What China Eliminating University Degrees Means For American Parents And Students
The bleachers in my son’s high school gym still smelled like old sneakers and floor wax when my phone buzzed halfway through the college admissions counselor’s opening remarks. My 17-year-old, Jace, was sitting two rows ahead picking at a loose thread on his hoodie instead of taking notes, and his text read: “Did u see China just got rid of a ton of college degrees? Why am I killing myself to apply here if no one cares about degrees anyway?”
I tucked my phone back into my jacket pocket and stared at the banner hanging over the gym stage: “Your Degree Is Your Future.” I’d seen that slogan a hundred times that night, printed on every brochure and poster. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Jace’s question. After the meeting ended, we skipped the post-event snack table and headed to the Dairy Queen down the street, like we do when we need to talk. Jace got his usual Oreo Blizzard, I got a small vanilla cone, and we pulled out my phone to actually read the story he’d seen.
It turned out Jace had misread the headline a little: China didn’t eliminate all degrees, it cut more than 1,500 underperforming university degree programs that weren’t leading to steady jobs. Most were overlapping general studies programs or low-enrollment majors that left graduates fighting for too few open positions, at a time when youth unemployment in China is hovering around 20 percent. The government is shifting more students into vocational and trade programs that align with what employers actually need. That’s the gist of it.
Jace leaned back against the hood of my car and wiped Blizzard crumbs off his chin. “See? Even the Chinese government gets it. Why do I need to pay $40 grand a year for a degree when I already know what I want to do?”
Jace has been rebuilding junked Honda engines in our garage since he was 14. He posts time-lapse videos of his work to Instagram, and he’s got more than 12,000 followers who ask him for design tips for custom parts. A local custom car shop offered him a part-time apprenticeship when he graduates this spring, and the lead designer there makes a solid $85,000 a year with no four-year degree. For a year, I’ve pushed him to get his applications in to industrial design programs anyway, because that’s what you do after high school, right? That’s what my parents told me, that’s what all the brochures say.
But reading that headline about China’s changes got me thinking. This isn’t just a faraway news story. The same pressure that pushed China to cut those useless degree programs is here in the US, too. My sister is a high school guidance counselor outside Chicago, and she’s been telling me for three years that more and more of her students are turning down four-year schools to do apprenticeships or get industry certificates. Student debt in this country hit $1.7 trillion a couple years back, and almost a third of recent four-year graduates are working jobs that don’t even require their degree. China just made the shift official, out in the open. We’re still tiptoeing around it, but the writing is on the wall.
I used to think the only right path was a four-year degree right out of high school. But over the last couple months, Jace and I have made small, concrete changes that I think any American family can steal, no matter what your kid wants to do. First, instead of opening every conversation with “When are you submitting your applications?” we switched to asking “What’s the coolest thing you worked on this week?” It shifts the focus from checking a box to building actual skills, which matters whether you go to college or not. Second, we blocked off the first 12 months after graduation as a low-stakes exploration window. Jace will do his apprenticeship 30 hours a week, and take two general ed classes a semester at our local community college for $158 a credit. Those credits will transfer if he decides to go to a four-year school in a couple years, so he’s not wasting time or money. Third, any time we look at a degree program, we pull up the free U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard website to check two numbers: the percentage of graduates working in their field one year after graduation, and the average starting salary. We did that for the industrial design program Jace was looking at, and the average starting salary was $38,000 a year, with an average of $27,000 in student debt. That’s less than the lead designer at his apprenticeship makes, with no debt at all. That number changed both of our minds.
I still worry sometimes. Last week I lay awake at 2 a.m. wondering if I’m setting Jace up to fail by letting him skip the traditional college path. I grew up believing a degree was the only ticket to a stable middle class life, and it’s hard to shake that. But right now, Jace comes home every day covered in grease and excited to tell me about the new camshaft design he’s testing. He’s already putting away money into a savings account, he doesn’t owe anyone anything.
China’s move didn’t create this shift. It just held up a mirror to what’s already happening here. Degrees aren’t going to disappear overnight, and they’ll still be the right choice for a lot of kids. But the old rule that any degree is worth any amount of debt? That’s gone, same as those 1,500 cut degree programs in China. We don’t know exactly what comes next for Jace, or for American higher ed. Right now, that’s okay. We’re taking it one engine rebuild at a time.
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