[tturedraider]

I’m just going to post this again separately for clarity. It is indeed a myth that college is a must to be successful and have a well paying job. While it is true that a fairly large percentage of U.S. young people start college only about 1/3 actually graduate with at least a bachelor’s degree. 2/3 of the adult population in the U.S. does not have a college degree. For many years it was very stable at 27%. It has only increased over the last number of years. I’m fairly convinced a lot of that increase is due to colleges pushing people through and graduating folks who wouldn’t have graduated in the past. That’s my opinion. I have no data backing that up. It just seems odd to me that after being steady at around 27% for many years the graduation rate has increased by 6% in just a few years. I think that change occurred over a ten year period or possibly less.

Prior to World War II only about 5% of Americans had at least a bachelor’s degree. The GI Bill was the beginning of the change. In 1938 160,000 Americans had a college degree. By 1950 that number had increased to 500,000. I found an interesting little factoid from the University of Texas. In the fall of 1945 their enrollment was 7,027. In the fall of 1946 their enrollment was 17,108. 10,849 of those students were veterans.

In 1945 88,000 veterans were enrolled in the GI Bill. In 1946 over 1 million were enrolled and by 1950 over 14 million were enrolled. World War II and the GI Bill were game changers for college enrollment in the U.S.

Personally, I think the popularity of college sports, football in particular, leads many to believe a lot more folks are college graduates than actually are. During college football season it seems like everyone is a college student or an alumnus.