Leah Shaver – Oct. 14, 2025
Declining interest in college highlights opportunities for fleets to engage the younger generation seeking lucrative, rewarding, and meaningful careers.
I dove into the results of a Gallup poll released last month about people’s perceptions of the importance of a college education, and while they’re striking, they’re not surprising.
Just in the past 15 years, from 2010 to today, the percentage of people who reported viewing a college education as “very important” dropped from 75% to just 35%. Conversely, those viewing it as “not too important” jumped from 5% to 24%. (The remaining 40% of respondents said they still see college as “fairly important.”)
Those shifting attitudes about the importance, or lack thereof, of a college education were led by younger people, those 18-34, whose perceptions of higher education’s importance declined more rapidly than other age groups.