AUTHOR ARGUES:
So what’s a fair way to judge the cost of college?
Consider an upper-middle-income student at a typically-priced public college. In 1995, that student would have paid an average of $12,618 in 2007 dollars, including room and board, according to the College Board. By the 2007-2008 academic year, the cost would have been $15,489.* A 23 percent increase over 12 years is a big deal for struggling families. But it’s not a doubling, and for lower-income students, the cost has risen less.
HE ALSO ARGUES:
College grads aren’t doing that poorly on the job market
53 percent of young graduates are either unemployed or working in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, and of Ohio University’s Richard Vedder, who found that, in 2008, 35 percent of all working college graduates were in jobs that didn’t need a BA.
Those numbers aren’t factually wrong, but they do require some context. First, recent college grads almost always have high levels of under-employment. At the peak of the dotcom bubble, 41 percent of new grads were still without work, or in a gig that supposedly didn’t require their education, according to Sum.
Second, as Stephen Rose of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce explained to me, the over-qualification problem is easily exaggerated. The BLS collects reams of data on different occupations and categorizes them by how much education you need to do the job. Both Vedder and Sum use those definitions to determine which jobs are college-grad appropriate, and which ones fall into the “barrista” category. But Rose argues that the BLS numbers are out of date, and don’t give a realistic picture of which jobs really require higher education.
Take insurance agents, he argues. According to the government, that job only requires a high school degree. And in 1960, that was true. Back then, only 20 percent of insurance agents had a BA, and those that did only took home 10 percent more pay compared to their colleagues. Today it’s a different story. Half of all insurance agents now have a BA, and they make 40 percent more than their high school-educated peers. For men, that means a median salary of $78,000.
You see similar patterns with professions like police work and nursing, jobs that traditionally didn’t take a four-year degree, but where having one can now mean higher pay and a better career path. Rose is working on his own estimates of college graduate underemployment, but says his preliminary estimate is that 15 percent of bachelor’s holders are working in jobs that don’t require their skills. Still not an ideal situation, but not disastrous, especially when you consider that many of those people may be moonlighting as they pursue other careers.
I have $1 Trillion in student-loan debt that says they are wrong...
The cost of college is a massive bubble inflated by guaranteed loans. Who cares if students ever pay it off? The companies are guaranteed payment by you and me. And it's not discharged by bankruptcy, or possibly even death - IE: If you co-sign on a college loan, and the student dies, you still get to pay back the loan.
The ‘typical’ college professor maintains 9 hours of classroom instruction per week. Nine. Want to slash the cost of college, and increase the amount of students who can attend? Simply ask those college professors to double their classroom time each week, to a whopping 18 hours of work.
Worse, the public’s being robbed blind by those who are using public facilities and public money to fund their research, which they then privately patent and profit from.
And in another year and a half (or now, if you count unpaid contributions), the UC California system will be paying more for retired employees than their active payroll. The single largest expense for the UC system will be paying people not to work. That's incredible.
This absolutely is a bubble, and you'll see Greece like riots just as soon as the money train hits the final station.
Most... but not all, and what about all the bad loans to students who don't make it to graduation and are now debt slaves to those loans?
Oh, and all those nurses with bachelors and masters degrees, they drive up the cost of medical care and they don't want to change bedpans, do bedbaths or change linens.
Paid more to work less is not a benefit to either society or the economy.
The author only looks at a part of the problem to diagnose the entire problem. Instead, you need to look at universities structurally.
Many of the large state universities have been on an explosive growth track for decades. In effect, it they just grow at a normal rate or not at all, the bubble collapses.
Much like subprime home prices. The scheme only works when the price continues to rise a lot. If it doesn’t then a lot of people are left with underwater mortgages.
Likewise, two generations ago, people would graduate from college penniless. But everything they earned after that, less taxes, was theirs. Today, just starting out deeply in debut throws off the entire timetable of family and prosperity.
Even if you do have a child and scrape by for two decades to pay off your student loan, is there any way for your child to attend university without economically crippling themselves as well? It is unsustainable.
I saw a whole bunch of similar articles denying the real estate bubble just before the crash.
Must be written by an academic or the spouse of one...
Yep.
I was right.
He's an adjunct professor.
Jordan Weissman - Adjunct Professor USC
College is a waste of money and a total scam. Most incoming freshman have to take remedial courses in simple things they should have learned in the 8th grade.
Showing my age: I started at the Univ of Arkansas in 1977 and the cost for one year (tuition/dorm room and cafeteria/books) was only about $3,500-$4,000.
Jordan Weissman - Adjunct Professor USC
This is exactly like all of those ill informed articles about "Why NOW is the best time to buy property" written by realtors just before the crash.
When the academics start squealing, you know that we areon to something.