The ironclad, bipartisan belief in college as the “ticket to the middle class,” in former President Barack Obama’s preferred phrase, that every child should go to college, that the public education system’s primary task is to prepare everyone for college, has begun to crumble.
“For the first time in 50 years, college grads are losing their edge,” the Washington Post reported recently. “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.”
Commenting on the same trend in the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley observed, “unemployment among college grads age 22 to 27 rose to 5.6% in December, roughly what it was in February 2009 during the financial panic.”
“The real problem,” she suggested, “is a mismatch between labor supply and demand. Government subsidies and public schools have funneled too many young people to credential mills, which churn out grads who lack the skills that employers demand. Many would be better off training in skilled trades, for which demand is enormous.”
