Blog > American Life > Blog article: Cost of Education: No time like the present to evaluate cost and benefits
 | Email This Article Email This Article  | 

Cost of Education: No time like the present to evaluate cost and benefits

Posted April 16, 2008

Blogger’s Note: The national credit crunch and decreases in federal subsidies are putting an increasing number of student lenders out of business. It couldn’t come at a worse time for parents of the Echo Boom generation… kids born around 1990 and later who are pushing out of high school and into colleges.Try getting that second mortgage as academia keeps jacking up the price of a year at college to the equivalent of an imported luxury automobile… every year for four years straight.

This may be a good time if $160,000 for a B.A. in Communications is money well spent…

Read the article right here…

by David Frum

Baltimore — (TFN): Surging prices, collapsing returns, ending in a crash — housing? Yes, but the pattern may equally apply to another area of middle-class aspiration — college education. And as high school seniors receive their fat or thin acceptance or rejection letters this month, maybe we should all take a closer look at what their money buys.

Over the past decade the cost of college tuition has approximately doubled, faster at private colleges. This rapidly inflating investment is yielding a declining return. The earnings of bachelor-degree holders have been dropping this decade. After inflation, B.A. holders earned more than $54,000 in 2000. That dropped 5 percent over the next four years.

What happened? Some point to international trade. It used to be only blue-collar workers who faced international job competition. Today, so do bookkeepers, software engineers and certain health care technologists.

Others cite immigration. About one in five U.S. B.A. holders was born abroad, nearly double the proportion of just a decade ago. Foreign B.A.’s, especially those on temporary visas, may have less bargaining power than the native-born, exerting downward pressure on wages.

Here’s another thought. The proportion of Americans with a college degree continues to rise. As more and more job applicants hold degrees, have employers become more discerning about what exactly those degrees represent? Do employers look past the degree itself, to the subject matter studied, the grades earned, the quality of the institution issuing the degree? If so, students, parents and universities alike will have to ask some hard questions about value for money.

Read on…

****Make sure you sign up for our FREE TFN News Feed for breaking news, special reports and new financial videos. Sign up through your favorite reader here. Or, if you prefer, have the feed delivered to your email.


Related Articles

    None Found

Posted by TFN · Filed Under American Life 

Comments

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus