Is a College Degree Still Worth It? >
With College, Only the Motivated Need Apply
Four to six years of partying do not equal an education
November 17, 2011
About Craig Brandon:
Craig Brandon is the author of The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up On Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It, which won the silver prize in the education category in the 2010 Book of the Year Awards.
Four to six years of partying on someone else's dime do not equal an education.
It depends on the kind of student you are talking about. A student who is intelligent, motivated, engaged, and has a clear career goal should get a degree and it would be a crime not to send her to the best college possible. On the other hand, the majority of college students are lazy, narcissistic, anti-intellectual party animals who refuse to read anything, disrupt classrooms, and spend more time drinking than studying.
[Today's Young Adults Suffering More Financially than Older Generations.]
The new book Academically Adrift shows that most of these students don't learn anything at all during the average six years they spend at so-called four-year colleges. Employers have come to understand that these degrees are worthless pieces of paper. Many of these "college graduates" are functionally illiterate, unable to do basic math and have a minimal understanding of economics or how our government operates. So it is not surprising that even if they land a job, they don't keep it long.
These graduates have an average of $25,000 in student debt that they must pay off working as waiters or clerks. This debt can never be forgiven, even if they declare bankruptcy, and God help them if they default, because the debt can quickly reach the $100,000 level. Banks and college administrators are complicit in this systematic fleecing of our young people, the debt-for-diploma deal, selling them classes they don't want to attend at outrageous prices that increase relentlessly year after year.
[Average Student Debt Reaches All-Time High.]
At the current price tag, it makes no economic sense to send most kids to college. High school guidance counselors recommend college for 90 percent of their graduates because it makes parents happy, and it is parents who need to wake up to the new economic reality of higher education. Many of them still think not sending their kids to college is a form of child abuse. The new reality is that sending immature children to adolescent amusement parks full of hot tubs, climbing walls, and food courts is a costly mistake that can ruin their lives.
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- Other Arguments
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#214081
Yes — The return on a college investment is more than that on almost any alternative
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN, Policy Analyst with the Postsecondary Education Program at the Center for American Progress
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#310955
No — We now have nearly 80,000 bartenders and taxi drivers with bachelor's degrees
RICHARD VEDDER, Director of Center for College Affordability and Productivity
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#48440
Yes — Like any smart investment, the pursuit of higher education requires effort to explore the options
PETER KONWERSKI, Senior Associate Vice President and Dean of Students at George Washington University
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#55932
Yes — Students and their families should not simply assume that college will be "worth it"
ROBERT B. SCHWARTZ, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice in Educational Policy and Administration at Harvard University
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#67757
No — Put more courses online and limit federal student loans to four years of undergraduate work
LINDSEY BURKE, Senior Policy Analyst in Domestic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation
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#75337
Yes — Encouraging students to go to college is the right choice
ANTHONY P. CARNEVALE, Director of Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
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#85946
No — What's the message when grads can't write a simple E-mail?
NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, Author of 'The Faculty Lounges ... And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For'
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#94837
Yes — College often provides the first opportunity for students to direct their own education
TOM CARROLL, President of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future
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#104746
Yes — People need to go to college in order to have a fighting chance at a well-paying career
KEVIN CAREY, Policy Director of Education Sector
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#113945
Yes — The return on investment in postsecondary education remains compelling
CHRIS FARRELL, Economics Editor of 'Marketplace Money'
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#123870
Yes — Tuition and student debt have not grown "unmanageable"
CECILIA ELENA ROUSE, Katzman-Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University
