No Joke — The Cost of College
A block away from my campus is a billboard that caught my attention.
Nearly finished with my sixth straight year of university student-life, I could not help but laugh at the image of a smiling student paired with such a dismal scenario. Literally selling herself to pay for textbooks. Unfortunately, the ever-rising cost of the traditional college experience is no joke.
Why go to college?
Ask a dozen people and you may receive a dozen answers. If those you ask are anything like the students sampled in a 2015 report from New America, however, you will find a common theme (Hint: notice the top three).
The expectation of financial payoff for attending college is not uniformed.
According to the Pew Research Center, those with a college degree earn about $17,500 more a year than those with only a high school diploma, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports only a 2.5% unemployment rate for college graduates.
These national averages are compelling; however, what happens when a specific degree does not deliver on those expectations? In 2016, the average college student graduated with $37,172 in student loan debt. Worse yet, what happens to the debt-ridden student that must dropout before the degree is earned?
The Cost of College
Today, total student debt in the United States stands above 1.4 trillion dollars.
If that number is difficult to conceptualize, consider this. That many one-dollar bills laid end-to-end could stretch from Earth to Mars and back.
…twice…
To economists, this should come as no surprise. After all, college tuition has risen well above inflation and every other major consumer good for the past two decades. This is truly an incredible feat considering these same two decades were marked by the rise of instantaneous communication and ability to share ideas.
When we consider students must also cover the cost of housing, food, textbooks, and other day-to-day expenses we begin to see why student debt is soaring.
Many initiatives are raising awareness of these costs. My favorite example is timeforpayback.com, a simulation game that role-plays the decisions making up the total cost of college.
The Rise of Alternatives
In the summary of his upcoming book, A New U — Faster+Cheaper Alternatives to College, Ryan Craig states:
…Colleges and universities operate much as they did 40 years ago, with one major exception: they’ve gotten dramatically more expensive. And they’ve actually gotten slower, with the average time to graduate now over five years.
As a result, graduates often struggle with enormous debt burdens. Even worse, they often find that degrees did not prepare them to obtain and succeed at good jobs in growing sectors of the economy. Parents and students have accepted this because a college degree has been seen as a prerequisite to a professional career. But now, for the first time, there are real alternatives.
Though I have not yet read the book, here are some alternatives I have identified over the last few years:
- Competency-based Degrees—Programs allowing students to progress based on what they know rather than the amount of time they have been enrolled.
- Skill Bootcamps — Non-accredited organizations that teach skills aligned with a specific job market.
- Community Colleges — Local institutions that provide 2-year degrees. Typically credits can be transferred to a traditional 4-year college.
- Technical Colleges — Offers accredited programs focused on specific career paths.
- Income Share Programs — Students attend college for a low cost (even free) and pay for their education after they have earned a job.
- Alternative Credentials — Certificates, badges, verifiable credentials. See my previous post for why these are needed.
- Entrepreneurship — Create your own job. Invent something. Try finding informed mentors who can give you advice.
- Apprenticeships — Learn by doing. A common practice for students in Germany. These programs allow the learner to work for reduced pay while being mentored. At the conclusion of the apprenticeship students may be offered a job or simply have the skills to obtain one elsewhere.
- Self Taught — Online courses, books, volunteer work, events, personal projects. The first full-time job I have accepted is largely dependent on a skill-set I learned outside of formal coursework.
- Get a job — Start working and progress in your organization or save up for one of these alternatives.
College + Alternatives
Nearly a year ago, I completed an internship with DevMountain, a local coding boot-camp. I was surprised to learn the majority of their students are not looking for an alternative to college but hoping to make a career change from the degree they earned in college.
Organizations like DevMountain are an invaluable resource for these students. Surely universities can do more to ensure the prolonged value of the degrees they issue (more on this in an upcoming post).
Should You (or your child) Go to College?
You decide. The goal of this post was to emphasize the need to give greater thought to that decision. When choosing whether or not to go to college, consider questions such as these:
- What do I want to study?
- What is the graduation rate for students in that major?
- Are graduates from these programs finding jobs? What is the salary range?
- Is a college degree important to employers in my field?
- Do I care about doing research? Or is a non-research institution fine?
- What financial aid and/or scholarships are available?
- What else do I hope to gain from my college experience? What could I do without (sports teams, party scene, etc)?
- Are there other options that could help me reach my most important goals at a better price?
These same topics should be considered when pursuing an alternative to college as well. However, in the end, most people should not need to sell bodily fluids to afford a reasonable education.
I am tremendously grateful for my college experience. Though naive at first, I created a path that fits my career goals, financial situation, and personal interests. One day (hopefully), all of us will look back and realize the real joke was thinking a single pathway was best for everyone.
What has your educational pathway been? Would you recommend it to others?
