: protests over Israel and Gaza, accusations of antisemitism, battles over free speech, sexual-assault allegations and Title IX procedures, hazing, student mental health and recurring questions about whether universities can keep students safe while treating both accusers and the accused fairly.
None of those problems, individually, proves that college is failing, but together they complicate the idea that families are simply paying for four years of intellectual exploration and personal growth.
A 2024 Knight Foundation-Ipsos study found that 69 percent of college students reported self-censoring on at least one commonly discussed campus topic, while two-thirds said self-censorship limits educationally valuable conversations. Most students nevertheless said they wanted exposure to a wide range of viewpoints.
That may be the more fundamental challenge for the modern college: families are being asked to pay extraordinary sums not merely for classes or a credential, but for an institution that promises community, independence, intellectual discovery and a protected space in which young adults can learn how to navigate disagreement, risk and one another. Increasingly, universities are being judged not simply on whether they provide that experience, but on whether they can manage everything that comes with it.
For Rosales, the value of that harder-to-measure part of college remains real even as he wonders whether the financial investment will work.
“I realize part of what I’m paying for is the college experience itself, so how do you put value on something so nebulous?,” he said.
Parents are increasingly forced to put a value on it anyway.
DeLeon is particularly interesting because she remains an enthusiastic defender of higher education while rejecting the blank check that once accompanied it. Her son entered Boise State after completing roughly two years of college coursework, and he works while studying.
“Yes, but not at any price, and not as an either/or,” she said when asked whether she would still advise pursuing the degree if the alternative were four years of tuition and debt versus four years of earning and accumulating experience.
Then DeLeon said something more revealing.
“If you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have given you a completely different answer. I would have said, go to college right after high school, no matter the cost,” she said.
There, perhaps, is the slow death of the American college.
Not the institution itself. According to the data, college graduates still earn considerably more, on average, than Americans without degrees. There are other pluses: the credential still opens doors, and the intangible things universities offer—friendship, independence, intellectual discovery, exposure to disagreement—cannot be reduced to the salary printed on a first job offer.
What's dying is the assumption. College used to be the answer and now it’s more of a calculation: Which school? Which major? How much debt? What job? What could I earn during those four years instead? And what, beyond the paycheck, will those four years actually give me?
Rosales doesn't know whether his bet will pay off, and it is likely that neither does any freshman arriving on campus this fall. Maybe that’s what has really changed: college was once presented as the safe choice, and now even the safe choice requires a leap of faith.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines