You might want to take a look at this Washington Post article outlining the findings of business prof Alan Benson suggesting that a college education isn’t quite the guarantee of prosperity its advance billing might suggest:
Earlier this month, after announcing his plan to make community college free, President Obama lauded a college degree as “the surest ticket to the middle class.”
New research in the prolific field of “Is College Worth It?†suggests it’s not that simple.
“‘Ticket’ implies a college degree is something you can just cash in,†said Alan Benson, assistant business professor at the University of Minnesota. “But it doesn’t work that way. A college degree is more of a stepping stone, one ingredient to consider when you’re cooking up your career. … It’s not always the best investment for everyone.â€
and
College is still worth it for the average student. But Benson’s study found returns are particularly modest for young men at the CSU system, mostly because of high dropout rates, delayed graduation and a lower effect on labor force participation compared with women.
“The return to a college degree in 2010,†researchers wrote, “could be less than the interest on unsubsidized Stafford loans.â€
As should be apparent, by definition half the population will not be average students.
Historically, a college education combined two things. It provided a forum for the children of the upper crust to make social and business connections, something not nearly as useful today as it was a century ago. And it provided preparation for the professions, i.e. medicine, law, the ministry, college professors. I question whether we should be subsidizing either of those objectives.
Nowadays a college degree provides a competitive advantage for those who have them against those who don’t. In other words when there are two candidates for that job at McDonalds a college degree sets you apart. I don’t think that necessarily means the degreed candidate will be a better McDonalds employee but that’s a decision for McDonalds to make. I’m not sure we should be subsidizing that, either.
If your view of the future is one in which workers are competing for a dwindling pool of jobs, getting a college degree makes a certain amount of sense but only if you focus your attention on skills that are likely to be saleable and you finish in four years. As the article points out, that’s a minority of students.
Higher education makes a lousy industrial policy. We need something that takes seventy or eighty percent of the young people into account rather than just the top quarter.
How good are we at predicting who won’t benefit? Who should make that determination, and how?
Steve
In a world of infinite resources there would be no need to make that determination. In the world in which we live that is limited in terms of money, time, and attention, we do.
The obvious answer: willingness to pay. Those who can afford it and those who are most highly motivated. There are other potential solutions. I’m open to other possibilities but I think the worst solution is letting the banks decide which is essentially the present solution.
I think we need to keep in mind that the best intelligence we have on the subject says that for the majority of people higher education is a waste of time. And that’s a critical point: it’s a waste of their time. Time is a critical, scarce resource.
The point that I’m making when I mentioned “attention” above is that right now higher education as a policy solution to our industrial and economic problems is crowding out all other solutions. Unless that stops we’ll end up ignoring the majority of the American people.
The candidate with the college degree is probably less likely to get hired at McDonald’s. I leave the “why” as an exercise for the reader.
Even though it is not related, I will add this here:
I am not sure why they burned to death the Jordanian pilot, but ISIS just lost. You can piss off, on, and all over the West, but they should know the ME does not play by the same rules.
Assad now has a free hand to deal with them, and he will likely get support from unlikely places.