How well are colleges preparing young adults to pursue the American dream? And how much of the problem is the economy? If that dream is financial independence, living on their own without help from their parents, and no debt – then the best thing we can say is that things are NOT working out so well right now.
In one of the most thorough studies I have read recently called Chasing the American Dream: Recent College Graduates and the Great Recession (dated May 2012), the researchers from Rutgers’ John J. Heldrich Center for Workplace Development posted some startling conclusions from a survey of 444 college graduates who graduated between 2006 and 2011, including:
- Nearly 60% of the graduates were paid by the hour on their first job (with a median starting wage of $10.23/hr)
- Only 4 in 10 reported that their job required a four-year degree
- Only 2 in 10 saw their first job as being on their career path
- Over 80% of these graduates had already transitioned form their first job out of college to another job
- 64% had borrowed money that they have to pay back, the median debt at graduation was $20,000, and 1 – 5 years after graduation only 13% have paid off their education debt
- Of the 20% of students who had gone on to graduate or professional school, 6 in 10 had not paid off ANY of their previous education debt
- Overall, 51% of the graduates in the study continue to get financial support from their parents or relatives
- The cost of a college education increased at a rate greater than inflation over the past three decades
On the positive side, those who had internships while in school had several advantages over the rest of the group:
- Higher salaries
- Better prepared to be successful in their jobs
- Better prepared to get a job
- Better prepared to find a job
By far the foremost thing the respondents would have done differently is “to have been more careful in choosing a major”. The leading factor cited when choosing their major was job opportunities in the field (39%), but 25% admitted they considered “Nothing” when choosing their major.
The costs are too high and the risks too great to keep allowing high school students to coast into college without thinking about what they plan to do when they get out. I have had many parents say to me, or at least infer, that “poor Johnny couldn’t couldn’t be expected to know what he wants to do right out of high school”. It may be O.K. to not have a definitive answer to this question, but what is NOT O.K. is to NOT have a plan for how they are going to figure it out. The statistics above prove that the colleges are certainly not geared to help them figure it out.