College is preparing kids for jobs that won't exist

Before you mortgage your family's future on a college degree for your child, ask yourself if it's still worth it

"So, are you starting to plan college visits with your oldest yet?"

I get this question constantly now that my daughter is in high school. People expect a straightforward answer, excitement about campus tours, or stress about standardized tests. Instead, I give them my polite response: "We're keeping all options open."

What I don't say is the truth: Sending my kid to college right now feels like enrolling her in a four-year horse carriage driving apprenticeship just as the first Model Ts start rolling off Henry Ford’s assembly line.

The timing is all wrong. The investment is enormous. And the skills she'd learn might be obsolete before she even graduates.

And here's the brutal reality most people don’t talk about: 52% of bachelor's degree holders are underemployed a year after graduating. Nearly half are still underemployed a decade later. We're not talking about a temporary adjustment period. We're talking about a system that's fundamentally broken.

I should be the poster child for college success

Before you dismiss this as privileged contrarianism, let me tell you why I should be college's biggest cheerleader.

I came to the U.S. alone at 17. First generation to go to university. I got into Columbia on what was essentially a full ride academic scholarship. I graduated with only $10K in debt, which felt like winning the lottery.

By every measure, I am the college success story. The American dream in action. The proof that education is the great equalizer.

And I'm still questioning whether it was worth it.

If someone like me—who got the elite education at a fraction of the normal cost—is wondering about the ROI, what does that tell you about the system?

I say this not to pull the ladder up behind me, but to warn you that the ladder is broken. I benefited from a system that no longer functions the way it once did, and it would be irresponsible to pretend otherwise.

Here's what I learned: even when college "works," it doesn't work the way we've been told it does. I didn't get ahead because of what I learned in those lecture halls. I got ahead because of what I built afterward, often in spite of what I'd been taught to value.

Photo by Brandon in Chicago for Flytographer

Jobs are vanishing faster than people can earn degrees

Let's be specific about what's happening right now, not in some distant future.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claims that AI is doing up to 50% of the work at his company. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon recently said drafting IPO documents is now 95% automated.

Work that used to take a six-person team weeks. Marketing coordinators creating presentations. Financial analysts building spreadsheets. HR generalists writing policies. These are all tasks AI can now do faster and cheaper than a human. These aren't hypothetical future scenarios. They're happening now to exactly the jobs we've been telling kids to pursue.

It wasn't that long ago that "Learn to code" was bulletproof career advice. Now ChatGPT writes functional code in seconds. "Get into data analysis?" Algorithms crunch datasets better than humans. "Study finance?" Most trading is already automated.

Even the prestige careers aren't safe. Law school trains lawyers for document review that AI already does. Medical school teaches diagnostics that algorithms perform. Business school prepares professionals to create strategy decks that ChatGPT generates overnight.

Companies aren't waiting for the technology to be perfect. They're already replacing workers with AI tools that cost a fraction of a human salary, because the narrative of "innovation" matters more to investors than whether the technology actually works.

Will every job disappear tomorrow? No. But the pace of change is accelerating, and the jobs most at risk are the very ones we’ve spent decades telling our kids to pursue. This isn’t about panic. It’s about preparation.

The hidden cost nobody calculates: time

We obsess over college costs—$240,000 for a private four-year degree. But if you ask me, the most devastating cost is time.

Four years. That's a whole Olympic cycle. That's an entire presidential term. That's enough time to move across the country, fall in love, start a business, burn it down, heal from it, and do it all over again.

I've reinvented myself more than once in a four-year span. I've watched entire industries rise and fall in four years. Yet we're still casually telling parents to send their 18-year-olds to lock up that time in a classroom, often just to get a degree that trains them for a job that might not exist by the time they graduate.

And for what? So your kid can graduate at 22 with six-figure debt and four-year-old knowledge, chasing the same dream their parents were sold, only to find that the rules changed, but nobody told them?

That's not education. That's expensive procrastination.

"But college isn't job training"

I can hear the pushback already: "College isn't just about getting a job. It's about becoming a critical thinker. Growing as a person. The whole college experience."

And I get it—I really do. I felt that way too. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: everything college used to offer exclusively is now available elsewhere, usually for free or at a fraction of the cost.

Want your kid to learn from brilliant professors? MIT's entire curriculum is online. Stanford lectures are on YouTube. The same lectures that cost $70,000 a year in tuition are available for the price of Wi-Fi.

Want your kid to think independently and solve real problems? They can join communities like Indie Hackers where people share real revenue numbers from businesses they've built, or contribute to open source projects on GitHub where their code actually gets used by millions of people. These spaces challenge thinking in ways no seminar ever will, especially when everyone’s just trying to say the right thing for a grade.

Want them to grow as a person? They could spend a year as an au pair in Berlin, do a farmstay at a horse ranch in Chile, or apprentice at a tech company writing code that real users depend on. They’ll gain resilience and connect with people who are building lives off the beaten path.

But what if your kid needs to earn money right now? That’s real. And it doesn’t disqualify them from building a meaningful future. They can stay local, live at home, and earn while they learn: working a “just a paycheck” job like retail, food service, or delivery, while using nights and weekends to build toward something more. That could mean reaching out to people in industries they’re curious about, asking to shadow someone, or volunteering on small freelance projects just to learn the ropes.

Here’s the reality: most good jobs don’t come from online applications—especially now that AI has broken the system. Recruiters are drowning in bot-generated resumes and using automation to screen out candidates before a human even glances. They don’t want to assess your skills. They want to filter you out.

Good jobs come, instead, through relationships—and relationships take time to build. For working-class kids who can’t afford unpaid internships or elite programs, this isn’t a workaround. It’s a strategy. It lets them earn money now while planting seeds for opportunities that can’t be found on job boards.

And here’s the hard truth: for families with the fewest resources, the traditional college path might actually be the riskiest. It demands the most money upfront and too often delivers the weakest return. If your kid takes on six-figure debt only to end up underemployed, that’s not stability. That’s a trap.

The “college experience” we romanticize—late-night debates, self-discovery, that first glimpse of real independence—often happens despite the institution, not because of it.

Will employers always recognize self-taught skills over formal credentials? Not yet. Some industries are slower to adapt. Some hiring managers still use degrees as a lazy filter. But that’s changing faster than most people realize, and your kid deserves to be ready for the world that’s emerging, not the one we were raised to expect.

The middle-class mirage

Here's the honest truth: if you're working-class, college might still make sense for your family. Going from no degree to any degree often does provide real economic mobility. If you're the first in your family to consider college, and your kid can do it affordably through community college or in-state schools, it might still be worth it. The key word is affordably.

But if you're already middle-class? The people I know from those backgrounds are doing about the same as their parents, or worse. They graduated into crushing housing costs, stagnant wages, and an economy where a degree is table stakes but no longer a ticket to prosperity.

Previous generations could work summer jobs to pay tuition. Buy houses on starting salaries. Build wealth steadily over time. Today's graduates—including your kid—will start adult life in debt, competing for gig work, living with roommates into their thirties.

That's not upward mobility. That's treading water with an expensive diploma.

When the system abandons itself

Even Google and IBM—the companies that helped create our credential obsession—are dropping degree requirements. Not because they got generous, but because they realized something important: the diploma doesn't predict who can do the work. It predicts who could survive four years of academic bureaucracy.

Problem-solving? Creativity? The ability to learn fast and adapt? College doesn't teach those reliably, and smart companies know it.

So what happens now? Some employers are evolving. But many still use degrees as a shortcut because it’s easier than evaluating what someone can actually do. And universities keep raising prices because they can, knowing the degree is still treated like a golden ticket.

That’s the trap. The signal is losing value, but the price keeps going up. And families are stuck playing a rigged game where the rules don’t make sense anymore.

What does make sense now

I'm not saying never send your kid to college. If they get a full ride, or your family can pay cash without sacrifice, or they want to be a doctor, that’s a different conversation. If your state school offers reasonable tuition and your kid can live at home, that changes the math entirely. If they’re going into a field that genuinely requires licensing—nursing, engineering, teaching—then yes, support them in getting the credentials they truly need.

I'm saying: stop treating college like the only path to a good life when it's become the most expensive path to an uncertain outcome.

Those four years could be spent helping your kid learn skills that can't be automated, building real relationships in industries they care about, discovering what they’re genuinely good at through trial and error instead of multiple choice tests.

Trade schools, apprenticeships, freelancing, gap years, entrepreneurship. These are paths that prepare your kid for an unpredictable economy without the crushing debt.

The young people who'll thrive aren't the ones with the best GPAs. They're the ones whose parents encouraged them to adapt, create value, and solve problems that don't have textbook answers.

This isn’t about rejecting college entirely. It’s about rejecting blind faith in a system that hasn’t kept its promises.

The stakes are too high to be on autopilot

Look, I don't know exactly what my family will choose. My daughter is smart, capable, and will have options. But I refuse to sleepwalk into a decision this big just because it's what everyone else is doing.

If you're reading this while your teenager is studying for the SATs, convinced that college is their only shot at a good life, you deserve to make this choice with your eyes open.

You deserve to ask whether spending $200,000 and four years makes sense when the job market is transforming this rapidly. You deserve to consider whether your kid might be better off avoiding debt and gaining real-world experience instead.

The Model Ts are already on the road. The question is: Will your family be driving one, or will you keep paying for horse carriage lessons?

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Do you still believe college is worth the price? Why or why not? And what do you think should come next? Drop your thoughts in the comments 👇

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Bring Carmen to your next event

Carmen Van Kerckhove is an author and keynote speaker whose work explores how technology, social class, and cultural change are reshaping ambition, identity, and the future of work. Her upcoming book, The Slingshot Effect (Crown Currency), shows why pulling back isn’t a setback—it’s how every breakthrough begins.

Based in New York City, Carmen speaks at keynotes, conferences, leadership summits, and company retreats. Explore her signature talks here.

→ For speaking inquiries, contact info@topflightfamilymedia.com.

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