Blue-Collar Millennials

They believe wholeheartedly that the only way out of dead-end jobs is a college degree. But over and over again, I heard stories of bewilderment and betrayal. They lack the skills and knowledge they need to navigate an increasingly complex, costly, and competitive higher-education system. Whether confused about majors, stymied by bureaucracy, crippled by loan debt, or left feeling like they don’t belong, working-class men and women have come to see their relationship with college as a broken social contract. As they see it, they bought into the promise of higher education but got nothing but disappointment and loss in return.

Jennifer Silva, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School just came out with a book examining working-class millennials and some of the realities they’re facing today. She discussed some of those realities in an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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