Amid Pandemic, Millennials Increasingly Believe Their Student Debt Wasn’t Worth Their College Education

Among all adults who have had student loans, the share who said college was worth their debt fell 7 points from last year, to 54%.

The share of millennials who say college was worth their student loans dropped 10 points from March 2019, to 46%.

26% of millennials who have had student loans say college “definitely” wasn’t worth their student debt.

A new series from Morning Consult takes a deeper look at how the coronavirus pandemic could permanently alter millennials’ behavior and how, in turn, that could impact the economy at large. The data is drawn from a poll of 4,400 adults, including 1,287 millennials.

As the coronavirus pandemic roils the job market, millennials are increasingly deciding that their college experience isn’t worth the student debt they took out for it.

Since the economic standstill brought by pandemic-related shutdowns, the unemployment rate has shot up to 8.4 percent and initial jobless claims rose to 870,000 for the week ending Sept. 19. And the relief to consumers offered earlier in the pandemic in the form of enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus payments looks unlikely to re-emerge, with talks in Congress over another economic stimulus package indefinitely stalled.

All this has added up to a more bleak labor market compared to the last time Morning Consult tested attitudes on student debt and college.

At the time, more than half (56 percent) of millennials who took out student loans said that doing so was worth attending college. That poll was conducted March 13-17, 2019, about a year before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a new survey conducted Sept. 8-10, roughly six months into the pandemic, that share has dropped 10 percentage points: 46 percent of millennials said their student debt was worth attending college.