America’s higher education system is broken. It is no longer a pipeline to prosperity. It has become a conveyor belt of debt, disillusionment, and dependence.
For too long, our universities have prioritized ideological conformity and bloated administration over job readiness and real-world skills. As a result, employers are turning away from American graduates and hiring foreign workers instead. This is not just an economic crisis. It is a national betrayal.
In theory, college is supposed to prepare students for the workforce. In practice, it is preparing them to protest, pout, and parrot progressive talking points. We now have entire graduating classes that can recite radical theories on gender and race but cannot balance a budget, build a resume, or function in a corporate environment.
The rise of safe spaces has produced a generation allergic to accountability. And while American families go into debt to foot the bill, the return on investment keeps shrinking.
The data is staggering. According to a report from the Federal Reserve, only 27 percent of college graduates work in a job related to their major. Meanwhile, student loan debt has ballooned to more than $1.7 trillion. Young Americans are graduating with degrees they cannot use and debts they cannot pay, while corporations quietly shift their hiring overseas.
We hear it from CEOs all the time. They struggle to find American candidates with the right combination of technical skills, emotional maturity, and work ethic. Increasingly, companies are bypassing recent college graduates entirely and hiring foreign workers through H-1B visas or outsourcing jobs to countries like India, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines. Why? Because many foreign workers come with rigorous STEM training, zero entitlement, and no delusions about being oppressed in the workplace.
This shift has real-world consequences. In cities across America, once-proud middle-class communities are crumbling. Domestic manufacturing has declined. Career-track positions are evaporating. Even prestigious industries like tech are now dominated by foreign labor while qualified Americans are left on the sidelines. What is worse, too many politicians and university presidents pretend this is not happening. They are more concerned with land acknowledgments and DEI statements than with putting Americans to work.
This is not about xenophobia. We celebrate legal immigration and global collaboration. But when our own system fails to equip citizens for success, and then replaces them with foreign workers, it is time to sound the alarm. America cannot remain a world power if it cannot even produce a competitive workforce. And we cannot claim to care about the working class while allowing our education system to sabotage them.
We need to radically rethink higher education in this country. That starts with accountability.
Colleges should be required to disclose the job placement rates and average starting salaries for each major. They should have skin in the game when it comes to student loans. If a university is charging 200,000 dollars for a sociology degree with a 10 percent employment rate, they should be on the hook when students default.
We also need to restore dignity and funding to vocational and technical training. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in fields like construction, welding, automotive repair, and clean energy that do not require a four-year degree but pay far more than many white-collar jobs. Yet these trades are ignored and stigmatized by an academic elite that would not last five minutes on a factory floor.
Additionally, we must realign federal funding to prioritize outcomes, not ideologies. Instead of pouring taxpayer money into universities that produce unemployable graduates, we should reward institutions that deliver real results. That means job creation, innovation, and upward mobility. It also means defunding DEI bureaucracies and investing in practical instruction, mentorship, and apprenticeships.
And companies need to do their part too. The private sector must stop using college degrees as a lazy proxy for competence and start building better pipelines from high school and trade schools into the workforce. Apprenticeships, certifications, and on-the-job training are often more valuable than a diploma. It is time to treat them that way.
Let us be clear. This is not just an economic argument. It is a moral one. We are betraying a generation of Americans by selling them a lie. We tell them to go to college, take on debt, and they will be set for life. Then we hand them a useless degree and shove them into a job market that wants nothing to do with them. That is unjust. That is un-American.
President Trump understood this better than anyone. His administration made historic investments in vocational training, championed apprenticeship programs, and called out the rot in higher education before it was fashionable. Now, as his second term begins, we have a chance to finish what he started.
We must revive the American Dream by rebuilding the bridge between education and employment. That means breaking the stranglehold of the academic-industrial complex and returning to a model of education that serves the people, not the professors.
The choice before us is clear. We can keep sending kids into ideological indoctrination centers that leave them jobless and bitter, or we can build an education system that prepares them to lead, build, and thrive. One path leads to national decline. The other leads to renewal. We know what needs to be done!
Dr. Isaiah Hankel is the CEO of Overqualified.com and a 3X Best-Selling Author
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