GEOFF BENNETT: Commencement season is under way around the country, but this season's celebrations come at a sobering moment for many public colleges and universities confronting major challenges, funding cuts, attacks from the Trump administration and declining enrollment prospects.

For their part, students are facing steep loans and too often dicey job prospects, especially in this era of artificial intelligence.

That's led many to openly question whether a college degree is even worth it anymore.

Economics correspondent Paul Solman visited the state of Michigan to find out how some schools and students are approaching this question.

It's part of our series Rethinking College.

WOMAN: Anyone else feel like their college degree was absolutely not worth what they paid for it?

PAUL SOLMAN: This is a feeling that's all the rage on TikTok.

WOMAN: I'm literally 22 years old and jobless.

That college degree, I guess, means nothing because I have literally been applying to jobs for six months.

PAUL SOLMAN: And thus a prime charge against higher ed these days: MAN: I truly believe that going to college only set me back farther from the goals I wanted to achieve and where I wanted to be in life.

PAUL SOLMAN: The cost of a degree just too damn pricey, given the iffy benefit of a job today, much less a job tomorrow.

On the scale of one to 10, how worried are you about going into the world of work now?

ITZEL SEGOVIA, Student, Michigan State University: I'd give it an eight as of now.

PAUL SOLMAN: One to 10?

REILLY COON, Student, Michigan State University: Probably about a seven or eight.

The larger climate for entry-level jobs right now is really hard and scary as somebody -- like, as you're graduating or anticipating graduation.

PAUL SOLMAN: And yet these are students at Michigan State University where the president, Kevin Guskiewicz, boasts: KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ, President, Michigan State University: Ninety-three percent of our graduates over the last five years have been placed before they graduated in either a first job or to graduate school.

PAUL SOLMAN: At much smaller Eastern Michigan University, the same job anxiety.

How worried are you on a scale of one to 10?

ALYSSA THORNTON, Student, Eastern Michigan University: I will go with a seven.

I know Eastern will hold career fairs and everything, but it's not necessarily guaranteed, so you just never know.

PAUL SOLMAN: How scared are you on a scale of one to 10, one fear at all, 10 terrified?

NADIA CONRAD, Student, Eastern Michigan University: I would say I'm at like an 8.5, like really high.

Yes, it's all very scary to me.

PAUL SOLMAN: Didn't used to be this way, of course.

A wage premium for a college degree has far outweighed the cost for as long as anyone can remember, those with a degree earning a million dollars or more over their lifetimes compared to folks with just a high school diploma.

But, nowadays, the question has become, is the education worth the price?

ANTONELLA MENNA, Student, Eastern Michigan University: It was my cheapest option, so... PAUL SOLMAN: How much does it cost?

ANTONELLA MENNA: I come here for under four grand a year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Compared to a national average all in of about $27,000 at public universities, out-of-state costs nearly double, so a stratospheric price tag, as much as six times the price of the BA at my school back in the '60s, inflation-adjusted.

The main suspects, major growth in specialized programs and the personnel to support them, part of what's been called administrative bloat.

There's also the amenities arms race, rec centers, food courts, climbing walls, but, most significantly for major public schools, years of cuts in federal and state funding, all of which has led to an affordability crisis and declining enrollments at places like Eastern Michigan, not to mention schools now going extinct.

So what's a university president to do?

KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ: We have to adapt with the changing landscape of society and of the various industries that higher education has to serve.

PAUL SOLMAN: For Michigan State, that means reaching out to its 550,000-person alumni base and asking them, what skills are most important for the modern work force?

KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ: Bring alums to the table, create a think tank group and learn from them about what it is that would be attractive to them if they were going to hire an alumnus.

PAUL SOLMAN: So the focus is on hiring, on getting jobs for grads?

KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ: It is, and creating internships are so, so important today, so much more than ever before.

PAUL SOLMAN: Brendan Kelly, the newly installed president of Eastern Michigan University, agrees.

BRENDAN KELLY, President, Eastern Michigan University: Landscapes change, and the businesses that are serving those landscapes have to change with them.

Higher education hasn't done that very well.

Our business is rooted in the student, and then has to be connected to their participation in the economy after graduation.

PAUL SOLMAN: A favorite example of the president's, student Megan Davis' ankle brace project.

BRENDAN KELLY: And I said: "So, was it successful?"

And she goes: "No."

I said: "Why are you so excited?"

She goes: "Because now I know that won't work."

MEGAN DAVIS, Student, Eastern Michigan University: It wasn't necessarily a failed project.

It was an experimental project just to see what would happen.

I learned it didn't work for the specific patient, but it could work for someone else.

So it was good research.

Any research is good research.

I also liked that our program was completely in person.

So I was here since the beginning.

My full two years were in person, and I was able to get hands on right away.

PAUL SOLMAN: But, even here, the economics are getting worse.

NATHAN KEARNS, Associate Professor, Eastern Michigan University: The Department of Education has put caps on federal student loans for graduate programs.

PAUL SOLMAN: In, Professor Nathan Kearns says: NATHAN KEARNS: Professions such as nursing, physical therapy, orthotics and prosthetics.

PAUL SOLMAN: That's your field.

NATHAN KEARNS: That is our field.

They have taken away the professional degree designation.

So now we're considered a nonprofessional degree.

PAUL SOLMAN: Pricier loans for students due to Trump administration restrictions, for the schools, federal funding R&D cuts, even funding cuts at the state level.

BRENDAN KELLY: The state does make an investment in EMU every year, absolutely.

But if you go back to the 1970s, it was a very different ratio.

Now states just make much less of a contribution than they used to.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, there is one more major critique of higher ed that needs to be acknowledged long made by conservative scholars like Peter Berkowitz.

PETER BERKOWITZ, Hoover Institution: Universities had begun to lose their way a long time ago.

And over the last decade, we have seen even stronger attempts to regulate speech.

PAUL SOLMAN: This is a critique the Trump administration has adopted as a reason for punishing universities by defunding them, further exacerbating, obviously, their economic woes.

PETER BERKOWITZ: We now confront the problem of viewpoint diversity on campuses and, from my point of view, a broken curriculum.

PAUL SOLMAN: Which is why Berkowitz also slams DEI.

PETER BERKOWITZ: Even where DEI sprang from honorable motives, in practice, diversity, equity and inclusion has meant race-based allocation of benefits, and it's meant imposition of a progressive orthodoxy.

PAUL SOLMAN: It will come as no surprise that some folks think this is right-wing orthodoxy, like USC Professor and researcher Shaun Harper, who defended DEI before Congress last year.

SHAUN HARPER, University of Southern California: I stand on more than 50 years of evidence, highly credible research published in my field and in others, that consistently shows that all students, not just students of color, not just women, not just queer students, but all students benefit from being educated in a diverse and inclusive educational environment.

PAUL SOLMAN: So what do students we talk to say about DEI and woke?

ITZEL SEGOVIA: I don't think that it's more about being woke or not.

It's just like, can you see different perspectives without getting mad and understand their viewpoint?

You don't have to agree with it.

REILLY COON: I don't think it's an indoctrination in any sense of the word.

I don't particularly use the word woke.

JACK MCGUIRE, Student, Michigan State University: It's kind of just tired.

PAUL SOLMAN: What?

JACK MCGUIRE: It's tired and it doesn't really describe anything.

I don't really know a lot of people who seriously use it to describe anything at this point.

PAUL SOLMAN: To which Michigan State President Guskiewicz adds: KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ: The world we're living in today, it's so polarizing and we're heading down this path where everybody's digging their heels in, and where are we going to be in a decade from now?

So I think we do have a responsibility to model civil discourse.

PAUL SOLMAN: Is it unfair of critics to say that American universities are left-leaning because of their faculties?

KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ: It is.

It's not the faculty that are -- quote, unquote -- "indoctrinating" students.

Most studies show that more conservative students feel as if their voices are stifled, that they're being censored by their peers.

What we have to do a better job of is creating the classroom environment where all voices can be heard.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sounds fine in principle, but ideology is far from the main problem of higher ed in today's economy, the cost-benefit equation of going to college at all.

For the "PBS News Hour," Paul Solman.