20-Year Prospect
Will college and guidance counselors be around twenty years from now? That's kind of a loaded question.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly sixty-six percent of 2013 high school graduates were enrolled in institutions of higher education in October 2013. In other words, we've got lots of kids going to college needing advice, and lots of kids not going to college needing advice – counselors are still serving a purpose at this point.
Here's where things get hairy. The average cost of college tuition nowadays hovers right around $23,000 a year. Yikes. There's many a middle-class American who can't afford that number.
Then, there's the fact that 8.5 percent of college grads between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four are unemployed, while 16.8 percent of this same demographic are underemployed. So, kids are racking up an average of $80,000 in student debt...which they will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be able to pay back.
What we're getting at here is that the idea of "college" as it exists right now is whack. It's just too expensive. This is why we've seen the rise of websites like Coursera and Khan Academy – you can learn from top-notch instructors on the cheap – and there's every chance that this education revolution on the Interwebz will reshape higher education in this country. At least, let's hope so.
Final question, then. In a world where going to college consists of logging on to the Internet with a million other people to take the same Calculus III class...where exactly do college and guidance counselors fit in? Do they fit in at all?