{"id":68931,"date":"2026-08-22T15:02:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T15:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/68931\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T15:02:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T15:02:34","slug":"american-colleges-are-facing-an-enrollment-crisis-as-young-people-turn-to-trades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/68931\/","title":{"rendered":"American colleges are facing an enrollment crisis as young people turn to trades"},"content":{"rendered":"

College-schmollage.<\/p>\n

American colleges are facing an enrollment crisis<\/a> as more young people opt for vocational schools and trade jobs \u2014 drawn by steadier career prospects, higher relative pay and less debt.<\/p>\n

The number of high school grads enrolling in traditional colleges could decline 13% over the next 15 years, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education predicts.<\/p>\n

A Harvard University student at a demonstration. Elite schools are as in-demand as ever, but more people are choosing trade schools over mid-tier colleges. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Part of that is due to a decline in birth rates, meaning fewer Americans will be turning 18 in the coming years.<\/p>\n

However, more and more students are choosing trades and vocational programs over traditional four-year degrees that might end with a mountain of student debt <\/a>and no high-paying job.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always ask me, \u2018Should I go to barber school?\u2019 And I always tell them to go for it. It\u2019s the best career decision I ever made,\u201d said Benjamin Davis of Los Angeles, who decided to learn to cut hair instead of earning a traditional college degree.<\/p>\n

He now has a steady job at Floyd\u2019s Barbershop and can find work anywhere he goes \u2014 more than can be said for many college graduates stuck with degrees that are more impressive than their real-world job prospects.<\/p>\n

Unemployment and underemployment among recent college graduates \u2014 which had rebounded after the pandemic \u2014 has steadily risen in the last four years, according to recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, enrollment in two-year vocational programs has risen around 20% since 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. <\/p>\n

\u201c[Trade school] is very direct,\u201d said Cynthia Moreno, 50, who manages a hair salon in California and teaches cosmetology at Pasadena City College.<\/p>\n

She said her students are attracted to clear, straightforward job prospects in a steady industry \u2014 and have none of the stress of huge student debt coupled with the prospect of breaking into the corporate world.<\/p>\n

Welders at work. Such skilled labor is in higher demand, resulting in attractive wages and plentiful job opportunities. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

A graph showing the projected decline of high school graduates over the next 15 years. (Western Interstate Comission for Higher Education.) Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education<\/p>\n

Her own son majored in communications (a field with a 52% underemployment rate and median early-career wage of only $52,000, per FRBNY) but ended up managing a major grocery store \u2014 a rewarding, decent-paying job that he enjoys, she told The Post.<\/p>\n

A healthy market and \u201cwage compression\u201d \u2014 i.e., higher wages for jobs requiring less or no education \u2014 are big draws for the trades, said Dr. Nathan Grawe, Professor of Economics at Carleton College.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go down to your local Aldi and they offer you 20 dollars an hour plus benefits, or you can get a certificate in a high-paying trade and find a job, all of a sudden the idea of spending four years in college becomes less attractive for some students who are on the fence,\u201d Grawe told The Post.<\/p>\n

Young students on the Yale campus.<\/p>\n

Bucking the trend for now are Ivy League schools, where applications remain strong, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.<\/a><\/p>\n

Grawe said this is because parents today who grew up being told they must go to college are pushing their kids to apply to top-tier schools.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the elimination of standardized test requirements, application fee waivers, and other provisions has led to more youngsters applying to the Ivy League.<\/p>\n

Caught in the middle are public universities and expensive two-year degrees, which could be a more expensive and less efficient alternative to simply entering the workforce after high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd some of them might be thinking they\u2019ll go back. They\u2019re saying, \u2018I wasn\u2019t entirely sold on this education journey, and the trades are a good alternative. But I can always go back and get my associates later, if that\u2019s what I want,\u201d \u00a0Grawe said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College-schmollage. American colleges are facing an enrollment crisis as more young people opt for vocational schools and trade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[6300,933,2358,8,4435,991,9,2399,7,1250],"class_list":["post-68931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-colleges-and-universities","tag-education","tag-gen-z","tag-headlines","tag-ivy-league","tag-jobs","tag-news","tag-students","tag-top-stories","tag-us-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117139770103201285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}