Is College Worth the Cost?

The first thing I can remember my mother telling me was that I was going to college.

Neither she nor my father had graduated high school and she was determined that for me, it would be different. My success would be their success, a fulfillment of what, for most working-class families, was the American Dream: upward mobility and financial security.

But it wasn’t easy.

For my parents, putting a child through college entailed far more than putting money aside from each paycheck. For my father, it meant working overtime and weekends, often twelve, sometimes fifteen hours a day. My mother, in turn, had to scrimp and save on everything, never allowing herself the slightest luxury.

I understood the sacrifice they were making and so I studied, took the tests and went on, first to a preparatory high school, then to college and afterwards, graduate school.

Was my parents’ sacrifice worth it? I believe it was.

For me, a college education grounded in both science and the humanities enriched my life by broadening my understanding of the world. Not only did it endow me with the critical thinking necessary for success in any profession; it also exposed me to different ideas, peoples, histories and cultures that, I hope, made me a more rounded individual.

The problem is that most students have no interest in those aspects of a college education. Instead, their motivation — as well as the motivation of their parents — lies solely in them getting a good job.

And for good reason.

For Most, an Education is About Getting a Good Job

One of the key tenets underlying the American Dream is that we all are given the opportunity to succeed. And that the proven path to success is a college education.

College graduates, we are told, earn more than high school graduates and that the income of people with either advanced degrees or professional certifications is even higher.

But is that true? The numbers appear to support the claims.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the wages of college-educated workers have steadily increased over the past two decades, while the annual salaries for those with only a high school education have decreased.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) analyzes employee earnings by education level. Its findings indicate that in 2015, adults with a high school diploma earned only $23,900 while those with bachelor’s degrees took home, on average, $48,500 a year. Individuals with degrees in science, law, medicine, engineering, and technology made significantly more.

As of January 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate for college graduates was only 2.5 percent. This is half the unemployment rate of those with high school degrees and one-third the unemployment rate of those with without a high school degree.

30% to 40% of College Graduates are Unemployed

But while the numbers are encouraging, they are counterbalanced by a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank which reveals that between 30 and 40 percent of college graduates are presently underemployed. The survey defines underemployment as college graduates working in occupations that don’t require a degree.

Several economists have challenged the Bank’s report, calling its methodology flawed and not representative of how and why people are hired.

I’m always suspicious of surveys and statistics, knowing how easily the numbers can be made to support whatever pre-determined answer you’re looking for.

My First Hand Experience with Unemployed Graduates

But based on my own experience, I tend to side with the Bank’s report.

About six months ago, I needed to hire a team of telemarketers. Because the ad I ran specified that the work was part time and the pay rate $15 per hour, I expected the bulk of the response to be from college students who wanted a job with hours flexible enough to match their class schedules.

Instead, I received more than two hundred resumes — not from students but from college graduates. As I parsed the resumes, I saw that almost every one of the candidates had an excellent grade point average.

Yet all of them were currently working at what are best described as low-level jobs, none of which required a college education.

Conducting the interviews, I found all of the candidates to be intelligent, articulate, and highly motivated. Yet none of them had been able to find work that matched their level of education.

Most had degrees in either business or economics. Some had been looking for more than five years.

What struck me most wasn’t only the pent-up frustration they all must have felt, but the total lack of return both they and their parents were getting from their college investment.

What’s the Current Cost of College?

The College Board reports that the average cost of an in-state public college for the 2016–2017 academic year was $24,610. The price tag for a private college came in at $49,320.

For most families, that’s a lot of money.

So much so that the total outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. is $1.2 trillion — the second-highest level of consumer debt behind only mortgages. About 40 million Americans now hold student loans with nearly 70% of bachelor’s degree recipients graduating with debt.

Still, it would be easy to dismiss these numbers as high but manageable if students were graduating into solid jobs with good salaries.

That argument falls away, however, when you take into account not only underemployment but the fact that since the Financial Meltdown of 2008, the more than 9 million new jobs created in the U.S. have been for part-time, freelance or contract work.

The pundits call it a Gig Economy and applaud the opportunity it gives newly minted graduates to pick and choose from a variety of jobs.

I doubt that the parents and students that now have to pay the bill share the same enthusiasm.

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