College is not a commodity!

Economo
Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:20:50 +0000

A university eduction can generate a bundle of benefits that include both market/economic returns and non-market returns. I think it might be hard to find anyone, or even any economist, who wouldn’t readily accept that. However, the necessary human capital investment is not costless. The danger lies when we extrapolate or extend the logic that because many of the returns are difficult to easily quantify or measure in economic returns, then a college eduction becomes somehow “priceless.” More specifically, the danger is when someone with difficultly judging appropriately ex ante investments for colleges, borrows beyond their ability to repay, or unnecessarily. As the trend continues for more and more or the cost of public colleges to be pushed onto students and their families, the concern is that the needed financial literacy won’t be in place to help students make wise borrowing and college investment choices. The public danger lies not in when we tend to treat college like a commodity, but when we deny this perspective.