Every year, more and more people are graduating from college.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In October 2024, 62.8 percent of 2024 high school graduates ages 16 to 24 were enrolled in colleges or universities.”
Going off college graduation statistics, this could be considered the most educated we have ever been in United States history.
“In 1940, 4.2 million Americans were four-year college graduates. Today, 99.5 million Americans have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher,” according to Foundation for Economic Education.
However, as more people graduate college, their degrees become less valuable. Similar to how inflation works with money, due to the increased supply of degrees, each degree now holds less value.
An example would be, recently, jobs that did not require a degree before are now requiring a bachelor’s degree, and those that required a bachelor’s now need a master’s, and so on and so forth.
This can be shown through a degree gap. A degree gap is when job postings require a degree, but the people that have that job do not have that degree. So, if 80% of employers request a college degree, but only 60% of those currently employed have that degree, that amounts to a 20%-degree gap.
According to Harvard Business School, “As many as 6.2 million workers could be affected by degree inflation.”
College degrees are becoming more required to get a job, but as more people obtain them, they simultaneously give you less of an edge in the job market.
All the while, college tuition has been skyrocketing.
According to the College Inflation Calculator, “Prices for college tuition and fees are 1,542.78% higher in 2025 versus 1977 (a $308,556.52 difference in value).”
College tuition has been rising at a rate of 6% a year, since 1977, outpacing inflation’s 3.5% a year.
Going to college is becoming a requirement to get a job. Even jobs that traditionally would not need a degree are requiring people to have one. Meaning that more people must pay for the rising cost of college, all for the chance to get a middle of the road job.
