Education Must Justify Your Investment

Every education path should connect cost, required credentials, real jobs, and earning power before debt claims future paychecks.

On Josh Shapiro’s first day in office in January 2023, a four-year degree requirement disappeared from roughly 92% of Pennsylvania state government jobs. About 65,000 positions sat on the other side of that decision.

That is a large stack of applications suddenly freed from a familiar little box. Bachelor’s degree required. Four words with the power to close a door before anyone asks whether the man outside can perform the job.

Shapiro called such a requirement “arbitrary” when he discussed the policy in a July statement during his 2026 reelection bid. Polling at the time suggested he was expected to win easily. There was also speculation that opening jobs to Pennsylvanians without degrees would serve him well if he entered the 2028 Democratic presidential primary field.

Fine. Politicians notice a parade once it reaches their reviewing stand. The interesting part happened earlier, when employers, parents, students, and workers began asking an impolite question: What exactly are we buying?

For decades, college carried the glow of prestige. The campus name mattered. The degree mattered. The framed paper mattered. Adults spoke of it with the solemnity of a board vote and roughly the same amount of open dissent.

Now the conversation has moved toward payback. Training has to connect to work. Tuition has to face earning power. Debt has to explain itself. Prestige can sit quietly in the lobby while the numbers enter the conference room.

“Arbitrary” Has a Payroll Cost

Shapiro’s word deserves a hard look. An arbitrary degree requirement is an expense imposed on the applicant before the employer has established that the expense improves performance.

If a state government job genuinely requires the knowledge developed through a four-year program, the degree requirement has a defensible purpose. If the work requires judgment, communication, reliability, technical competence, and a skill set learned elsewhere, the requirement becomes a velvet rope maintained by habit.

Employers have used degrees as screening devices because screening is difficult. A credential gives the hiring manager a shortcut. It says someone completed assignments, met deadlines, dealt with bureaucracy, and remained upright through several years of institutional fluorescent lighting. Those qualities have value.

The shortcut also throws away capable people. It confuses attendance with competence and selection with proof. Human resources departments love a clean filter. A clean filter makes a fine chart in a board deck, and board decks have concealed more lazy thinking than tinted executive-office glass.

Donald Trump’s administration has pursued a similar direction in federal employment. In June 2020, Trump signed executive orders directing agencies to emphasize job skills and remove unnecessary college-degree requirements unless law required them. That approach expanded after he returned to the White House, alongside an emphasis on skills-based federal hiring and workforce training.

The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act has passed the Senate and awaits presidential sign-off. It would effectively prevent federal agencies from requiring contractor employees to hold college degrees.

That policy asks a useful question: Does the contract require a credential, or does someone inside the agency simply enjoy seeing one?

The same question belongs in every hiring meeting. Pull up the actual responsibilities. Mark the tasks that require knowledge exclusive to a degree program. Mark the tasks that can be demonstrated through experience, testing, certification, or a work sample. Then remove every requirement surviving on institutional muscle memory.

A credential should open a door because it proves preparation. It should never own the building because everyone forgot to ask for the key.

“A Tragedy” Needs a Balance Sheet

Ken Goodrich described the student debt crisis as a “tragedy.” He first held a flashlight for his father while work was being done at night when he was 10 years old. He later became a bestselling author in the E-Myth series and a mentor to people in construction, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and other fields.

Goodrich sees more parents encouraging high school students and older children to consider those industries instead of treating college as the automatic route into the middle class. He says young people can begin earning sooner in stable, growing fields.

“Tragedy” is a heavy word. It fits when debt was presented as the admission price for adulthood and the promised earnings never arrived.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that about 42% of recent college graduates were underemployed in jobs that did not require degrees. That figure does not prove that 42% wasted their education. A degree can shape thinking, deepen knowledge, create relationships, and become useful later. Underemployment measures the job being performed. It cannot measure every benefit a person carries away from school.

Still, the monthly statement arrives with less philosophical range. The lender has yet to accept “personal enrichment” in the payment field.

A man with a bachelor’s degree who enters another training program has learned something expensive about sequence. Eric Jochim, a co-owner and vice president of marketing at Beyond 21st Century Beauty Academy, says many students entering the California-based cosmetology program already hold bachelor’s degrees. They are concerned about whether entry-level positions remain available in their original fields as artificial intelligence changes the employment market.

Those students deserve respect rather than sneering. They made one decision with the information, pressure, ambition, and counsel available to them. Then they faced new evidence and changed direction. Pride has buried plenty of men beneath obsolete plans. A course correction takes nerve when a loan balance follows you into the next room.

Debt itself deserves plain language. It is tomorrow’s paycheck assigned in advance. It reduces the number of choices available to the man who owes it. Sometimes that exchange funds a profession with strong earnings and necessary credentials. Sometimes it funds four years of vague hope accompanied by impressive landscaping.

I do not know a universal formula for choosing a life at 18. Anyone claiming to possess one should be required to explain his own decisions from that age under oath. I would request counsel before discussing my teenage certainty about anything.

I do know what belongs on the page before a man signs:

• The full cost he expects to finance.
• The credential required for the specific occupation he wants.
• The entry-level positions actually available to graduates of that program.
• The earnings associated with those positions.
• The payment terms attached to the debt.
• The cheaper routes into the same work.
• The consequences if he changes direction before finishing.

Hope belongs in a man’s heart. It has no business impersonating a repayment plan.

“Developing Talent” Takes Work

Chris Harrington, state director of North Carolina’s State Apprenticeship Agency, called apprenticeship a “model for developing talent.” That phrase clears away one of the dumbest assumptions in the room: that apprenticeship is simply a fallback for people who dislike study.

Apprenticeships require study. They are used in healthcare, education, information technology, advanced manufacturing, construction-related fields, and other professional and technical occupations. The work varies. The structure connects instruction to demonstrated performance.

Paul Iaccerino runs a five-year electrician apprentice program in New York funded by the Building Industry Electrical Contractors Association, a regional group of union electrical contractors. Gen Z participants make up about 70% of the program’s 145 apprentices. Many arrived after trying other paths, including traditional college. Iaccerino says the average age of apprentices entering the program is consistently getting lower.

Five years should cure anyone of the fantasy that apprenticeship means skipping education. The participant studies, works, gets corrected, and returns to the task. Competence develops under observation. Errors have names. Progress can be seen.

That last part matters. Many men focus better when knowledge meets a live responsibility. A concept becomes concrete when an employee must use it correctly, answer for the result, and return the next day prepared to improve.

Harrington also made the essential distinction between occupations. Some call for a bachelor’s degree. Others align with a Registered Apprenticeship, certificate, associate degree, or a combination of education and work. He rejects presenting those routes as a hierarchy.

Good. Hierarchies built around status tend to serve the people already seated at the top.

The better hierarchy ranks pathways by fitness for purpose. A surgeon needs the education and credentials governing surgery. An information technology employee needs demonstrable technical ability. A manager needs the capacity to lead people, allocate resources, communicate decisions, and own results. A framed degree can support those outcomes. The outcome remains the point.

Ken Goodrich also emphasized the range of positions inside trade-related companies. Those organizations employ people in administration, sales, and customer service, alongside employees performing technical work. A young person entering one role can discover another aptitude and move through the organization.

This is where the prestige debate starts looking childish. Companies require technicians, salespeople, administrators, customer service employees, managers, and owners. The P and L statement has no line labeled “occupational glamour.” I checked. The accountants remain stubborn on this matter.

A man choosing training should ask where the first role leads. He should identify the next credential, the expected responsibility, the route into management or ownership, and the skills that transfer if the company closes. A starting position matters. A visible progression matters more.

The ordinary working man deserves a pathway that respects both his mind and his need to earn. He should be able to build competence without placing his future under a stack of obligations designed by people who never see his bank statement.

“Employees and Learners” Changes the Math

Harrington described apprentices as “employees and learners.” Those three words expose the central financial advantage of work-based education. The person develops skill while earning.

That arrangement carries its own demands. The apprentice has responsibilities to an employer. Instruction often combines classroom learning with work-based training across a longer period. The schedule can be punishing. Advancement requires performance. Anyone selling apprenticeship as an effortless escape is running the same prestige scam with different signage.

Still, earning during training changes the calculation. Education stops occupying a sealed chamber separate from the labor market. The employer sees what the participant can do. The participant sees the actual organization, its standards, its management, and its opportunities.

National Student Clearinghouse data show enrollment in undergraduate certificate plans increased 10.2% in spring 2026 over the same period in the previous year. Students new to bachelor’s degree programs increased 1% over that same year-over-year period. The number of students was essentially the same across both categories.

Preliminary fall 2025 data showed particularly strong growth in mechanic and repair technology and engineering technology programs at two-year colleges, according to Scott Beaulier, economist and dean at the College of Business at the University of Wyoming.

Those figures describe enrollment choices. They do not establish future earnings or guarantee completion. They do show that a meaningful group of students is moving toward shorter credentials connected more visibly to occupations.

Federal policy has begun moving in the same direction. Workforce Pell Grants were extended through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to certain qualifying short-term workforce programs. Tax-friendly 529 savings plans also expanded under the bill to include many more vocational programs.

Harrington sees value in recognizing postsecondary learning delivered outside a traditional degree structure. He also says Workforce Pell was not designed primarily for Registered Apprenticeship. Department of Labor-recognized Registered Apprenticeship programs face restrictions involving eligibility rules, timing requirements, and other narrow parameters.

There it is. Government discovers a useful model, praises it from a podium, then hands it a binder thick enough to alter the Earth’s rotation.

The current administration has set a goal of surpassing 1 million active Registered Apprenticeships and committed hundreds of millions of dollars to expansion. A goal remains a goal. Money committed to expansion remains distinct from completed apprenticeships and successful careers.

The practical test belongs at the participant level. Does the program place a man inside actual work? Does he earn while learning? Which credential does he receive? Which employers recognize it? How many participants complete the program? What position follows completion?

Training becomes credible when the employer, the worker, and the paycheck all occupy the same sentence.

“Oversold” Is an Expensive Word

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has argued that traditional four-year degrees were “oversold” and that demand remains high for skilled workers in trade-related fields.

Oversold describes a promise marketed beyond its evidence. For years, the four-year degree was treated as the standard admission ticket to respectable adulthood. School counselors repeated it. Parents repeated it. Employers reinforced it with degree screens. Colleges printed glossy materials that seemed to suggest every pathway ended near a glass office and a tasteful conference table.

The institution received tuition. The lender received a claim on future income. The employer received a convenient filter. The student carried nearly all the downside when the career connection failed.

That does not make college a fraud. It makes indiscriminate college promotion irresponsible.

Some occupations require bachelor’s degrees. Some students want serious academic study that serves a clear professional or intellectual purpose. Some institutions connect students with employers and produce graduates whose earning power justifies the cost. Those facts belong in the same room as debt, underemployment, and weak career alignment.

The question, is college worth it, collapses too many decisions into one sentence. Which college? Which program? Which occupation? Which price? Which debt terms? Which completion rate? Which employer relationships? Which alternative path?

A man should force the institution to answer at the program level. General claims about graduate success conceal weak degrees behind strong ones. University-wide averages can blend engineering, management, education, and loosely connected programs into one polished number. The applicant needs information tied to the credential he intends to buy.

Ask the admissions office which employers hired recent graduates from that specific program. Ask what positions they entered. Ask whether internships are built into the curriculum. Ask which certifications the program includes. Ask how often required courses are available, because an unavailable course can extend enrollment and increase cost. Ask what happens to credits if you transfer.

Then call employers. Admissions employees are paid to fill seats. Employers are paid to fill roles. Their answers can differ with impressive athleticism.

Thomas Weston, chief strategy officer at the Colorado-based U.S. Career Institute, says students need flexibility to work and study simultaneously. That point reaches beyond online convenience. A program designed around the assumption that adults can stop earning has already misunderstood the lives of many people it claims to serve.

The man covering rent, insurance, transportation, debt payments, and family obligations lives under a hard calendar. His education has to fit beside those duties. He deserves scheduling built for reality, rather than a lecture about commitment from an institution that closes administrative offices before he leaves work.

There is tenderness in a man opening course material after a full day because he wants a stronger future. There is dignity in the effort, regardless of whether the material leads to a bachelor’s degree, an associate degree, a certificate, or an industry credential. The institution owes that man something equally serious in return.

“Connect Clearly” Means Show the Work

Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, said young people expect education to “connect clearly” to jobs, earnings, and skills. That expectation is healthy. It is also astonishing that anyone treats it as a new demand.

James Flannery reached the question through experience. At 26, he is a first-year electrician apprentice in Iaccerino’s New York program. He previously studied cybersecurity at a New York college, decided the path did not fit him, and entered the apprenticeship after working at his father’s hardware store in the Bronx.

Flannery said school presented college again and again while giving other routes little attention. He now feels happier about his future.

His choice proves no universal rule about cybersecurity, college, or electrical work. It shows a man correcting his own course. That is enough. He looked at the path in front of him, judged the fit, and moved.

Sarah Boisvert operates a New Mexico-based training program that connects apprentices and interns with digital technology pathways aligned with employers. Her approach reflects a broader collapse in the old white-collar and blue-collar categories. Modern technical work often combines study, software, equipment, communication, and judgment.

The collar labels were always doing too much work anyway. They assigned social rank to the setting instead of measuring competence, usefulness, or earning power. A weak analyst behind a desk remains weak. A skilled employee solving a costly technical problem remains valuable. Office furniture has never conferred wisdom, though several executive committees continue the clinical trial.

Connecting education clearly to work requires evidence before enrollment. A serious program should identify the occupation, the credential, the employers involved, the sequence of advancement, and the expected demands. The student should understand whether the training prepares him for one company, one region, one license, or a portable field of work.

This also changes how parents, mentors, and school officials should speak to young men. Prestige questions come last. Start with aptitude. Move to actual work. Examine cost. Examine earnings. Examine mobility. Then examine the education required.

A man with a gift for technical systems should hear about the full range of technical pathways. A man drawn to management should understand that leadership requires operational knowledge, financial discipline, and responsibility for people. A man pursuing academic work should know exactly what advanced study demands. Respect the man enough to describe the road accurately.

Prestige asks how the choice sounds at a reunion. Payback asks what the choice does on Monday morning.

“Value of Our Degrees” Goes on Trial

Scott Beaulier said colleges need to demonstrate the “value of our degrees,” connect students directly to employers, and create flexible opportunities for learning across a career. He also observed that a successful person in a technical field may later benefit from business education in accounting, entrepreneurship, or management.

That sequence makes sense. Education can arrive when the need becomes visible. A person begins with technical competence, encounters payroll, pricing, contracts, hiring, and cash flow, then seeks business knowledge tied to responsibilities already sitting on his desk.

Harrington described a similar progression. A young person can begin as an apprentice, complete an industry credential or certificate, move toward an associate degree, and later pursue a bachelor’s degree when that degree adds career value. The pathways can connect.

This is a better frame for the college decision. Education becomes a series of investments tied to work, rather than a single ceremonial purchase made before a person understands the market or himself.

Before choosing any program, build a one-page education investment memo. Use the language a leadership team would use before approving capital:

• Objective: Name the job or field the training serves.
• Required credential: Identify what employers or law actually demand.
• Total obligation: List tuition, fees, financing, and the time away from paid work.
• Evidence of demand: Name employers hiring for the role and the skills they request.
• Starting position: Identify the likely first role rather than the dream role printed in promotional material.
• Progression: Map the next credential, responsibility, and earning step.
• Failure plan: State what remains useful if you leave early or the occupation changes.

If the school refuses to provide program-specific employment information, record that refusal. If an apprenticeship cannot explain completion requirements or employer recognition, record that too. If a certificate has no standing with the organizations doing the hiring, its low price still buys very little.

College has to justify itself against actual earning power. So does an apprenticeship. So does a certificate. So does every boot camp, academy, training provider, and government initiative with a polished brochure and a heroic noun in its name.

Stewardship requires this kind of severity. Money represents hours of a life. Debt assigns future hours before they arrive. A man should spend both with humility, courage, and a clear view of whom the decision serves.

The sacred part lives inside that responsibility. Work provides. Skill serves other people. Earnings create choices and obligations. Ambition can build a company, support a household, strengthen a community, and fund generosity. Ambition can also become a shrine where a man sacrifices peace, integrity, and every relationship unable to improve his résumé.

That is why prestige makes such a poor compass. It points toward applause, and applause moves.

The better question is specific enough to make everyone uncomfortable: What will this education enable me to do, who will pay me to do it, and why does the return justify the obligation?

Some men will answer with a four-year degree. Others will choose a five-year apprenticeship, an undergraduate certificate, a two-year college program, or a sequence that eventually includes all of them. The form matters less than the evidence.

One application still sits open on a screen somewhere, waiting for a degree checkbox that has already disappeared from roughly 65,000 Pennsylvania positions. A man reads the responsibilities again. For once, the door asks what he can do.

What to do about it

This week, choose one education or training path you are considering and write a one-page investment memo. Name the target occupation, required credential, full cost, financing terms, likely first role, expected earnings, and what remains useful if the plan changes.

Call the program and ask which employers hired recent completers, which positions they entered, how long completion usually takes, and whether credits or credentials transfer. Then call two employers and ask what they require for the same role.

Put the answers beside your current budget and calculate the monthly payment and time away from paid work. Leave the application open until the program can show what your signature is buying.

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