Judith Scott-Clayton asks over at
Economix who should not go to college:
While college may be a great investment, it’s not like investing in
the stock market: a prospective student can’t just fork over some money
and let someone else worry about how to make it grow. For college to
have any payoff, students must participate in the process by going to
class and engaging with course materials, peers and instructors.
The cost of college includes not just monetary costs but
psychological costs, which are highest for those who either strongly
dislike classroom instruction or have to work particularly hard to get
anything out of it. Individuals with high psychological costs who enroll
anyway because that is what they believe they “should” do may end up
with the worst of both worlds: forgoing income (and possibly
accumulating debt) without accumulating skills.
The downside to all this? Student debt that now has hit the
trillion dollar mark, and worse:
we've reached a point where two-thirds of college seniors now graduate in debt, where a total of 37 million
Americans now owe money on their education. Sixty-seven percent are
between the ages of 18 and 39, but recent research suggests the fastest
growing group of borrowers may be in middle age
-- people who have been laid off from jobs or are afraid their
professional skills aren't fresh enough to keep up with a changing
economy. [...] For young graduates -- or dropouts, for that matter
-- the debt will drag on their finances well into adulthood. For the
adults, it's an investment they may not have a time to recoup. Many
are already being overwhelmed by what they owe. The NY Federal Reserve
believes that more than a quarter of all borrowers with due loans are
now delinquent on some of their payments.
1 comment:
I for one believe that everybody MUST go to college (totally pro Obama on this one). There is no excuse of "disliking classroom instruction" - that's a cop out !!
The problem in the US is the horrendous costs of higher education - Cost effectiveness, which has featured in all walks of life, has however not permeated academia. Its a cocooned world where the ruthlessness of the market place which keeps firms competitive does not exist. End result is that the young suffer with horrendous debt. Let a good hard core corporate cost cutter loose on academia and give him the power and you'll see student debt dramatacially go down !!!
I know you are going to give me an earful on this :)
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