If you’ve spent five minutes reading about the election results last week, you would know that Trump won voters who don’t have a college degree and Clinton won those who do. Given the sort of appeal each candidate made, this was not surprising. But Trump also won another group — those with some years of college — by a 9-point margin. This is a group of swing voters — like Catholics — that represents a broad swath of the population and interestingly has a pretty good track record of picking the winner in presidential elections.

The question remains, though, why did people who have some years of college but no bachelor’s degree go for Trump? These were folks who finished high school, who presumably had some measure of ambition, who wanted to make more money, who planned to be part of the 21st century economy rather than waiting for coal production to come back into style. Sadly, it might have been their college attendance that put them in a worse economic situation rather than a better one.

“The folks who have some years of college,” says Beth Akers, “are the ones we have forgotten about.” Akers, the author of “Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt,” notes that the people who are struggling most with student loans are the ones with relatively small balances. She notes that those with less than $5,000 in debt have higher rates of default and are more likely to be late on payments for other household expenses. People with large amounts of debt (who get a disproportionate amount of media coverage) are more likely to be going into lucrative careers. But the people with low balances, “especially those who started a degree and didn’t finish, don’t have access to labor-market opportunities.”

Many of these people feel (rightly) as if they have been sold a bill of goods. They have been told in high school that no matter what their level of academic performance or their ambitions, they should go to college. Indeed, Akers notes that some of these people are actually worse off than folks who just have a high school degree.

“High-school guidance counselors treat college as one big homogeneous thing,” says Richard Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “As if it didn’t matter if you went to Harvard or Slippery Rock College. Or it didn’t matter if you major in sociology or electrical engineering.” As Vedder says, “The earnings differentials are mammoth, depending on the type of college you attend and what you do there.”

Students have been told that getting a college degree equals more money. In many cases it does, but students are taking big risks based on this generalization. They would be better served by starting out at a community college, where the costs are significantly lower and so is the price of failure. Certainly getting a vocational education would be more of a sure thing. We really do need welders. Heck, there is a shortage of long-distance truck drivers.

In order to make an informed choice about college, students have to be advised realistically about the benefits as well as the costs. Sociology, recreation science, visual arts and community health may be of interest, but they are unlikely to get you a better-paying job. A few years ago, Vedder calculated that there were 80,000 bartenders in the US with college degrees. Imagine how many there are with only some years of college.

What fields do yield higher incomes and more job opportunities? Any of the STEM fields of course. Engineers do particularly well. But how about nursing? Hardly a week goes by when you don’t hear about the nursing shortage in this country. As Vedder says, it is not the most intellectually daunting major, but if you are willing to work hard, there are opportunities across the country, flexibility, good pay and plenty of room for advancement. And given the aging population of the country, we are going to need more of them — not fewer — in the coming decades.

Unfortunately, many colleges (even the least academically rigorous among them) don’t want to think of themselves as job-training institutions. And so they simply say to incoming students: Here’s a big course catalog. Pick whatever interests you. But they are working at cross-purposes with students who overwhelmingly say they are in college to get a better job and earn more money. Akers says it would be “fantastic if students didn’t need to think about a pathway to career while they were in college, but it’s not a practical reality.”

The last eight years have not been good for people in the “some college” category. They have tried to improve their lots, but many of them have not succeeded. Indeed, they are probably worse off as a group than they were before Obama came into office because the cost of college has continued to rise faster than inflation—meaning they have shelled out and borrowed more, all to achieve the same meager effects. Higher education was supposed to be the great equalizer, but, according to Vedder, it has actually made income inequality worse. So much for the old college try.