Oh, Why’d I Go To College?
Listen to the song first (like 1:30 and you’ll get the point). College by Nola Wren remixed here by Lucian tells a familiar tale to many Americans all over the United States:
Twenty four hot flush brown-eyed girl. Making no good money in a big bad world. I don’t know where I’ll begin but I know where I wanna go. So I punch the clock and roam the night. God I really hate my nine to five. Sick of working ‘till my body hurts.
Then the chorus really hits home hard:
Oh why’d I go to college? The fuck I go to college?
So many people are asking themselves this very question right now.
The idea that everyone should go to college has been a persistent myth. While it’s true college could be a good investment, we’ve been told it’s the only way to make money and move up the socioeconomic ladder.
It isn’t.
There are plenty of ways to make money without college. But no one ever tells you that now because college is the new high school. This narrative may be true in some ways, but you can make an honest living without a 4-year degree as seen here. The median pay for an air traffic controller with an Associates degree (2 years) is $122,530. Are you kidding me? That is obviously a market signal saying you don’t need much formal education to make some great money.
It’s a reality that often sinks in post-degree — there are no returns on this purchase. There can be buyers remorse. Even if you declare bankruptcy, you can’t get it off your books. Since you can’t return your education, it makes sense you wouldn’t be able to write it off.
The commercialization of college has caused a race to build the best amenities, dorms, sports facilities and teams. Sometimes they even get decent professors! Build it and they will come, they said, but the incentives are all backwards. With the majority of this expansion being financed by increases in tuition, we’re left to ask ourselves “what is the actual value of the services rendered? Was it worth the extra cost?”. How can tuition keep rising, but the education remain virtually the same as it was 60 years ago?
One answer is that government gives many grants and need-based loans to lower and middle income students, and indirectly this increases the cost of attendance. In the private market, these students probably don’t qualify for loans with such affordable terms and low interest rates because they don’t have strong credit histories. Because the government will provide this financial help, even if repayment is unlikely, schools know they can charge more and still attract students. This cycle helps drive up the demand for college, including by students who might not actually be able to afford the loans they take on. Is this helping anyone? Especially those who drop out after a year or two when they realize college wasn’t a good investment for them?
The reality is many kids who start and never finish with undergraduate degree with will make $17,500 less than their college graduate counterparts in their first year of work (according to Pew). So for them, attending college was a triple whammy; they weren’t making money while going to school (instead of working full-time), they now receive a lower weekly average pay (below), and they have to pay back the loans with interest.
Plenty of people go to college and find their careers in the fields they set out to. And I think here lies the secret — you go to college when you know what you want to do. I knew when I was 14 that I was going to be an Economist. Now, I have my B.A. in Economics and I’m starting my M.A. in the fall. I knew before I went to college what I wanted to do in life and it helped me enormously and saved me time and money by streamlining my class schedule.
But isn’t there “hope” for debt cancellation/free college presidential policies? With some of the candidates you might be in luck! I mean that as sarcastically as I can possibly make it — be wary of the snake oil they are trying to sell.
Let’s get a general picture of the student loan debt landscape. The most recent reports indicate there is:
- $1.42 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt
- 43.3 million Americans with student loan debt
- Student loan delinquency rate of 11.6%
College debt has surpassed total credit card and auto debt in America, and it’s not even close. So where is the money going to come from? Are the taxpayers on the hook for everyone’s college tuition? Some say the Feds could be on the hook for $47 billion a year and the states would cover $23 billion. This would likely be in addition to what the government already pays for higher education. The feds currently spends about $76 billion — mostly flowing to colleges through financial aid grants awarded to students and grants for specific research topics — and the states pay about $73 billion, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Adding all that up, does that sounds like a sustainable idea? So many people are struggling already, as we discussed above, are government loans helping or hurting if they can’t pay back those loans because college isn’t for them or their career paths aren’t great due to the degree they chose.
The real question is why did a bunch of 18 year old’s with no real credit get trusted with the largest collective credit line in the country? It’s an investment in training for productive future jobs, of course, but here’s the catch. The loans don’t stipulate what you had to major in and most students aren’t told the job prospects in their fields. This might be why recent graduates with a degree in Architecture have the high unemployment rate. Or why we have the most people in the world with an undergraduate Psychology degree and they are among the lowest paid degrees coming out of college.
If the 11.6 percent of students just stopped paying their loans, there would be roughly 160 billion dollars that taxpayers would be on the hook for.
So if you’re asking yourself, why’d I go to college? You’ve gone for the wrong reason. But there’s hope as she points out in her song, you have trade off’s:
Bonafide hustler. Got a choice: Education / Living on the streets.
So are you a bonafide hustler? You got a choice? And remember the return on education can be a valuable one, but that doesn’t mean it has to be taught through your traditional 4-year degree program. There are plenty of options, you just have to find the best one for you: vocational school, apprenticeships, associate degree, or build your own business. The idea is to find the path for you. Hey, maybe it is college, but I would say you should know before you go, because there is a lot of money on the line.
