Mike Rowe says he would have been 'screwed' in 1980 without a degree — now you 'absolutely, positively do not need one'

That was 1980, and the counselor laid out what waited for a kid without a four-year degree: He'd be "screwed," as no employer would take him seriously.

"You want to turn a wrench the rest of your life?" the counselor asked.

Rowe, now 64, told the story in a tweet — and gave the opposite advice. The Dirty Jobs host wrote that a four-year degree is neither good nor bad in itself, but called two things "indisputably true." Degrees are "far too expensive for most people," he wrote, and you "absolutely positively do not need one to prosper."

Mr. Dunbar was right, though — Rowe concedes that much.

"In 1980, there was a bright line through the workforce," he wrote, explaining that college graduates were on one side, and everyone else was on the other.

Rowe took the advice and did two years at a community college before getting a BS in communications from a state school. The degree never got him hired, he wrote, but he got his money's worth from the liberal arts — and, in 1984, he could afford it.

"Not so much today," he added.

What college costs now

Rowe is not exaggerating much. College tuition has climbed 914% since 1983, rising faster than any other household expense, according to an analysis from J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

Rowe has been making this case everywhere lately. In March he appeared alongside BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the firm's 2026 Infrastructure Summit. And he told Fox Business he'd met three data center electricians in Texas, each under 30 and each earning around $260K a year — without a degree.

And young people seem to be listening. About six in 10 Gen Zers plan to go into a skilled trade — electrician, plumber, construction worker — according to a survey from career site Resume Templates. About half of the respondents holding at least a bachelor's degree said the same.

Rowe's foundation, mikeroweWORKS, created in 2008 to promote skilled labor, pays for exactly that kind of training through its work ethic scholarships.

"If you're skeptical, I can show you 3,500 examples," he wrote, pointing readers to the application at MikeRoweWORKS.org.

Before skipping your degree, observe the pay tables first

The gap in earnings hasn't gone anywhere, though, because full-time workers who are 25 and older with a bachelor's degree — and nothing beyond it — were found to earn a median of $1,578 a week alone in 2025, according to a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. High school graduates who have no college earned $966, and that gap has continually held for decades.