Commentary
College is “not for everyone,” says Warren Buffett, who never looked at where CEO candidates went to school when hiring for Berkshire companies. Business talent, character, and lifelong learning, not formal credentials, mattered more. Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed: “We hire people from all walks of life,” degrees or no degrees. Steve Jobs believed college turned people into “bozos” by stifling creativity during their most productive years. Elon Musk has said “colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning.” Tesla does not require a college degree for many of its hires.
In earlier decades, before a strong social stigma attached to those without a college degree, far fewer Americans pursued higher education. The share of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher was roughly 8 percent in 1960, 11 percent in 1970, 16 percent in 1980, and 20 percent in 1990. Most entered the workforce—and often started families—soon after high school.
Today, that stigma—combined with government subsidies that slash the net cost of college for many students—pushes most high school graduates into higher education whether they are driven by a love of learning or not. Over one-third drop out as they realize higher education is not for them. But even most who slog through to obtain a degree don’t benefit financially.
A 2024 analysis by the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Education Foundation of more than 10 million career histories found that a year after graduation, 52 percent were underemployed—working in jobs that do not typically require a degree—and that most who start underemployed stay that way.
The opportunity cost of downtime spent obtaining an unneeded degree shows up in the skilled trades. An electrician who begins a paid apprenticeship after high school can accumulate roughly $217,000 more over the first decade than a typical in-state public university graduate, after accounting for debt and forgone wages. Nearly half of workers with trade credentials or certificates now earn more than the median bachelor’s holder. The trades route builds skills, income, and the capacity to start a family years before the college path does.
Increased years of study delay marriage and children, and often reduce the total number of children people have. In Britain, France, and Belgium, longer educational participation accounted for 57 to 74 percent of the delay in having a first child from 1970 to 2000, according to research in Population and Development Review. Broader demographic studies show that these delays typically lower completed fertility as well.
As a 2023 analysis of 10 high-income countries in Demographic Research put it: “Mothers who have their first child later tend to have fewer children, and in the absence of fertility catch-up at older ages, delayed fertility contributes to cohort fertility decline.” The same study found that in most countries examined, attempts to have more children at older ages didn’t offset the fertility-depressing effect of starting later.
In the United States, men first married at a median age of 22.8 and women at 20.3 in 1960. By the early 2020s, first marriages occurred about eight years later, at roughly 30.5 for men and 28.6 for women.
Children are delayed as well. Across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the first child often does not arrive until couples are in their 30s—up two to five years since the 1970s in most countries—while average total fertility rates have more than halved, from more than 3.3 in 1960 to about 1.5, far below the level needed for a society to sustain itself. The combination of later starts and incomplete catch-up helps explain why fertility has fallen so far.
The public is waking to the realization that, for many, a university education is counterproductive. Gallup’s August 2026 survey found only 31 percent of Americans said a college education is “very important,” down from 70 percent in 2013, while the share calling it “not too important” rose from 6 percent to 29 percent. The drop appears across all demographic groups.
Governments shouldn’t get in the way of that downward trend by continuing to incentivize higher education. For decades now, Western governments have spent generously—often more than they spent on defense—in failed attempts to reverse the collapsing fertility rates that threaten their countries’ long-term survival. If they instead spent less on higher education—a surprisingly key driver of low fertility—they would finally start to see results.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
