The Social Wealth Men Without College Degrees Need

“So as the college degree has increasingly become the great sorting function in American life, men without degrees have increasingly found themselves sorted out,” write the authors of Nobody to Call, a new report on friendship, community, and purpose among men without college degrees.

These men did not become disconnected from work, friendship, and community all at once. That separation unfolded slowly, as they lost touch with the people and institutions that build a stable life.

A man leaves high school without a clear next step. Daily routines vanish and friends scatter. As work becomes unstable, he finds no mentors to offer support and no community institutions to which he can turn. The young man who was once merely uncertain slowly becomes an adult man without connections.

"Many describe purpose in relational terms: being fathers, uncles, mentors, neighbors, workers, and community members."

The authors interviewed thirty men without college degrees, ranging in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties, asking about friendship, community, role models, and purpose. The report includes case studies and interview transcripts.

These interviewees do not pretend to speak for every man without a degree. But they give voice to men often discussed in policy debates but rarely heard in their own words.

The report's central insight is that this is not simply a “male loneliness” crisis. It is a crisis of men without degrees being left to their own devices. As college has become a sorting mechanism for work, marriage, civic life, friendship, and neighborhood belonging, those without degrees, especially men, are more likely to be sorted out of economic and social life.

The report develops this argument through six related themes.

First, the missing pieces in these men’s lives are not limited to one area. The men often lack friends, mentors, neighbors, community ties, and civic groups. These are the everyday relationships that help people find work, solve problems, hear about opportunities, and feel known and understood.

Second, this disconnection is less a single break than a slow drift. For many men, the drift began after high school, when the structure of school disappeared and no new structure, be it college, the military, stable work, a union, a faith community, or another institution, took its place.

Third, even their current connections are often fragile. One friend, one mentor, one group, or one workplace may become the only tie holding a man to a broader social world. When that tie breaks, the result can be near-total isolation.

Fourth, most of these men want friendship, community, and purpose. They want to contribute to something larger than themselves. Many describe purpose in relational terms: being fathers, uncles, mentors, neighbors, workers, and community members. They are men who often do not know where or how to begin reconnecting.

Fifth, there is a large gap between wanting connections and building them. Money, time, work schedules, transportation, family responsibilities, and lack of confidence make relationships harder to form and sustain. The problem is not simply attitude. It is also the absence of places, routines, and institutions that make connections easier.

Sixth, many men blame themselves. They see disconnection as a personal failure to fix alone. But forming relationships rarely works that way. People build friendships, habits, purpose, and opportunity through institutions and shared settings, such as schools, workplaces, unions, churches, community groups, military service, clubs, neighborhoods, and families.

That is where the report connects to a larger question about opportunity. Too often, opportunity is discussed mainly in terms of income, credentials, job openings, or training slots. Those matter. But Nobody to Call demonstrates that is not enough. A person can have a job lead and still be isolated. He can enter a training program and still have no mentor. He can earn a credential and still lack the relationships that help him move forward.

All that points to what I call social wealth: the idea that opportunity is created not only by earnings, credentials, or job access. It is also created by relationships, habits, institutions, and networks that help people find direction and recover from setbacks.

A man with social wealth has adults who open doors, peers who reinforce ambition, employers who give feedback, and community institutions that create belonging. A man without it may have a program slot or a job lead but still lack the relationships that turn a chance into a life.

A career pathway that does not build relationships is not really a pathway. It may produce a certificate, place someone in a job, and check the box on a grant report. But if it does not connect a man to adults who know him, peers who support him, employers who expect growth, and institutions that keep calling when he falls away, it is not likely to change the arc of his life.

Career pathways, then, need to be understood as more than training pipelines. Done well, they are bridges into adult life. They provide structure, expectations, feedback, relationships, and a visible next step. Done poorly, they are another short-term intervention with little lasting effect.

Adult apprenticeships and other earn-and-learn models deserve attention for this reason. Apprenticeship is usually discussed as a workforce strategy, and it is that. But its deeper promise is that it combines wages, structured learning, adult supervision, mentoring, progression, and occupational identity. It gives adults without degrees a place to build skills, responsibility, confidence, and connection at the same time.

Apprenticeship is not the only answer, but it shows what a real bridge looks like. It is structured, relational, and carries clear expectations. By combining wages and learning with adult guidance, it signals to a man that he is needed, that someone expects him to grow, and that his progress matters.

That is the heart of opportunity pluralism. A healthy society should not make the college degree the only reliable route to a flourishing adult life. College should remain a powerful pathway. But it cannot be the only institution that gives people structure, identity, friends, adult guidance, economic mobility, and access to opportunity.

"A country serious about opportunity cannot be satisfied with credentials, job placements, or training slots alone."

We need many respected routes: adult apprenticeships, community college pathways, employer partnerships, union training, service years, small groups of adults who move through training together, faith- and community-based programs, and reengagement efforts for adults who have been left outside the usual systems.

Here are recommended priorities for policymakers, educators, employers, and community leaders that build bridges to opportunity for these men.

We need to create “no wrong door” local systems. A man without a degree should be able to enter through a community college, workforce board, employer, union training program, faith community, library, public agency, veterans group, recovery organization, or local nonprofit and still find a common pathway forward. The system should not depend on his knowing which office to call first. It should include navigators who help people move through transitions and handoffs rather than leaving them to start over each time.

We need to make work-based learning relational rather than transactional. Every adult apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, internship, first job, or return-to-work program should include supervision, mentoring, feedback, and opportunities to grow. The relationship with an adult at work is as important as the task itself. A good job includes being a place where someone is expected, coached, corrected, encouraged, and seen.

We must create pathways that adults move through together. Many disconnected men need peers, structure, and shared momentum—not only a referral to a website. Moving through a program with a small group creates identity, accountability, and belonging. It also reduces the burden on individuals to build every relationship from scratch.

We have to treat barriers as a design problem. Transportation, scheduling, childcare, paperwork, unstable work hours, legal issues, and lack of money are not side issues. They are often the difference between persistence and dropping out. Programs must be designed around the real conditions of their lives.

Let us measure connection as an outcome. Programs should track not only enrollment, completion, placement, and wages but also whether participants build mentoring ties, remain connected to peers, persist through setbacks, participate in community life, and have someone to call when the pathway gets hard. Reconnection must be part of the measure of success.

Nobody to Call is a report about adult men without college degrees. Its warning is specific, but its lesson is broad. A country serious about opportunity cannot be satisfied with credentials, job placements, or training slots alone. It must build bridges that create not only skills and wages but also social wealth—the relationships, expectations, purpose, belonging, and someone to call when the path gets hard.

Bruno V. Manno is a senior advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute and leads its Pathways to Opportunity What Works Lab. He is a former United States Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy.