[SeekAndFind]

[wombtotomb]

I imagine the trend line will continue downward as all children are guaranteed a cradle to grave education. When something is had by everyone, it loses value; even a degree.

[sthguard]

I got a 404 from the posted link, but found another version: http://innovationandgrowth.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-creative-economy-and-college-grads/. Perhaps the link should be corrected?

[sinanju]

There have been a host of articles recently contending that the tipping point has been reached, regarding college costs. The amount charged is just too great to be worth it, especially for graduate degrees. People are graduating with impossible debts.

[Domandred]

Part of the problem is the student loans themselves, guaranteed by Uncle Sam. They are too easy to get so colleges know they can get the money no matter what they charge. Schools raise their rates more. No biggy get bigger student loans. Cycle repeats.

So even in a down economy schools can raise rates while everyone else takes pay cuts and/or job losses. Don’t matter student loans are available all you have to do is pick a college, and what better time to go to college or back to college then when the economy is down so you can’t find a job. Take another loan from Uncle Sam, that’s okay.

[Eyes Unclouded]

Masters is the new Bachelors.

[Lou L]

In this day and age of free healthcare, why are we still paying exhorbitant college tuition and associated costs every year? /s

[RepublicanMeansAmerican]

As college degrees become more like idoctrination certificates administered by poorly socialized creeps, their value in the market will decline.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Sola Veritas]

IMO one of the things that is hurting the value of a college degree is how easy it is to get one these days if you have the money to pay for it. Also, there is no doubt in my mind that the students being turned out by many institutions (especially online but still in traditional ones as well) are receiving useless degrees that don’t teach you anything usable, not even how to learn.

For the most part (I’m sorry for the generalizations), but unless you receive a degree in a true science (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) or in engineering, a BS or BA doesn’t prepare you for the employment market.

I see so many young military officers with useless bachelor’s degrees that serve only to open the door for them to receive a commission....but they don’t know anything and aren’t good at REAL learning.

Anyway, I guess my point is that steps need to be taken to raise standards as to what trully constitutes the minimum requirement to earn a BS or BA degree. The cost keeps going up, but the quality keeps going down. The result is there are too many “college” graduates in general subjects that have no application in reality.

As much as I despise government interference....we need a better (country wide) standard for accreditation. Also, we need to crack down on many glorified diploma mills.

[LibFreeOrDie]

The other racket that colleges have is “continuing education.” Many employers require that you take courses (leading to a degree or a certificate, or stand-alone courses in your field) to remain employed, get raises or to advance up the career ladder. It never stops! True, many employers also have tuition reimbursement, but you’ve still lost more hours of your life to lectures.

[AussieJoe]

I would love to see this exact same breakdown but separated by major industry sectors. I’ll bet an ‘arts’ degree that qualifies you to do little more than the sort of job where you often repeat “would you like fries with that?” is going to work out very differently to something like an electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering degree. I’ll bet that at the masters level the difference will follow the same trend and be even more pronounced.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I tend to view this divergence between rising real college costs and flat or falling real earnings for young college grads as insupportable over the medium term for an economy like the U.S....In fact, the next bubble to damage the US economy - what's left of it - is likely to be the collapse of the student loan craze - "Frontline" had an excellent program on a few weeks back looking at the for-profit college field - schools like DeVry University and Grand Canyon University which sell stock to investors to fund operations - the great majority of those attending such schools do so with student loans, are likely to have trouble finding good paying jobs when finished (one nursing school charged $30k for a year's training and didn't have their students inside a hospital once), and 44% eventually default on their loans vs. about 8% of those attending traditional colleges.

It's now obvious why the Obama crew was so anxious to take over the student loan field and make it a government program. Like they pushed Fannie and Freddie to take over all those bad home loans so they could eventually pay them off with taxpayer money, they will now "forgive" many of the non -performing student loans already out there and offer many more to students who eventually will default, covering the shortfall with more taxpayer money - it's called redistribution, sharing the wealth.....