Only a third of US college students believes higher education is worth the cost — with humanities majors feeling the most ripped off, a dismal study shows.
Just 33% of students said college is worth the price, while 29% said it isn’t, according to the survey of 1,000 undergrad and graduate students enrolled in 2024 and conducted by the education research firm BestColleges.
Another 38% of respondents said they are still on the fence about the value of college, the poll found.
Tuition for a four-year in-state public university averages $11,950 a year. For a private school, the average is nearly $45,000.
The survey also revealed growing skepticism over whether college should ideally be for everyone.
Just over one in three students, or 34%, said it is, regardless of what they want to do or accomplish in life.
But nearly half, or 45%, disagreed with the statement, and 21% were on the fence.
Those figures represent a 22 percentage point difference from 2022, when 56% of respondents said college was for everyone regardless of their aims, the survey said.
A similar drop was seen in the percentage of students who said college is for everyone regardless of economic background.
In 2022, almost two-thirds of those surveyed, 65%, said college was for everyone regardless of economic means.
By 2024, that figure had dropped to 48%, while 32% of students disagreed that college was for everyone regardless of background, and 20% were neutral.
Gen Zers appear to be more sceptical of college generally compared to their millennial counterparts, the survey shows.
Only 45% of Gen Z students versus 61% of millennials said college is for everyone regardless of background.
Around 31%, compared to half of millennials, 53%, said college is for everyone regardless of what they want to do in life.
The study also found that humanities majors held bleaker opinions of the value of a college education but at the same time, were more likely than STEM or business majors to say that college is for everyone.
Just 30% of humanities majors said college is worth the cost, compared to 34% of STEM majors and 39% of business majors.
But 53% of humanities students said college is for everyone regardless of background, compared to 46% for STEM and 48% for business.
In 2026, the average student pays roughly $20,800 per year for a public four-year school and $36,200 annually for a private four-year school.