Students Choosing Careers Over College

From the Welcome To The Jungle website: College has traditionally been a springboard to better-paying jobs and financial security, but a confluence of economic factors has more students choosing to jump straight into the labor pool instead. Those factors include higher wages and a stronger job market: employers added nearly 400,000 jobs in May, and wages are up more than 5%, according to the Department of Labor. 

Meanwhile, rising tuition and increasing interest rates are pushing up the cost of college even as many schools haven’t been able to return to a Pre-COVID-19 experience.

“After a semester or two of virtual learning, people were feeling pretty let down, especially at higher-cost institutions,” says Jeffrey Strohl, research professor and director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Such trends are incentivizing more young people to opt out of college.