In a world with increasing debt and stagnating wages, many are now asking if a college education is worth it in today’s day and age. Controversy riddles this topic as compelling arguments can be made for both sides and a clear right and wrong answer cannot be decided upon. There is even conjecture within those who agree a college education is worth it as they argue over the importance of the degree and the caliber of the institution from which the degree is acquired. Despite the growth of college costs rapidly outstripping inflation and wage growth over the last twenty years, it appears there is still light at the end of the tunnel. Assuming you receive a viable degree from a reasonably well-qualified school or better, economically it is still worth it to attend college in today’s day and age.

In a post-recession world, people are still fearful that the job market will be slim and so naturally they are questioning if it is worth it to take on astronomical amounts of debt for an education that may not result in a job. However, the job market is finally climbing back upwards after the recession and the demand for well-educated young professionals is at an all-time high. The Georgetown Center for Education released a report in July of 2016 which showed that out of the 11.6 million jobs created in the post-recession economy, 11.5 million went to those with at least some college education (Douglas-Gabriel). Of those jobs, 8.4 million went to people with a bachelor’s degree or higher (Douglas-Gabriel). In general, the report makes the point of how the job market is shifting towards the educated worker as those with a college education in the workforce now outnumber those without. The report also tells about the general decline of industries that are traditionally low education and how the recession laid waste to blue collar and clerical jobs. The job market is transforming to one with college graduates which is good for those who can afford a college education but for many the burden is too much. While the report also shows that the unemployment rates for college graduates is lower than those without, the employment rate for those with a STEM degree is higher and their overall salary projection is much higher than those with a liberal arts degree.

A college education appears to be worth it in the long run, but one must also consider possible extenuating circumstances. If you rack up a significant 6 figure college debt and get a degree that has low job prospects, you achieve a low GPA, or you attended a little-known university then whether or not you wasted your money on a fruitless education comes into play. While college graduates have a lower unemployment rate, this does not mean that all college graduates have the jobs they want or are making a comfortable yearly wage. The job markets with the largest current and projected growth are in STEM fields so if college graduates are interested in getting well-paying, secure jobs, then they should major in a related field. However, this brings up the issue of how college is, in theory, supposed to be about educating the whole person, not just creating cogs for the “capitalistic machine” that is our economy. In today’s day and age, only the exceptionally wealthy can afford to think of college as a wholesome experience as opposed to an extended training program for the work world. Educational institutions adapt with the times and the most successful in today’s day and age are those that offer viable degrees that get students jobs upon graduation. Based on the research discussed in this article, it would appear as though a college education is generally always “worth it” in terms of personal development and growth but only economically reasonable if the student majors in an area that is likely to get them a job.

The previous article held out hope that college educations of all kinds are worthwhile but according to the article “Is College worth it? Goldman Sachs says maybe not” it may not always be worthwhile. As the return on investment of college is rapidly declining, Goldman says that getting an education in Engineering, Healthcare, and Business is still worthwhile, but it is becoming harder and harder to get jobs in these fields if you do not come from a top tier university (Long). Well known for ruthlessly focusing on the bottom line, Goldman suggests that instead of attending a middle tier or lower tier university (or majoring in something outside of Engineering, Healthcare, or Business), one would be better off getting training of some kind and working in more of a grey collar job field as opposed to spending the time and money to receive a college education only to struggle financially for years to come. 

There is undoubtedly truth in the argument that graduates of middle and low tier universities struggle to get jobs more so than those of higher caliber universities but at the same time it is also about what you put into your education and time at college that largely determines your job placement, regardless of the caliber of your institution. For instance, the University of South Carolina has the Finance Scholars program which is designed for those who are interested in a career in investment banking. As USC is a non-target, public institution it is incredibly hard to place graduates into fields like investment banking that are dominated by graduates of Ivy League and similar caliber schools. Despite this, the finance scholars program has a 100% job placement rate and most of the members of the program end up employed at investment banks because they put in an incredible amount of work both inside and outside of the classroom to be successful and to get the most out of their education. The tier of the university you choose to attend most definitely influences your career prospects but the level of effort you put in during your time at the institution far and away plays a much larger role in employment prospects. 

The more one reads on the subject, the more the consensus seems to grow that getting a viable degree from a well renowned institution has a far better return on investment than a lower tier school. According to a study by Payscale, some college educations can have a worse salary earning outlook over twenty years than those that only graduated high school (Economist). If one were to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley with an engineering degree they are expected to earn $1.1 million more over twenty years than those that only went to high school (Economist). However, an art student from the Murray State University in Kansas can expect to make $147,000 less than a high school graduate, after they have paid for school. While these numbers have outside factors such as the local economy of the state within which the university is located as well as different response rates and different degree types and job connections, they still show that importance of receiving a viable degree from a higher tier institution in terms of overall success. 

At the end of the day, students need to realize what they are getting themselves into before they choose a college and degree program. If you are going to major in art, you probably should not attend college because the career prospects are not promising or lucrative and you are still amassing an incredibly large amount of debt. If your college does not have a particularly good job placement rate, graduation rate, or good reputation then maybe you should consider entering a trade or choosing a different institution. The main conflict between those that are pro college and those that are against it is simply the disgusting debt that students are going into these days for a degree, especially when they choose a degree that isn’t viable. Maybe it should be on the high school education systems to teach students more about personal finance and debt management, but either way debt and job prospects should be the most important factors in the college process instead of which school has the prettiest campus or which one the student feels most at home at. I understand that college is as much a social experience as it is learning but I am also a firm believer in the American Dream and the hard work, sacrifice, and intelligence it takes to achieve and if these students are willing to plunge themselves into massive amounts of debt for a useless degree, we may soon see the death of the American Dream. As it is, college debt is already keeping students from buying houses, starting businesses, and having children until much later in life because their priority out of school is to tame their debt. This problem is only going to grow exponentially worse as the cost of college tuition has massively outstripped the growth of wages and inflation. 

Student loan numbers have ballooned in recent years to numbers that are staggering. The average student in the Class of 2016 has $37,172 in student loan debt (Friedman). There are more than 44 million borrowers with $1.3 trillion in student loan debt in the United States alone (Friedman). Think for a moment about the absurdity of that statement. Over a trillion dollars in student loan debt in the United States right now. A thousand billion, a million million. Over 44 million people made the decision to get a college education because they felt it was a worthwhile investment and now there is over $1 trillion dollars in student loan debt. The largest concentration of student loan debt is $10,000 - $25,000, which accounts for 12.4 million student loan borrowers (Friedman). This does not account for the interest that the students will pay on the loans. Based on calculations of what my own student loan debt payments will come out to be, students can be expected to pay back up to 1.5x the original amount they borrowed. 8.3 million student borrowers owe between $50,000 - $75,000 (Friedman). 1.35 million student borrowers owe between $75,000 - $100,000, 1.1 million student borrowers owe between $100,000 - $150,000, 500,000 student borrowers owe between $150,000 - $200,000, and an alarming 415,000 student borrowers owe over $200,000 in student debt (Friedman). These numbers are disgusting and the reason why millennials are pushing things like getting married, having children, buying houses, and starting businesses back further and further in their lives. Millions of young, educated Americans are being burdened with debt that they will have an intensely hard time paying off. You cannot save money properly and financially plan for your future if you are encumbered with such staggering amounts of debt. 

As a man who will likely leave college with student loan debt in the low six figures, I question how tuition has gotten so out of hand across the country given the stagnation of wages in all fields over the last twenty years. As the cheapest option from a pool of twelve possible colleges and universities across the United States, the University of South Carolina had the most appealing financial burden and it will still bury me in a mountain of debt. The fact that at the ripe old age of eighteen I had to come to terms with and accept the fact that I will be encumbered with a debt number that keeps millions of Americans up at night is truly flabbergasting. I cannot legally purchase an alcoholic beverage in the United States, but I evidently have the financial wherewithal to make the decision to take on crippling amounts of student debt so that one day I can potentially live a financially comfortable life. Instead of having the financial liberty to buy a car and potentially a home upon graduating college and (hopefully) landing a job, I will instead likely be denied any other loans and will have a monthly payment that could comfortably pay for a mortgage until I am in my 30s, simply because I chose to get an education that is supposed to financially benefit me. Do I still believe a college education is important in today’s day and age? Yes. We are living in an educated world that needs educated people to do even the simplest tasks. But I believe that if tuition rates continue to grow at the rate they have been over the last twenty years, a college education will soon not be worth the financial burden and that will result in only the wealthy receiving an education and which will have the potential to lead to the creation of an education based class system within the United States. I still believe that it is a completely absurd and even asinine notion that college should be free within the United States for a host of personal and economic beliefs, but I do believe something needs to be done about the ever-growing cost. As a country, and even a world, we are constantly growing debt and that is not sustainable. At some point the system that is “too big to fail” is bound to fail and with that will come catastrophe and devastation the likes of which have never been known. That reaches outside the realm of student debt but if people are willing to take out over $1.3 trillion in loans for an education, imagine the debt they are willing to take on for other things within their lives. Something needs to be done about the growing cost of a college education before the situation gets completely out of hand.

In the information age we currently live in, we are regularly exposed to statistics and numbers that are incredibly large and maybe hard to understand. We regularly hear how our national debt is approaching $20 Trillion and how our GDP every year is approaching the same number and most people do not understand what any of that means. To put into perspective the rapidly growing cost of a college education and the stagnation of wages, one must look at a few things. “In 1970, the average amount of a university’s tuition and fees was about $585 per student per year…” (Collinge 4). Today, the cost of a college education is in the tens of thousands of dollars per year per student. Because of this increased cost, more and more students require loans to finance their education. “Today, about two thirds of college students require loans to make it through, and the typical undergraduate borrower leaves school with more than twenty thousand dollars in student debt” (Collinge 5). Written in 2009, the numbers discussed in this book have undoubtedly grown to an even more alarming number. This is saying that for every 100 students enrolled in college, 67 of them are required to take out loans to pay for their education. Another major factor in the student debt epidemic is the stagnation of wages in comparison to the cost of a college education. “Tuition inflation has outpaced the Consumer Price Index (CPI) during this period by a factor of about two to one” (Collinge 5). The CPI is used to measure the value of the dollar which means that the cost of an education has vastly outstripped the growth in cost of all consumer goods. Inflation of this nature cannot be sustained in any area of an economy and if something is not done about this problem there will be a massive economic failure and upturn caused almost largely by the student debt industry. 

It has been made clear several times that for an education to be worthwhile, one must pursue a worthwhile degree from an institution with at least some level of renown. How exactly is one supposed to determine whether a university is going to offer an education that is worth their time and money? To start, one should look past the stereotypical concept of a college education and see what the climate is currently like. “40 percent of college students is now attending part time. That’s a huge shift over the past few decades. You have people who go to commuter schools, they go to school at night, they go to school online. They don’t live in Ivy covered dorms, it’s just not the way college is now for most people.” (Korn). On the face of it, college is simply a different experience than it used to be, largely because of the financial burden that now comes with a college education. To add to the confusion, colleges across the United States spit out a constant stream of statistics about their graduating classes that turns what should be a fairly transparent process into a mire of confusion and uncertainty. The largest problem that prospective students run into is that they do not know where the information is coming from so they take it at face value. “So, it’s not very helpful to say – for a school to say 80 percent of our graduates are employed within six months of graduation, because that’s often self-reported data from the graduates” (Korn). The way this information is collected is inherently biased and therefore not particularly helpful. Not only is it biased, it is a very superficial statement. “Six months after graduation doesn’t say much about where they will be five or ten years after graduation. It’s also an average. So, maybe all the engineers are employed but none of the film majors are” (Korn). What Korn is essentially saying is that until this data collection is done in a far more meticulous and accurate fashion, many of the statistics that schools spit out about graduate success and graduation rates are useless. In deciding on a college, one should take into greater consideration what graduates say about the experience, what employers are saying, and other things of that nature. They should avoid most things that the college itself is saying.

As someone who is required to take on significant debt to receive a college education, I often look at the price when deciding if my education is worth it. However, opinion is still a deciding factor. An online poll conducted in 2015 found that many college graduates determined their education was worth the cost. “The actual poll of 30,000 college alumni found that the vast majority of college graduates agreed that their education was worth the cost. Recent graduates were less enthusiastic than older graduates, but only the recent graduates who took out more than $50,000 in loans were unlikely to agree that their degrees were worth what they paid” (Weston). Graduates with a significant amount of debt are likely to be more bitter about their college education but as the debt is paid down and their earnings continue to rise, their outlook on their education is likely to change. This is especially true as the earnings gap between college graduates and high school graduates continues to grow. “High school graduates earn about 62% of what those with four-year degrees earn, according to a Pew Research Center study… It is not that college graduates are earning so much more, but that the incomes and economic opportunities for high-school-only graduates have collapsed” (Weston). Weston makes the point that there is a pay gap that is worth the education but also points out that taking on massive amounts of debt is not necessarily worth it. Per usual, it comes back to whether your education is going to be worth the amount of debt you take out for it. Therefore, one must pick and choose their degree and institution wisely. 

The increase in student loan debt is leading to recent college graduates to push off things like buying a car, purchasing a home, getting married, starting businesses, pursuing advanced degrees, starting families, and other things of this nature. It is also affecting career choice and has been for a very long time now. “Minicozzi (2005) analyzed the career choice of 1,006 men in public and private 2 and 4-year postsecondary institutions… he found that men with larger debt preferred to take a higher income job than those with less debt… Moreover, men tended to sacrifice high-wage income growth to try to quickly decrease debt” (Choi 26). The data used in this analysis came from the 1987 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, but a similar study conducted by Rothstein and Rouse in 2011 also supported this finding (Choi 27). While this does not apply to all college graduates, the findings of this study hit home as I am a man who will be graduating with significant debt and am already looking at similar jobs. At some point in my career I will undoubtedly be concerned about the income growth available in my career field but upon graduation my prerogative is to obtain a job with a high salary so that I can rapidly pay down my student debt. This “practice,” if you will, is becoming more and more common in today’s day and age as student debt continues to grow and graduates look for the most efficient ways to eliminate it. 

 The student debt epidemic continues to worsen everyday but even as more people begin to catch on and say something about it, no one is doing anything about it. Students and parents constantly complain that a college education is getting too expensive, but they continue to sign loans that put them massively in debt and cause financial burdens and struggles for years to come. It is understandable as most people want an increased quality of life from the financial success that a college education generally brings but if nothing is done to solve the issue, we will soon have a population of bright young people who are enslaved by student loan corporations who are only in existence to profit off your inability to personally finance your education. It must be made clear that this is not just a necessary evil to be successful in life but an epidemic that is plaguing millions of Americans. The fact that these colleges can charge extortionary rates and student loan companies can gouge students and families with criminally high interest rates on these loans is absurd. I am all for capitalism and its many benefits, but I believe something needs to be done to regulate the student loan and higher education industries. The simple fact that there are entire industries centered around student loans and higher education should be a red flag. If something is not done to curb the rapid inflation of the costs of a higher education and student loan debt, this country is going to face a serious economic crisis. If student loan debt and the cost of a college education continues to grow this rapidly, default rates will begin to sky rocket and the economy will face a crisis as fewer and fewer people pursue an education. The current situation is a recipe for an economic collapse because people will be up to their ears in student loan debt and those who are not will not be educated enough for the growing job market. To avoid a dire economic situation, something must be done about the rapidly increasing costs of a college education and student loan debt.