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The college dream is falling apart | The Gray Area

Vox | May 16, 2026



College was supposed to be a ticket to a better life. A degree meant a good job, a decent salary, and a brighter future. That promise is breaking down. For many graduates, a college degree no longer guarantees economic security or upward mobility.

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In today’s episode, guest host Miles Bryan talks with reporter and author Noam Scheiber about his new book, Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, which argues that the economic prospects for college graduates have steadily eroded since the mid-2000s. The result is scrambling our politics. Miles and Noam discuss why college graduates are increasingly drawn to socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, why they’ve become some of the strongest supporters of organized labor, and how economic frustration among educated workers could transform the American political landscape.
Host: Miles Bryan, Vox reporter and senior producer
Guest: Noam Scheiber, New York Times reporter and author of Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

00:00 Intro
01:36 What are college graduates revolting against?
07:53 Teddy: college grad to labor organizer
13:20 What happened to Apple ‘creatives?’
19:52 Baristas to doctors: everyone thinks they’re a ‘worker’
24:45 Why educated workers are moving left
32:14 Will AI replace white-collar workers?
43:07 Are we headed for a new era of labor unrest?

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Written by Vox

Comments

This post currently has 28 comments.

  1. @ekolder

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Totally out of touch. Only talked to and about costal liberals without marketable degrees.
    Representative of a very small percentage of people.

  2. @ingoos

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Don't rely on any degree. Nice to have one if you can, but much better to believe in & pray to a loving God. He will not be embarrassed, and delights in providing & doing more we can imagine…

  3. @DanTheYoutubeAddict

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    I try hard to always be polite and kind to retail and low-level workers because I don't know their circumstances or how their day is going, but I want to be at least the one person in their day who was genuinely nice to them. It costs me nothing to just thank them when they help me or wish them a good day, and it might just be the one nice thing that someone says to them that day.

  4. @PikaYoshi21

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    If everyone went to college then this disastrous Iran war never would have happened. If everyone went to college this massive inflation wouldn't be happening right now

  5. @eamonjun

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    The fundamental thing is that if you go to college you won’t be rich. You’ll end up being a resource for the rich. People who dropped out of college became rich and realise that the system is rigged.

  6. @PikaYoshi21

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Go to college people. We need you to be smart, for the sake of our society. Our society needs you to be educated, well informed, and capable of logical reasoning.

  7. @PikaYoshi21

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Learning is good. So we must encourage everyone to go to college. No one is leaning from casually browsing the internet. 99.99999999999999% of people are incapable of educating themselves. We need college.

  8. @PikaYoshi21

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Say yes to college. Say no to Idiocracy. Yes to basic reading comprehension. No to low IQs. Yes to data literacy. No to anti vaxxers.

    YES TO LOGIC. College makes you a way better logical thinker.

  9. @PikaYoshi21

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    We need way more people to be forced to sit down and read and study hard. So we can put an end to this dangerous anti intellectualism. So we actually have a society where people know how to read and understand data. Therefore we need to encourage as many people as possible to go to college. It's better for our communities. Uneducated people will lead to the death of us all

  10. @ibn1989

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    I went to college from 2007-2009 and I didn't even graduate, and I wasted my time.

    I only recommend people to go to college if you have a plan and know what you really wanna do.

  11. @Nihilist_Porcupine

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    I have to say, the fact that he keeps mentioning "radicalization" and "unionization" together in the same sentence, as if they are the outcome of one another or something… disappointing. Are police unions "radical" or are those just necessary? Why is this any different? Framing is important.

  12. @Artificer101-g8w

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    College is still helpful for government uniformed services. Degree holders who join military, police and fire can get an increase in salary and improved internal record for promotion. Caveats do exist including job being unrelated to major, physical fitness requirements and potential risk to life.

  13. @spelunkerd

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    In the past, university was really hard and almost free. So there was a filtering process, and you didn't get to be part of the club unless you achieve academic excellence. Fast forward a couple of generations, and students are customers who don't fail nearly as often. When they do, they graduate with a mountain of debt. As numbers of graduates increase, of course the meaning of that degree is watered down. Those who didn't complete their degree went into blue collar occupation and many succeeded. These days there's a deficiency of those capable of technical blue collar jobs, so wages are climbing. The road is open for those guys to start a business and succeed.

  14. @mevans4953

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Millennials have shown that a College education has been a Taxpayer funded debt trap, it’s time to defund the bad programs, and make College about jobs again. Untill then there needs to be a hard restart. We probably only need a third of the colleges there currently are, the text should be trade schools and teaching common sense.

  15. @Stefanie-Tp

    May 16, 2026 at 8:20 am

    Just gonna say this outright, modern college is a scam. I finished college with a Doctorate only to end up filling almost 300 applications per month, most of them not even remotely related to my degeee. That's almost 10 a day and I'd be lucky if I can land a single interview. Ended up working in the fast food industry for my first year but I ended up leaving because I personally couldn't handle the pressure and I wasn't passionate about my work. I now work at a business my family owns and there's still barely any other job opportunities. I could've saved myself the time, tears, effort and money and my situation literally would not be different apart from the huge burden of college debt.

    TLDR; College is a hollow promise that's only designed to get money out of you. ….

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