CHAPTER ONE
College Is a Major Deal
The best way to predict the future is to plan it.
—Peter Drucker
Each fall, about 2.1 million (69.2%) high school students enroll in college—
an enrollment rate that has been steady for the past couple of years. More
women (72.6%) than men (65.8%) are enrolled in college, and about two
in three of those high school graduates who enroll in college attend
four-year colleges.1
Despite the conversations in the media about the value of a college
education, the data is clear that education is becoming a necessity.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “The unemployment
rate for recent high school graduates not enrolled in college was 20.7 per-
cent, higher than the rate of 12.6 percent for recent graduates enrolled in
college.”2
While it’s true that jobs are back after our recent recession, Anthony
Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, and Artem Gulish write in America’s
Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots, “They are not the same
jobs that were lost during the recession. The great Recession decimated
low-skill blue-collar and clerical jobs, whereas the recovery added pri-
marily high-skill managerial and professional jobs.”3 They state that
workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher now make up a larger share of
the workforce (36%) than workers with a high school diploma or less
(34%).4 Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce
statistics show that by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the United States
will require education beyond a high school diploma.5
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