congratulations graduates. it's college
commencement season, and we wish all the best to the class of 2022. but this also seems
to be the right time to ask a tough question. was it worth all that money all that hard
work? david pogue has our crash course. twenty-eight-year-old kera cheney works for the
government, lives in a basement apartment with her boyfriend in san francisco, and stresses about her
college loans. how much did they add up to about? it's around like 280-some thousand. two hundred
and eighty thousand dollars? yeah. cheney followed the classic recipe for success she graduated
from penn state but now she's facing down decades of debt. have you ever tried to figure
out if I put aside this much a month this is the year when I'll pay off those 280 thousand
dollars? I mean that would be the goal. I've always thought of
winning the lottery [laughs] and cheney's not alone. 43 million americans carry
student debt. they owe the government more than 1.7 trillion dollars. and about two-thirds of all
graduates leave college carrying debt. many will work their entire careers without being able to
pay it off. no wonder college debt has become a white house priority. we can't go out as much as
we used to for dinners, and we can't take as much trips as we want to unless it's in our budget.
so it does affect us. one reason for the crisis: skyrocketing tuition. another reason: more people
going to college in the first place. in the early 1960s only about eight percent of americans had
a college degree and now it's getting close to 40 percent. wow. so it's a big difference. you
were pretty special in the 1960s if you had a college degree. peter cappelli is a professor of
management at the university of pennsylvania's wharton school of business. but you are also the
author of a book relevant to our topic today, called "will college pay off."
that's right. will college pay off? um it depends. there's no doubt that going to
college is incredibly useful for people in terms of improving their lives. what everybody's
interested in more is financially. is this a good investment? will it pay off and that you'll
be better off than in a high school graduate? yeah, if they graduate for sure. if they don't
maybe not. trouble is most students don't. the astonishing statistic is that only 40 percent
of full-time college students graduate in four years. less than half? less than half. and even
if you pause your schooling your debt keeps right on growing. if it takes you six years to graduate
you've got six years of interest accumulation. so the old formula - spend four years in college get
financial security - is no longer a sure thing. I'm applying for the position of user experience
designer. but some new formulas are springing up in its place. nothing is ever set in stone whether
you want to, like,, go to college or go straight to the workforce, everything's changing. natasha
and stephanie ramos and their father javier live in connecticut. natasha avoided massive debt by
starting her college career inexpensively. I got two years at a community college. and finishing
at a state college. connecticut university student debt is way "better" than private school
student debt so I'll just leave it at that okay? stephanie attends a vocational high
school where students can learn trades like carpentry plumbing or hairdressing. but
she's taking a shortcut to the corporate world, thanks to the google professional certification
program. providing you with job ready skills to start or advance your career in IT. for $39 a
month she can take video classes that prepare her for a career in technology. and the courses give
you a certification at the end that looks very good for employers or for colleges, whatever route
you want to take. by the time you're done with high school you'd be in the working world at what
18 years old? yep. javier, do you put any pressure on her one way or another for financial reasons?
I support going college but a certain point the last decision is on her. well seems
to be working in your family. thank god! it looks pretty complicated. the google program
has already placed 75 000 workers into well-paying tech jobs at over 150 companies that are eager to
hire them. meanwhile opportunities are opening up on the receiving end too. eighty percent of what
we call family sustaining jobs - sixty thousand dollars or more generally speaking - require
a four-year degree and so companies screen out people no matter what their intelligence is, their
curiosity, their work ethic, their adaptability. but if you don't have enough people to fill
all the jobs that we need in this country I think we have to re-examine it. ken frazier is
the executive chairman and former ceo of merck. ginni rometty is the former ceo of ibm. they've
led a drive to eliminate the college requirement from as many of their companies' job descriptions
as possible. when I became ceo in 2012 we looked at every single job and said do we need a college
degree to start or could we translate into a set of skills you need? so what started as over 90
percent of jobs needed a college degree is now less than 50 percent. wow. for example lab techs
and things of that nature, they don't necessarily need a degree in philosophy in order to do
the job. obviously you're not doing this just because it's the right thing to do, there must be
something in it for the corporations. absolutely, this is not philanthropy. at the end of the
day you have people who you can retain longer because they're incredibly loyal, they're hard
working, you can access them for a lot less money, and our data has shown that their performance is
equal to those with a four-year degree. but wait a minute, a college degree means you know how to
apportion your time, you learn to communicate with others. it does but there are studies that show
that people who actually have the right skills training are five times more likely to succeed
in the job than people who have a college degree, it's counterintuitive. are you anti-college are
you saying? we are absolutely not anti-college at all. it is about just recognizing you may
start and go a different path than someone else. you know college has lots of value beyond just
getting a job I mean we think education is a good thing for people it broadens their perspectives
on the world and what we've seen in these kinds of programs is eventually a substantial majority
of these people go on and get a college degree. they just didn't get the college degree before
they entered the workplace. it's a question of sequence not a question of capability. to scale
up this idea rometty and frazier have founded one-ten, a coalition of 60 major employers and
counting. one-ten came from the proposition that it would be useful if we sought to
hire one million black americans who lack a four-year college degree over
10 years into family sustaining jobs. the coalition works with community colleges,
job training organizations, and apprenticeships, persuading them to train young people for
precisely the kinds of jobs that need filling. rometty calls them new collar jobs. in our
country is a stereotype of white collar/ blue collar and we came up with the name new
collar as something different, to say, no, no, no, this is something new. new programs
new sequences new collar workers. for some careers it's all part of a new wave of alternative
paths that don't involve college or college debt. as for kera cheney she has a long-range plan.
I really want to go to law school. if I can start making higher money then I can afford my
monthly payments. so was college worth it for you? I mean I had fun in college it was great
experience but for the lifetime of debt I'm going to be living with ... that's
so hard, it's such a difficult question.
