College has long been the most popular choice for graduating high school seniors, but these days, a growing number of recent graduates are choosing alternative pathways instead.
Enrollments in undergraduate certificate programs—which are designed for students who want to develop technical skills in lieu of traditional higher education—increased by almost 10 percent from fall 2022 to fall 2023, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s 2023 higher education enrollment update. Meanwhile, enrollment in bachelor’s programs increased by 0.9 percent in the same time period.
The Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) Group, a nonprofit focused on postsecondary access, and Vice Media have surveyed a national sample of high school students multiple times between February 2020 and January 2023. At the start of 2023, 52 percent said they were considering four-year college—a 14 percentage point decline since before the onset of the pandemic.
Sixty-three percent said they are open to options other than four-year college, a 7 percentage point increase since before the pandemic. Those options could include community college, on-the-job training, and career and technical education.
ECMC Group President and CEO Dan Fisher attributes this to a “cultural and societal shift” in preference away from the historically popular four-year-college path.
“There’s been a lot more awareness around some of these alternative pathways to postsecondary education,” Fisher said.
The rising costs of college and the prospect of student loan debt has deterred some high school students from attending a four-year college, along with a growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. In fact, a recent study by the Pew Research Center, conducted in late 2023, found that 49 percent of U.S. adults believe that it’s less important to have a four-year degree today to get a well-paying job than it was 20 years ago.
Education Week spoke with three recent high school graduates who chose to pursue career paths that did not require bachelor’s degrees.
Why these young people chose to skip college
Madeline Avery, a 2021 graduate of Mondovi High School in Wisconsin, is a firefighter and paramedic for Stevens Point Fire Department.
Avery developed a deeper interest in health care after the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t know much about the industry until she took classes in the health care academy offered by her school.
"[The health care academy] allowed me to explore different career paths in health care and take courses that would prepare me for health care programs, so that was a good way that I got to explore it before I actually had to go and decide,” Avery said.
Avery said the academy also let her gain the prerequisites required to further her education in any health program she wanted. During her senior year, she took emergency medical technician and firefighter classes offered by Chippewa Valley Technical College and paid for by her school.
“Through the exposure that my school and these programs gave me, I figured out that I wanted to be a firefighter,” Avery said.
Avery believes it can be helpful for students to know what their career plans are before graduation but says it’s “no rush” to figure out what they want to do so early on.
The 2023 ECMC survey found that 78 percent of high school students believe it’s important to determine their career plans before graduation, and 65 percent of high school students say their ideal postsecondary learning should be on the job, through apprenticeships or internships.
“I’m a big hands-on learner, that’s just kind of how I’ve always been. I think that’s why a job in the trades was perfect for me, because it allowed me to be exposed to that,” Avery said.
Timothy Lipovsky, a 2017 graduate of Brashear High School in Pittsburgh, is an automotive technician with Caliber Collision, a collision-repair company.
Lipovsky, who grew up around cars, said he developed a passion for automotive work that followed him through graduation. He explored college options but didn’t find any programs that were of interest to him.
While in high school, Lipovsky took an automotive body class that allowed him to do hands-on work with cars, solidifying his career aspirations in the automotive industry, he said.
Zwena Killikelly, a 2021 graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in Maryland, is now a self-employed personal chef.
Killikelly said she’d always been interested in culinary arts and even sold desserts in high school.
As she progressed through high school, Killikelly became increasingly interested in the relationship between food and the body, in part due to what she learned in health class.
As a personal chef, Killikelly offers services like private dinners, cooking classes, and catering corporate events. She wants to eventually cater for high-profile clients and host their dinner parties or even galas. She said a degree is not something she needs to make this dream happen.
“Go try something that you like to do—just try it out,” she advised high school students. “You don’t want to go to a four-year university and change your major five different times. ... Why not try?”
Students need guidance from educators, experts say
Fisher, the ECMC Group president and a first-generation college graduate, believes the future of postsecondary education is changing and the “linear” path of going to college right after high school shouldn’t be an expectation. It isn’t for everyone, he said.
“The four-year pathway is good and great for some people, but it is not a panacea,” he said.
Jimmy Tadlock, the executive director of MERIT Health Leadership Academy, an education nonprofit in Baltimore, believes the changing attitudes about pursuing a bachelor’s degree are partially due to the rising costs of college, as well as a lack of guidance, especially for first-generation students from low-income households.
“They’re doing this by themselves. Their parents haven’t gone through the process, and they don’t understand it. They may or may not have an older sibling that hasn’t done it either,” Tadlock said.
He suggests first-generation students need more personalized support from K-12 educators in order to succeed. Without the proper guidance, they tend to miss important deadlines, like for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, he said.
The ECMC survey highlighted the answers of students from low-income and first-generation backgrounds, as well as those who are Black, Indigenous, or other people of color.
Forty-eight percent of students from that group plan to apply for scholarships, and 31 percent plan to apply for grants. Meanwhile, 58 percent of all students surveyed say they’ll pursue scholarships, and 48 percent plan to apply for grants.
With the overall perception of the value of a four-year degree in decline, Fisher emphasized the importance of high school educators listening to students’ needs and catering to their postsecondary desires.
“If you take a step back and you think about higher education as a service provider, and a student, as a customer—if you’re not listening to your customers, you’re not going to do great,” Fisher said.
Tadlock said high schools should emphasize career aptitude tests that allow students to see what options might be a good fit—and what they need to do to get there.
“Students don’t always know what to ask for. Our counselors have to get them to take the career assessments, look at the results, and then bring those resources in to expose our students to what would benefit them most,” Tadlock said.
