Students walk across campus at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Tony Talbot | AP

Twenty million students started college this fall, and this much is certain: The vast majority of them will be taking on debt — a lot of debt. What's less certain is whether their degrees will pay off. According to the survey Freelancing in America 2018, released Wednesday, freelancers put more value on skills training: 93 percent of freelancers with a four-year college degree say skills training was useful versus only 79 percent who say their college education was useful to the work they do now. In addition, 70 percent of full-time freelancers participated in skills training in the past six months compared to only 49 percent of full-time non-freelancers. The fifth annual survey, conducted by research firm Edelman Intelligence and co-commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union, polled 6,001 U.S. workers. This new data points to something much larger. Rapid technological change, combined with rising education costs, have made our traditional higher-education system an increasingly anachronistic and risky path. The cost of a college education is so high now that we have reached a tipping point at which the debt incurred often isn't outweighed by future earnings potential. Yet too often, degrees are still thought of as lifelong stamps of professional competency. They tend to create a false sense of security, perpetuating the illusion that work — and the knowledge it requires — is static. It's not.

Too often, degrees are still thought of as lifelong stamps of professional competency. They tend to create a false sense of security, perpetuating the illusion that work — and the knowledge it requires — is static. It's not.

For example, a 2016 World Economic Forum report found that "in many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate." And recent data from Upwork confirms that acceleration. Its latest Upwork Quarterly Skills Index, released in July, found that "70 percent of the fastest-growing skills are new to the index." Expect the change to keep coming. The WEF cites one estimate finding that 65 percent of children entering primary school will end up in jobs that don't yet exist.

These trends aren't just academic to me. It's influenced the advice I give my children. While my father had one job throughout his life, I've had several. And I tell my children not only can they expect to have many jobs throughout their working lives but multiple jobs at the same time. It is therefore imperative that we encourage more options to thrive without our current overreliance on college degrees as proof of ability. We need new routes to success and hope.

New, nontraditional education options