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Ben Shapiro’s question—whether the traditional college path still makes sense for today’s young people—cuts to the heart of a much larger failure: higher education has become an expensive industry that too often markets credentials instead of skills. Conservatives should not be nostalgic about a system that saddles families with crippling debt and hands cultural institutions over to ideological tribes. The debate isn’t merely academic; it’s about whether credential inflation and campus radicalism are delivering real economic value for the price charged.
Families are right to be alarmed when the sticker price of college keeps climbing while average borrowing hovers near record levels and total student debt tops the trillions. Those figures are not abstractions — they are a real drag on household formation, entrepreneurship, and financial independence for millions who graduate or drop out with mountains of loans. Policy and private-sector reform must begin with acknowledging the scale of this fiscal burden and the poor return many majors deliver relative to cost.
Enrollment statistics show a complicated picture: after pandemic-era dips, national postsecondary enrollment has jittered, with some recent rebounds but a long-term shift in attitudes about four-year degrees. The point is not that colleges are collapsing — many are thriving — but that the monopoly on respectable adulthood once held by elite diplomas is eroding. Young people and their families are increasingly weighing alternatives because the calculus of time, money, and job-market signal has changed.
That rethinking has opened space for apprenticeships, trade programs, and short, skills-focused credentials that connect directly to employers. Registered apprenticeships have grown substantially in recent years, showing that government-recognized, career-focused routes can scale when encouraged and funded. Conservatives should champion these practical pathways because they rebuild dignity in work and reduce dependence on credential inflation and federal subsidies that reward ever-higher sticker prices.
At the same time, a parade of corporate announcements about hiring without degrees has revealed the limits of performative reforms: many firms drop degree language from postings but still hire graduates because managers default to credentials as a cheap signal. If conservatives want to free people from the paper ceiling, then the private sector must be held accountable for genuine skills-based hiring and incentivized to create apprenticeships that promote real upward mobility. This is a market-friendly solution that reduces government bailouts while expanding opportunity.
Nobody is wrong to point out that the cultural environment on many campuses has become hostile to intellectual diversity and free inquiry, a problem made worse by disruptive protests and administrative overreach in recent years. The loss of viewpoint diversity and the spectacle of campus disorder erode the moral authority of universities to claim they are essential engines of character formation. For families paying full freight, these cultural failures are not incidental — they’re part of the value proposition that is now being questioned.
So what should be done? Conservatives ought to demand accountability: stop treating every degree as a public entitlement, expand apprenticeships, rein in federal subsidies that encourage runaway tuition, and promote skills-based hiring in the private sector. At the same time, defend academic freedom and viewpoint diversity so that campuses produce citizens rather than ideological catechisms. These are common-sense reforms that restore the dignity of work, honor taxpayers, and give young people real choices.
The takeaway is simple and unapologetic: higher education must earn its price tag and prove its promise. If colleges want to remain central to American life, they must stop operating like cash cows shielded by status and start serving students and communities with transparent costs, honest outcomes, and less political indoctrination. That’s the conservative case for reform — not an attack on learning, but a demand that learning be honest, affordable, and allied to real opportunity.
