Good Advice About What To Do Next

As we approach the dog days of summer, millions of recent high school graduates must now decide what to do next. I’m not talking about the students who months ago committed to selective colleges—those school that take less than half of their applicants. Such teenagers are the exception, not the rule, given that only about 18% of high school graduates matriculate to selective colleges every year.

No, I’m referring to the other 82%, those who need to decide whether to enroll in their local community college or trade school for the fall semester, or perhaps a non-selective four-year college down the road—or if they might be better off joining the military or otherwise entering the world of work.

These are not easy decisions, but their parents and other loved ones can offer helpful guidance that can help graduates make good choices.

While it is true that students who graduate from college earn much more money over the course of their lifetime than others—the famous and still sturdy “college wage premium”—those benefits only accrue to those who complete college. That might sound obvious, but it’s no small thing because an enormous proportion of Americans who enroll in college never complete a credential. Indeed, as Michael T. Nietzel reported recently for Forbes, an astounding 36.8 million working-age individuals dropped out of college in recent decades without earning a degree. For them, the college wage premium is just an unmet promise.

The reasons that someone might stop out or drop out of college are numerous, from financial struggles to mental health challenges to pregnancy and more. But many students just find their college classes to be a slog. In other words, a lot of 18-year-olds are not well prepared to succeed in college because they don’t have anywhere near the academic skills needed to tackle college level work.

In many cases, that is not their fault, but is the outcome of a K–12 system that is not preparing all students to live up to their potential.

So the most important question that young Americans can ask themselves, or that their family and friends might help them understand, is whether they are likely to pass their college courses and make it through the two to four years it takes to get a valuable degree. If completing high school was a challenge for them, the answer might be no.

And that’s OK! College is not the only path to upward mobility in America, nor is it uncommon for Americans to give college a try later in life. That’s the great thing about our higher education system: It’s never too late.

Families and friends can show love to their graduates by helping them make good choices about their next steps—even if that next step doesn’t involve college.