Nobody To Call: What's going on with men without college degrees?

An interview with Sam Pressler on the launch of a new report on class and connection

This week sees the release of a new report that broke my heart.

Nobody To Call argues that there isn’t a male loneliness crisis, but there is a crisis of men without degrees being left alone by society. Authors Sam Pressler (yes, he of the wonderful Connective Tissue blog) and Soren Duggan interviewed some thirty men and their voices sit at the very heart of the project—illustrating how men without degrees have increasingly found themselves sorted out of economic and social life.

Sam generously asked me to be an advisor for the report, and I’m delighted that he took my suggestion to work with the fabulous designer EJ Baker to bring the research to life. The website has the full interview transcripts, audio clips, and beautiful illustrations that center these men and their stories—do check it out.

Below, you’ll find my conversation with Sam reflecting on the insights from the research—both the despair and the small signs of hope that these interviews revealed. Enjoy!

Illustration: EJ Baker

Casper ter Kuile: Hey Sam, thanks for doing this. You and I have been talking about this research project for a couple of months and I know that these themes of class and connection are particularly important to you. What drew you to understanding what’s going on with men without college degrees?

Sam Pressler: In 2024, I collaborated with the Survey Center on American Life to help publish a survey report, which we titled Disconnected, that found a pretty significant class divide in American civic life.

That divide was seen in everything — access to places in your neighborhood to see neighbors like commercial places, parks, civic spaces; membership and participation in community, religious groups, unions; and even friendships and social support. What we didn’t find in that research was anything that would show a so-called “male loneliness crisis.” There was no gender difference really at all.

As part of that research, we also ended up doing a set of qualitative interviews with people who’d filled out the survey. And in those twenty qualitative interviews, what really stood out were men without college degrees. They were almost entirely untethered and disconnected compared to the rest, which included women with and without degrees, and men with college degrees. They shared stories of their isolation that were pretty raw and heartbreaking.

But what disillusioned me was that when we put out this Disconnected report, it almost immediately became fodder for op-eds in the New York Times and hot takes on Twitter. The richness of these guys’ stories got lost behind these sterile data points and think pieces.

So, in going back and talking to these guys through this new research, I wanted to make the invisible visible: to humanize and provide texture to a group of people in American life that are oftentimes talked about but are very rarely heard from directly.

Illustration: EJ Baker

CtK: This project really hammers home the isolation these guys feel—like, it’s pretty rough to read, honestly. But what strikes me is that family is the one remaining source of connection for the men you spoke with. Can you say more about that?

SP: I would say one of the things that surprised me most in a positive way was the strength of the relationships that these men still had with their families. I think my takeaway from this is, frankly, a socially conservative argument, which in American life, family is the foundation from which many other pathways to flourishing can be found. It is the pathway to strong religious participation. It is the pathway to strong community participation.It is the pathway to both strong and weak ties. It is the pathway to mentorship and role models.

Guys who are fathers feel like it’s their sole purpose in life. Guys who are uncles see it as a stabilizer to their identity. The guys who don’t have kids, nephews, or nieces are also deeply connected to their families — both in supporting them and in feeling supported by them.

What it shows me is that, for many people, family still provides a foundation for their relational lives. This foundation is a place from which we can begin to repair and strengthen the relational lives of many of these guys who were largely isolated and alone. There’s a responsibility of family members to bring their brothers, uncles, fathers, sons, nephews into connection—whether that’s by bringing them to a house of worship, or bringing them out to be involved in their community in some way.

However, for some of these guys, the responsibility and purpose that came from family was so intense that it became a burden—particularly from a caregiving perspective. In this way, the class angle comes across very strongly because a lot of these guys are working full-time and either caring full-time for children alone or for aging parents alone. For people with more means, they would likely outsource some of those responsibilities to paid caregivers. For these guys, that’s not possible.

The theme that came through here was the sense that care was a one-way street. We heard how care-giving got in the way of friendship, of being involved in the community, of identifying any other sources of purpose. Of course, I imagine that if we were to interview women without degrees, this would be an even stronger finding!

Illustration: EJ Baker

CtK: No doubt…

Of course, my interest is always if there’s a religious or spiritual element that shows up in research like this. You’ve mentioned the social connection value of religious community, but did those themes show up in the research more broadly?

SP: So I love this question. It’s a very Casper question :) What I’d say is that it came up very strongly—but only in a small number of our interviews.

The two men we interviewed who were living something close to flourishing lives had two ingredients: a strong family life, and a strong religious life—particularly as active members of their religious communities. I’m thinking of one guy in particular from Nebraska.

He’s been married for 20 years. He’s always been a member of the Baptist Church that he was born into. And over the course of his life, that church community has become the foundational pillar (alongside his family) for a flourishing life.

He teaches Bible study and leads the church choir. His leadership has been formed and lived into through that church. His main role model in life outside of his father is the pastor from that church. He’s raised all of his kids there, in the religious school tied to the church. He even found his job as the chief foreman on a construction site through the networks of that church membership.

So for the few men we spoke with who were living “good lives,” religion was at the core of those good lives. Again, in what could be considered a fairly conservative coded way…

CtK: Okay, okay—I’m not ready to give up on a progressive, committed religious community just yet. But I take your point :)

SP: But the other thread that we saw was that men who were going to church stopped going to church when a female family member passed away. There were at least three of the 30 that I could think of who had a mother or grandmother who took them to church every weekend. And when she passed away, they just stopped going. These women were the single connection to the congregation—and when they passed, the men lost that tethering to the religious community.

The only other thing I’d mention is that when we asked, “Hey, if you were to start getting involved in community or start making friends, where would you go if time and money weren’t an issue? Where would you begin?” It was notable how infrequently these guys pointed to church or temple or mosque, given the fact that it is free and you can find religious communities pretty much anywhere you are in the country. This was especially interesting in light of the discourse that young men are returning to religion.

CtK: Ah yes, that old chestnut..

SP: But these guys were yearning to contribute. They were yearning to connect to something bigger than themselves. So we saw evidence, at least for the underpinning principles behind religious belonging. But these guys weren’t talking about finding connection at church, if they weren’t already involved.

CtK: Listen, there’s no getting around the fact that the stories in the report were really heartbreaking. It’s so clear that these guys are doing the best they can but feel so dejected about the possibility of connection in their life. Like, it just doesn’t seem possible for them.

So if you had the capacity to wave a magic wand, what policy changes would you implement to change the landscape for them and us?

SP: All right, well, you know I’m not a big magic wand guy…

CtK: That’s why you and I make a good double act!

SP: The honest answer is I don’t think there are any silver bullet solutions. What we’re dealing with is the compounding generational breakdown of both of the foundations of working-class life—economic and social—and our failure to maintain the “social” safety net.

And I say social safety net not just from a policy perspective, but from the actual local associations, whether it’s community, religious, familial, neighborhood, etc. that can catch people when they fall. We need to be thinking about this in generational terms—not in the type of magical thinking where there can be a magic wand solution in the next few years.

Illustration: EJ Baker

Having said that, I think there are things that can be done. If we believe that the issues first and foremost are relational, I think the solutions should begin relationally.

CtK: Right. But what does that look like?

SP: First, I think there is a clear role for families to be looking out for the men in their lives who have fallen into disconnection and to play a role in bringing them back into community. And many families are already doing this—and they need to be supported by community groups, by neighborhood groups, by religious groups. We need to actively support families to get their sons, uncles, fathers, nephews, and grandpas reconnected.

More broadly, there’s a role for community and religious groups to focus on disconnected young men. I think the founding story of the YMCA is quite useful in this context. The YMCA was founded as the Industrial Revolution was massively disrupting village and agrarian life. As young men moved to the city, they started to engage in not the most pro-social activities—going to brothels, gambling, drinking excessively—and many experienced isolation and alienation. So the YMCA was created to promote the spiritual, social, and physical formation of young men. I think something like that is what we may need, which is why I hope that the YMCA can reconnect, in some way, with its initial purpose!

But there’s also a role for new initiatives to take on the challenge of bringing men into contribution and connection—particularly these guys without degrees.

CtK: And on a policy level?

SP: There is a role for policy. One of the things that we saw very concretely in this research is what we called ‘the friendship cliff and slow drift.’

Most of these guys had friends in high school because they had a consistent structure through which to see friends day in, day out. But once they left high school, some of their friends went to college, and the guys we interviewed didn’t. And they didn’t have any alternative structure, like the military, to replace that consistent form of interaction.

Notably, work didn’t prove enough of a structure to maintain connection. No one talked about work as a consistent form of interaction where they could build and sustain friendships. As a result, there was a significant friendship cliff after high school.

So that makes me think: How do we build relationships in a structured, cohort-based way during the transition into adulthood that may last longer in life?

That’s where opportunities like the National Public Service or state-level service years come in. That’s where all of these alternative vocational pathways—whether it’s apprenticeships or work training programs—should build in cohort-based interactions so that people can build relationships through that process. Beyond that, we need to get imaginative with alternative structures and rites of passage into adulthood that both build containers for relationships and help sustain those relationships later in life.

Illustration: EJ Baker

So, those are some capital P policy opportunities. But we shouldn’t diminish just how important the material foundations of this research are. If you don’t have stable work, it’s very hard to build relationships inside of work and it’s very, very hard to participate in community and build relationships outside of work. So we need policies that promote fair workweeks and stable schedules. If you don’t have support to spend time with your children when they’re born, it’s going to drive a wedge within the family. We need paid family leave, resources for childcare, etc.

These are policy decisions. We can’t in one breath say, “Family is important, relationships are important, community is important,” then in the next breath say, “Let the market take care of it.” We tried that already.

CtK: Okay, so some progressive policies, I see :)

SP: We need to strengthen the material foundations of working-class life. And all of what I just said is merely a start. This is going to take several generations to rebuild.

CtK: So, in closing, what do you hope we take away from your research?

SP: First, I want to stress that there is not a male loneliness epidemic, but a crisis of men without degrees who have been left alone by us, as a society.

Second, this is the result of college becoming the dividing line in American civic life. Even though college completion rates have been going up for several generations, these gains have been driven by women. So men are making up more and more of the remaining contingent of people without college degrees—it is this group, in particular, that is experiencing acute pain and isolation.

Third, I have to name the despairing part of this, which is that these men were even more disconnected than we thought going into the research. Most of them had no connection to community. Most of them had few or no close friendships.

Even for the men who did have connection, it was what researchers call a “tenuous tie.” It was one friend or one community attachment or one mentor, and that created a single point of failure for their relational lives. So when something as simple as a move, or a job change, or even a loved one’s death happens—it makes the difference between connection and almost complete isolation.

BUT—and I want to stress this—these guys were not nihilistic or resentful. They weren’t willful loners or about to be radicalized. That popular narrative seems completely wrong, and it obfuscates the degree to which these guys actually want to be connected and want to contribute!

They were still yearning for friendship. They were yearning to be a part of something in their community. They were yearning to become the mentors and role models that they never had themselves.

But they felt stuck—they didn’t know where to begin. Oftentimes they had material constraints like not having enough time, feeling like they didn’t have enough money, or that they didn’t have transportation to get anywhere. And then they blamed themselves for the structural issues they were facing.

CtK: Yeah, that really struck me, too. So many of the guys blamed themselves for the situation they were in.

SP: Right! Many of them had extremely low confidence, extremely low self-esteem.

Oftentimes, they felt like it was their responsibility to fix themselves before they could get back into relationship. And the reason I’m saying this is a hopeful narrative is not because of the stuckness. It’s because of the yearning. And the stuckness is actually, for lack of better words, ass-backwards, right?

Relationships have never been rewards of entrepreneurial action. They’ve been gifts of generational inheritance.

CtK: That’s beautifully said. Thanks for this, Sam. I love you, bruh!

SP: Thanks, C-Daddy. Appreciate it.

Illustration: EJ Baker