Never before in the United States, we're told, has having a college education been more important for finding a good-paying job. Yet on the other hand, many Americans are critical of the traditional four-year college plan, questioning whether college is worthwhile—if maybe too many kids are going to college these days. Together, these two points of conventional wisdom
suggest that many people nowadays think it isn't worthwhile to have a job that pays well.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am college educated and have done well from it. I went to a traditional school for a traditional four years using a traditional all-expenses-paid-by-my-parents financial plan. I got a degree in computer science, and since then the job market has been, on average, good for people who aren't afraid of computers. So I can't say that my life would have been easier and more materially profitable if I hadn't gone to college. Probably it would have been neither.
But college for me ended eleven years ago. I recently looked at estimated expenses for my alma mater and discovered they've nearly doubled since I graduated in 2001. It's the same story as everywhere else: college costs are steadily growing faster than inflation, and middle-class people are eating the costs. So when is college no longer worth it?
Though this is a subjective question, there's an important objectivity to it; a college education may be assigned a monetary value just as any annuity may be. Suppose a degree allows you to earn $X more per year than you would earn without it. Further suppose your degree costs $Y in direct expenses, plus the opportunity cost of having missed $Z of income for four years while you're busying going to frat parties and playing intramural sports. How much money is that degree worth? For a sufficiently small value of $X combined with sufficiently large values of $Y and $Z, a college degree is worth a negative amount. That is, it pays back less than what it costs to obtain.
All exponential trends fail eventually, and rising college costs will prove no different. However, I wonder if maybe the biggest factor that will cause this trend to fail will be college becoming a (perceived) negative-returning investment for too many people. That is, many people will stop trying to get into college, satisfied instead to take lower-paying jobs indefinitely or else to scrap a good income the old-fashioned way, by learning a trade and running a business doing it. Not that either of these alternatives leads to a cushier life than what follows from muddling through tests and writing clutter-filled papers for four years at an esteemed university, but the universe can be an uncaring place when it comes to one's personal problems.
I pity parents of children today and the education decisions they face. In the next few decades, many families and their would-be college-bound kids will opt out of taking on a lot of debt, instead forgoing college and a better chance of working a higher-paying job in order to come out ahead by earning less. But lost somewhere amidst the dollar figures and stigma of class status of this decision is the subjective, intrinsic value of a good education and the habit of thinking critically about the world.
4 comments:
The final assumption that 60 Grand teaches you to be a lifelong critical thinker is a reach. I suspect that you were a critical thinker prior to entering college and if you had not attended an institute of higher learning you would have maintained a robust autodidactic life style.
Anonymous— You're absolutely right that you can't force critical thinking onto to someone solely by buying them a college education. And for a lot of people, college cements viewpoints by enabling critical thinking for the other guy's ideas, not one's own.
However, what's not always true for the individual may remain true for the group, on average, and I think that's what's going on here. I believe that, on average, college stretches out minds in ways that aren't likely stretched when schooling is limited to public education and self-teaching. This is at risk as college increasingly becomes a financial investment.
It's certainly something I've been thinking about lately. I do not want to set my kids up with a lifetime of debt, nor do I want to take on a lifetime of debt myself to put them through college. We are encouraging academic excellence with the hope for scholarships, but I would not shy from encouraging my children to pursue a trade or craft that would be beneficial to themselves and society if that is their calling. For us, it's not just about numbers; we believe that every person has a vocation and that it is important to discern, through prayer and careful attention, as well as personal best effort, what direction each of us needs to go in life.
One of our reasons for homeschooling is the intent and desire to teach our children how to learn, and how to love learning. I don't think it's something that automatically happens, and I don't think it is the main goal in many public education settings.
PS--maybe I should go back to college so I can figure out how to read those security codes at the end of the comment box. I'm now on my third attempt.
Lindsey— Seems likely that self-education is going to become more important as paid-for education slips further out of reach for most people. This isn't necessarily tragic. Self-education worked well for a lot of people in the past, including our 16th President.
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