Gen Z doubts degree ROI
- A new social datapoint finds many Gen Z graduates question college return on investment because of debt and low starting pay. - The figure cited is 51% of Gen Z graduates viewing their degree as a waste versus entry-level compensation. - That skepticism is boosting interest in trades and bootcamps and pressures institutions to clarify outcomes and costs (x.com).
More than half of Gen Z degree holders in a new U.S. survey said their college education was a waste of money. (indeed.com) Indeed said 51% of Gen Z respondents with at least an associate degree held that view, compared with 41% of millennials and 20% of baby boomers. The company said it surveyed 772 U.S. professionals and published the results on December 15, 2025. (indeed.com) The same Indeed report said 52% of respondents graduated with student debt, and 38% said that debt hurt their career growth more than their degree helped it. Respondents with debt were more likely than those without it to call their degree a waste of money, 41% to 31%. (indeed.com) That skepticism has landed as employers have eased degree screens in hiring. Indeed Hiring Lab said 52% of U.S. job postings on its platform listed no formal education requirement in January 2024, up from 48% in 2019, while postings requiring at least a college degree fell to 17.8% from 20.4%. (hiringlab.org) The wage edge for college graduates has not disappeared, but Federal Reserve researchers said it has stopped widening. A Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis summary of San Francisco Fed research said the college wage premium doubled from 39% in 1980 to 79% in 2000, then “hasn’t really budged” for about 20 years. (minneapolisfed.org) College costs kept rising while that wage gap flattened. The Minneapolis Fed said four-year college costs in 2022-23 were 40% higher than in 2000-01, and the National Center for Education Statistics said the average 2022-23 total cost of attendance for on-campus students at four-year institutions was $27,100 at public colleges and $58,600 at private nonprofit colleges. (minneapolisfed.org) (nces.ed.gov) Student debt remains a large part of that math. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said student loan balances rose to $1.66 trillion at the end of December 2025. (newyorkfed.org) The labor-market case for a degree is still there in national data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said workers with a bachelor’s degree had lower unemployment and higher earnings than workers with only a high school diploma in its latest educational-attainment tables. (bls.gov) But enrollment gains have recently been strongest in career-focused two-year programs. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center said spring 2025 community-college enrollment rose 5.4% from a year earlier, and public two-year colleges focused on vocational and trade programs were up nearly 20% from spring 2020. (studentclearinghouse.org) Colleges now face a harder sales pitch than they did a generation ago. The new question from younger graduates is not whether a degree has value in the abstract, but whether the price, debt load, and first-job pay add up. (indeed.com)
