By Lawrence Solomon, published by The Epoch Times, November 9, 2026

Fear of social stigma, abetted by government subsidies, consigns most students to lacklustre years in school, sapping their ambition for meaningful careers. Lawrence Solomon argues that pushing more young people into college is counterproductive—economically, creatively, and demographically.

Lawrence Solomon contends that “college is ‘not for everyone,’” citing Warren Buffett, who “never looked at where CEO candidates went to school.” Tim Cook has said Apple hires “people from all walks of life,” degrees or no degrees. Steve Jobs viewed college as turning people into “bozos” by stifling creativity, while Elon Musk has called colleges “basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning.”

Solomon notes that before stigma attached to non-graduates, far fewer pursued degrees: only about 8% of adults had a bachelor’s or higher in 1960, rising gradually to 20% by 1990. Most entered the workforce and started families after high school. Today, social pressure plus subsidies drive most graduates into college regardless of aptitude. Today’s outcome: over a third drop out, and a 2024 Burning Glass/Strada analysis of millions of careers found 52% of recent grads underemployed in jobs not typically requiring a degree—and most stay that way.

Solomon highlights better returns in the trades: an electrician starting an apprenticeship post-high school can accumulate roughly $217,000 more over a decade than a typical public-university graduate after debt and forgone wages. Nearly half of workers with trade credentials out-earn the median bachelor’s holder, and they gain skills, income, and family capacity years earlier.

The deeper cost, Solomon argues, is demographic. Longer education delays marriage and children and often reduces completed fertility. Research on Britain, France, and Belgium attributed 57–74% of the 1970–2000 delay in first births to extended schooling. Median first-marriage ages in the U.S. have risen about eight years since 1960 (to ~30.5 for men and 28.6 for women). 

Across the OECD, first children now often arrive in the 30s (up 2–5 years since the 1970s), while total fertility has more than halved from over 3.3 in 1960 to about 1.5. Studies confirm later starts generally lower lifetime births without full catch-up.

Solomon concludes that governments, which have poured money into higher education and fertility-boosting programs with little success, should stop subsidizing unnecessary degrees. Reducing those incentives, he writes, could help to reverse the fertility collapse threatening Western societies. [Continue here to the publisher’s website to read this article in full].

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Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book, The Population Implosion, is executive director of Fertility Probe, a joint project of Canada’s Energy Probe Research Foundation and U.S.-based Probe International Foundation.