What’s the Value of a College Degree?
Jeff Selingo
Bestselling author | Strategic advisor on future of learning and work | College admissions and early career expert | Contributor, The Atlantic | Angel investor | Editor, Next newsletter | Co-host, FutureU podcast
When my parents bought their first house in the early 1960s, they focused on buying a place to live in and raise their children. By the time I purchased my first house early last decade, buying a house was as much about the “investment” as it was about buying something in order to put a roof over your head. Flipping homes turned into something people did for a living. "Return on investment" became as important a metric as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the house.
Return on investment has now become an important metric for another big purchase in life: the college degree. For generations we’ve been told that going to college was worth it both from an economic standpoint (higher earnings) and for improved quality of life (better health and civic engagement). College enrollment surged by one-third last decade. Going to any college, at any cost was the ticket to a better life.
Now as incomes lag and college prices continue to rise--average tuition eats up 40 percent of median income these days--the conversation about going to college has evolved into figuring out the return on investment of going to a specific school to major in a particular degree program.
Better data tools now allow prospective students and parents to measure colleges based on the salaries of their graduates. This is just one measurement of value, and shouldn't solely be used to judge a school. But as expected, college leaders are vocal in their opposition to such measurements. Some want to return to the old days where they told families that the degree was worth it based solely on trust.
For me, it’s a win for prospective students and their families to have salary information available to them during the college search, along with the answers to other key questions: How long will it take me to graduate? How much student loan debt will I need to take on? When viewed together, such information helps consumers measure the return on investment. Here’s why that's a good thing for students and colleges:
Forces colleges to better measure "the experience."
College leaders say the campus experience is about so much more than the degree and what you earn after graduation. But most colleges can’t quantify that “value added,” and even if they can through measures such as the National Survey of Student Engagement or the Collegiate Learning Assessment, schools don’t want to release the results. If schools dislike earnings information being made available, it might force colleges to come up with other ways to measure value.
Helps differentiate colleges.
If college A has a much higher graduation rate than College B and graduates of College A have higher earnings than that of College B, the ROI helps students and parents better separate schools that might look similar on many other factors, such as majors, size, and location.
Puts potential loan debt in context.
The idea of loan payments are unfamiliar to potential college students if they never had debt in their lives. What’s more, student loans are often expressed in total debt rather than monthly payments, the way most of us think about paying back debt. If schools are requiring you take on $30,000 in debt to go there, then they should be able to tell you what graduates from that college in your field are earning in order to pay off that debt.
Jeffrey Selingo is editor at large at The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of the forthcoming book, College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, scheduled for release on May 7.
Sign up for updates on the book here and receive one of two free PDF workbooks, Making the College Decision or Colleges of the Future, a perfect way to get a head start on College (Un)Bound for students, parents, counselors, college leaders, and others.
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11 年Federally regulated tools are great resources, but value seems to be defined differently in today's competitive job market and regarding degree education. When assessing that degree value one must ask several questions: Who are the institutions professional alumni networks? Is the degree program applied learning or lecture format? Where are past graduates professionally? What are current students saying about their program learning? Can this degree be legitimately translated into employability? Today's career market market demands applied knowledge. Today's employers require competitive, competent candidtates! When we marry ROI and advanced learning the logical conclusion is yes! However, at what "rate" that "investment" is "returning" is the bigger, more taxing question for today's new grad!
Manager at Sunburst Apartments
11 年I agree with this article. Time and time again I am seeing persons graduating with degrees and cannot get a job or are underemployed. Yet, they have an enormous student loan to pay. Now, on their current salaries, these individuals could only think of a house or property until this loan is paid off after which half their life is gone. With the change in time, people also have to change. While some will say going to college teaches you much more than obtaining the degree, most persons don't care much about learning anything else but getting the degree since it may give them a better job. How many persons here will still go to college if it did not give you a competitive edge at the workplace? Information has changed with the proliferation of the internet. One can obtain more information on the internet than what is learnt at a university. Businesses understands this and they are no longer hiring overly qualified persons. A business don't necessary need a day to day manager any more. All that's needed is a supervisor and the business hires consultants to advise them. it's cheaper in the long run. Consulting is the way to go but there are only so much space available for such. I've known consultants who takes information from the internet and advise others. As a heavy researcher myself, I've learnt so much from the internet without a college degree. I've chosen to do certification courses, which are cheaper and are instrumental in charting my path currently and I don't have a penny of student loan debt.
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11 年nice article...!
Docent at Chalmers University of Technology
11 年Here in the UK, this information has been published for the last 6 years in the form of university "league tables", and when I held an academic job I saw how they have become perverse incentives for universities. In particular, the fact that a high graduation rate is considered good leads to great pressure to inflate grades and lower academic standards. True, lower standards will lead to lower graduate earnings in the long term, but we didn't have the luxury to think long term: a drop in graduation rates would lead to an immediate fall in the league tables, which would lead to fewer applications next year, which would put us in immediate financial deficit.
Quality Assurance New Development
11 年Spot on! Quite sync with my thoughts. ROI (education) is really an important aspect that everyone should concentrate as a major factor to filter out better college/ degree program from rest.