Posted on 05/31/2015 7:47:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
With debt soaring for college loans and the current generation of post-graduate college students being hogtied by their loan burdens, the question of how much sense this all makes comes to one’s mind. Well, a couple of noted individuals did a detailed analysis of that and came to their own conclusions.
Jaison R. Abel, research officer, and Richard Dietz, Assistant Vice-President for Regional Analysis of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, cast their eyes on this issue. Unfortunately, repeated requests for an interview were turned down. Their study -- named Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs? -- brought to mind one immediate question which is why the New York Fed looked at this issue in the first place.
They came to the conclusion that “once the full set of costs and benefits is taken into account, investing in a college education still appears to be a wise economic decision for the average person.” Once you review their charts and graphs you may come to the same conclusion. The unanswered questions still remain that may make it not so for many college attendees.
Their findings stated that on average, workers with a bachelor’s degree earn well over $1 million more than high school graduates during their work career. A question that would be nice to get answered is whether that is because of the college education or because of the nature of the individuals involved? Certainly many professions restrict your entry into them without a college degree, but that does not mean that the person who succeeds in college succeeds in life financially because of the college degree. We do not have to lurch to Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg (both Harvard University dropouts) to know that people who attend even superior colleges don’t often need to attend college to be financially successful in life. When the population of college attendees typically includes the smartest and most motivated people in our country, it follows that they would have higher lifetime earnings than the population as a whole.
But also notice the authors noted that the average earnings are $1,000,000 higher. Let us consider over a 40-year career that would be about $25,000 per year. There certainly are many people who will have either zero increased earnings or something like $10,000 per year on average. Those increased earnings will increase to a higher level as their careers propel forward, leaving these degree holders with little or no increased earnings in the first few years of their career and many harnessed with $60,000 to $100,000 of debt for student loans. I have counselled two young adults in recent weeks with debt exceeding $150,000 for advanced degrees.
This mountain of debt has been documented as being a stall on this generation acquiring homes because of the burden that decreases loan capacity. Also, for many of these people, their burden of debt is stifling them from taking risks to start their own businesses. Both of these issues, home purchases and business starts, are reflective of the costs of college, the debt incurred to attend college, and the resulting sometimes meager increased earnings culminating in casting a giant shadow on the future of many of these young graduates.
One of the questions I wanted to address to the authors of the study was whether people receiving some of the proliferation of degrees that leads them to unknown careers was really worth the time and money to attend college. They did include a section entitled Does Your Major Matter? They clearly stated that certain majors have a greater economic return, while they likewise stated that other majors still gave a great rate of return on investment. What we don’t know is how many of those degrees end up being totally useless because jobs are not available in any shape or form.
As a society we have put a tremendous distorted premium on attending college. Many high school students are told through societal norms that their lives will be a failure if they do not attend college. We have completely de-emphasized training for jobs that are lucrative, but not needing of a college degree. Many of those positions have gone begging in our current environment.
We currently have a person considering running for president for the first time since President Harry Truman who did not graduate from college. Governor Scott Walker attended college for three years, but did not finish. Not finishing college has brought some to question his qualifications to be president. Last time I checked that was not one of the items listed in the Constitution. And the doubters have discounted that his vast experience in government over the last 20+ years might actually be more important than that last year of college. A typical analysis was done by Albert Hunt in Bloomberg entitled Can Walker be President without a College Degree? A discussion like this crystalizes the distorted emphasis on that magical piece of paper.
The authors should have been open to a deeper analysis. It would be nice to address the trillion dollar noose around the neck of college grads for the cost of college. But none of that was done and more needs to be looked at before we continue to give this unbridled premium to colleges -- societally and financially.
A more interesting question is:
Is a college degree at a private school worth significantly more than a degree at a public school when the debt burden is factored in?
No, the cost is astronomical.
If you get a real degree, of course.
If you get an affirmative action degree, or a useless degree like womens studies then no.
You are not paying more for a better education necessarily, you are paying more to weed out the trash and increase the chances of meeting a quality mate.
Good question. Another would be when you strip out those who go into accounting, law, medicine,engineering, etc. how do the numbers look?
It all depends on whether the degree is in something like Computer Science or Nineteenth Century Wymins Lesbian Dance Theory. One can quickly lead to an $80,000 starting salary and the other to a slightly lesser career as a Starbucks Barista. I leave it to the reader to figure out which leads to what.
Exactly.
Also like you said its about increasing your chances for a quality mate.
But they always compare the value of a College education to a High School education.
It w/b interesting to compare College vs Technical or Trade school education. Lots of people have done well with Technical or Trades, especially when combined with 2+ years of college.
Really it all comes down to the individual.
The obvious flaw in this conclusion is that for them to have measured this difference, they have to be studying people who went to college 20 or 30 years ago.
I submit that the comparison with the value of a modern college education is absolutely ridiculous.
College 20-30 years ago was a whole different experience than it will be for those entering it now, or even for those who have just graduated.
Although college has always been a left wing environment at least since I first attended in 1968 (the year things started getting ugly), today it is pretty much nothing but a Progressive propaganda and indoctrination center full of totalitarian leftist, racist nonsense.
Everyday I see articles about crazy radical professors, courses and policies and their latest departure from relevant reality.
Perhaps it is different for science, technology, math and engineering (STEM). But by and large, modern colleges are pretty much reduced to Orwellian moron factories.
Moreover, 20-30 years ago, virtually all large companies required college degrees as a condition for advancement. But I think that is changing now due to the irrelevancy and ridiculous cost of a modern college education.
I don’t see college as an economic decision, at least not primarily economic. Education broadens a person’s perspective and enhances life, so I want my three teens to go to college.
That said, we are conservative reformed Christians. My overriding concern is over who and what they are taught in college. We have worked hard to teach them. I don’t believe they need to go to colleges that parrot everything I’ve taught them, but regardless of how much they can earn later, I am unwilling to pay for the privilege of having my values and beliefs undermined and belittled. In other words, I am not sending my daughters to liberal indoctrination centers, even if it’s free.
Thus when they start a family they often move out to the suburbs where their children will interact with the fewest possible bad apples in their neighborhood and school. This will help them raise their children to be better adults because what they are trying to teach them will not be undermined on a daily basis by nearly everyone the children interact with.
The parents must pay more for this privilege.
Thus it is with college, but the stakes are higher, because there is a good chance their child will meet their future spouse in college. And everything the parents have done up to that point would all be for naught if their child met some trash from the neighborhood the parents moved away from and married them while attending a state college.
Diminishing the possibility is worth paying extra for.
If you attend college to make money or get a job, it is probably not worth it.
But if you use college for its intended purpose, to enrich your mind, help you solve problems, teach you “how to think”, expand your horizons, then, yes it is worth it.
It is “not for everybody” and is most definitely not (supposed to be) a tech school.
No because 99% of degrees should be just simple training courses you take online, or better off as hobbies.
There was a time when universities offered very limited courses for a reason. Other areas, like the arts, had specialized schools for that as well. It was serious school for serious study. Mainly for rich kids.
Now it’s like college is a gigantic academic Planet Fitness, where you have to dig through the layers of fluff just to find the thin layer of actual usefulness. an extra 5 years of high school because 18-22 year olds aren’t remotely ready for even the simplest responsibilities and would rather go into massive debt just to have a piece a paper to tell a company to trust that they know what they are doing.
For some yes, and for some (many) no.
"Price" versus "value". Put another way, is a Toyota Camry "worth" $30,000? (I think the average debt for a college graduate is about $35K now, which is still too high.) Is that Toyota Camry "worth" $300,000? Probably not.
I would prefer a president who has served in the military to one with a college degree. Apples and oranges, I know.
28% of people marry someone they went to college with
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/facebook-data-odds-soulmate-college/
Combined that's a 43% chance that you will meet the person you will marry in high school or college.
Anyone with half a brain knows that few things will affect your life more (and your children's lives) than your choice of a spouse.
So if your a parent that knows this and want to dramatically increase the chance that their child will meet and marry a quality spouse. You do your best to make the pool of potential mates they have a 43% chance of picking from as top notch as possible.
the benefits of an education can’t be measured in Dollars and cents
YES....IF;
You take the first 2 years at a community college and ensure the credits are transferrable to a 4 year school.
You take courses that will prepare you for a real job, earning real money.
They're riding on the reputations of a University system that died in the early 60’s...
Today's 'college experience' is not much different than sending your kids to a liberal indoctrination camps run by the kinds of people who use to sell shoes at the five and dime. It's not even Disney World. Not even animal house. It's a cheap carnival with carnies working the 'games'...
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