Is college worth it?
here and here) as well as my extreme opposition to student loans and our current system of funding higher education (here, here and here). Today, via Joanne Jacobs, we find out that Charles Miller who led the Commission on the Future of Higher Education is now arguing that the earnings benefit for having a college degree is probably much less than has been previously stated.
Rather than being 1 million over a career, the number according to Charles Miller is more like $280K. Given that a private college education now routinely runs about $100K over 4 years with room and board and adding in the cost of interest on student loans, as well as the missed opportunity costs of having money which could otherwise be used to invest in a 401K or other investment vehicle going towards paying off student loans, this number really calls into question whether it makes sense to insist on a college diploma as a requirement for most decent jobs.
I have long thought that the credential inflation we have seen over the last couple of decades (requiring ever higher credentials for professional positions) is the result the failure of our high schools to adequately prepare students to enter into the workforce. It used to be that if you had a high school diploma, an employer could assume that you knew how to do math, write coherently, understand written and verbal instructions and complete tasks given to you. Today, even some students on the college track lack these basic skills so a college diploma is now often what employers rely on to indicate that a potential employee has basic skills.
I personally think it would be great if we could develop some sort of credentialing system which could be a substitute for a college diploma. Like a test which could be used to demonstrate that you have mastered the skills needed to work in accounting or computer science or to teach grade schoolers. It would be very helpful for self motivated kids who don’t need to spend 4 years in college to learn their area of interest and allow adults who have the skills needed to move into a profession without having to go through the time and expense of returning to school.
I am absolutely certain that using student loans to fund a person’s entry into middle class jobs will have serious long term implications for our country, so perhaps once everything has fallen apart, we’ll decide to take a look at something like this. It would be nice if people would think about these things before people’s lives get ruined, but that seems to be too much to ask these days.